“Life is not an exam, it is a project.” It is the mantra that American pedagogue Bob Lenz repeats when talking about learning. Lenz is director of the Buck Institute for Education, a non-profit organization charged with disseminating Project-Based Learning (PBL). Between 30 and 40% of the users of his organization's website, which offers free resources for teachers interested in learning this methodology, are international. The pedagogue has recently been in Barcelona with the desire to evangelize the educational sector. He also visited the Escola L’ Horitzó in Barcelona, which has been using this methodology in his classrooms for years.
What is project-based learning (PBL)?
It is an approach or a methodology. It is also a philosophy that is based on students learning the content of the courses, but also skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity and even acquiring a feeling of empowerment to change things. It is research-based, in which students are asked to apply or demonstrate their knowledge, not just spew it out on a test. They work as a team when appropriate and reflect on their learning so that they can transfer what they have learned to new and different situations.
One of the premises is creativity. Is that what was missing from education?
It is a fundamental piece that is missing in traditional education, although not the most important in PBL. Critical thinking, collaboration and teamwork are, for me, equally important. Because being creative, but not knowing how to work as a team or not knowing how to manage a project, develop a plan, put it into practice and evaluate it, does not have the same value.
Can you learn everything with PBL?
No. PBL will not teach you to read, it will inspire you to read. It is motivating to learn basic academic skills, such as reading, writing, mathematics. In most schools, students are told, “learn this, read this, solve this problem.” But they are never told why or how it connects to the world. PBL asks students a question that the only way to answer is often by learning math, reading, or history. Start with meaning and relevance and then use strategies that teach the basic skills, rather than teaching the basic skills and then saying, "someday, later, you'll use this." The ABP is the main course, not the dessert.
Is the value of this learning that it motivates students and teachers?
Definitely. Many of the jobs that the students we have now will have do not exist yet. Project-based learning teaches you to be a learner. You are learning how to learn, and you are committed and motivated to do so. For teachers, I think it's a much better way to be a teacher than the traditional way. I was a project-based teacher and it was a lot of fun (laughs). Teachers become teachers because they want to contribute meaningfully to the lives of their students. They look for those moments in which the student says 'uaala'. In a traditional class, that never happens.
This system requires motivated teachers, something that, due to various circumstances, does not always happen...
It's difficult for teachers right now, also in the United States. But if they receive the necessary support, training and resources, PBL will help them find motivation. In our workshops we often have teachers who have taught for 30 years who say, "I am now excited for the first time in many years to be teaching again."
We could say that PBL is the antithesis of rote education.
It allows the student to be better able to remember the content and skills. It is important that there is space for reflection on learning, what we call metacognition. Brain research says that to remember, and to remember longer, you need context. So in PBL, students tend to do well on exams long after they have done the project because they have a context to remember it. There was a study in which students with the traditional method were given an exam and some did very well, others obtained an intermediate result and others failed. They took the same exam six weeks later and they all failed.
It is a way of teaching and learning that not everyone understands…
When I talk to groups of teachers, high school teachers tell me "it's great that the younger students do projects." And when I talk to primary school teachers they tell me "the projects are for secondary school kids." One of the things we do is have teachers do a project so they can experience it. And we also need to give parents evidence that they can see, even if it is small, that students who do projects achieve good results.
What would you say to parents?
That I am more concerned about the future of your children if they focus on exams than on projects. Because life is not an exam. Life is a project.
There is a fear that if there are no books, they will lose control of what they learn.
It's something new. When they have the opportunity to go to the project presentations, then they see the learning. It takes some time to get to this point though. But it's not about one thing or the other, I think "every project or everything traditional" is an erroneous contrast. The important thing is where you start, it's the context.
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Learning is demonstrated and applied in projects. To assess students as a whole, it is necessary to have knowledge, mastery of knowledge, application, understanding and reflection. Most schools only test knowledge. We are missing everything else. The fear that exists is that only the projects will remain and academics will be eliminated. And that's not right. But the grade on the big exam tells you very little about what the student can know and do. If you just take the exam you don't have to prove that you know something.
Are there universities that work on projects in the United States?
Some. But there is also part of a crisis. In the United States, students are increasingly asking, "Why are they teaching me this if I can watch the lecture on YouTube? I don't need to go" or "Why do I have to pay $70,000 a year to hear people speak?" " They have to change.
The United States is the pioneer country, but are there experiences in other countries?
We have helped develop projects in Chile. China also has a national project-based learning policy, although they don't call it that. Finland is a leader in “phenomenal learning,” which is basically project-based. And I think India has a national policy for project-based learning.
The detractors of PBL who claim that it does not work and that children do not learn content, that they only play and pass the time.
That's why we have developed standard procedures for high-quality PBL. If you follow the standard, you can be sure that the projects will lead to good results. We have to make sure that the people who are doing the PBL are using the standards and then be able to share that so that they see that it's not just something vaguely structured. It is also important to share the stories of success, commitment and enthusiasm of teachers and students. It is very important that teachers in PBL schools can say how they know that students are learning all the academic aspects, as well as skills, and that they have work products such as the novels that students produce here (school experience L'Horitzó in secondary school which consists of writing a novel). That's more convincing than any test.
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Some people believe that everything should be calm in schools. And when they see students talking and making noise, they think they are not learning. We relate learning to silence. But this, with noise, is how human beings learn.
He assures that PBL is especially good for people with fewer opportunities. Why?
And also for students who traditionally do well in school because they advance faster. They are both doing well. They stay committed instead of giving up. Young people today face a challenge, because they prepare and work very hard for an exam and even arrive at university and ask themselves: "Why am I here?
What would you say to skeptics of this system?
There need to be very clear standards about what constitutes high-quality project-based learning and frameworks, so that it is not up to each individual to decide. But there is a difference between doing projects and project-based learning.
