Big read

What is project-based learning?

PBL puts children at the heart of their own learning. With projects driven by an irresistible impetus and underpinned by authentic assessment, children work together to secure the substantive and disciplinary knowledge needed to carry out an extended project. This culminates in a public showcase where they present their work to a range of audiences. My experience is that the public showcase is a huge motivator for children and staff.

In order to ensure fidelity to the ambitions of project-based learning while creating space for innovation and adaptation, we will work within a loose framework built around 6 core design principles:

  • Learning is driven by an irresistible impetus (typically an essential question) that addresses a real problem, issue or opportunity that requires children to gain and apply domain knowledge to ‘answer’. The authenticity of the driver sustains engagement.

  • We believe that knowledge is not the binary opposite of skills, but the net result of three factors: information and facts, skills and experiences. We also believe that this knowledge should be shared with audiences, and assessed in a way that is reliable, meaningful and genuinely transformative. At KindEducational, we call this Communal Knowledge.

  • Patrick Geddes told us to ‘think global, act local’. This is a powerful driver for authentic endeavour. We will seek opportunities to explore the big issues of the day as experienced at a local, perhaps even personal level. This will ensure relevance and help children develop a deep ‘sense of place’.

  • Building project partnerships with local experts will liberate learners and learning and it will be mutually beneficial. Partners bring a real-world rigour to our work, support the development of authentic assessment and provide expert role models for our children. And it is powerful CPD for staff!

  • The purpose of project-based learning is for children to deliver a response to the project’s impetus in the form of an original product. The nature and form of this ‘product’ is bound only by its capacity to address the brief. Whatever form it takes, it must be beautiful…

  • The beautiful work must be shared publicly with authentic audiences. It is demanding work and the stakes are high, but our experience is that it is the importance attached to the showcase that is so motivational for children and staff

Why should we do it?

PBL truly delivers for the whole child. Projects are meticulously planned to ensure domain rigour, and meaningful opportunities for reading and oracy are prioritised. But it is the process of engaging in an extended project over time and delivering publicly-exhibited ‘products’ that reveals the unique benefits of working this way. PBL leaves a powerful legacy of learning:

  • PBL fosters in children an understanding of and appreciation for the relationship between hard work and success. And such are the levels of engagement, it does it by stealth!

  • PBL requires children to develop a more open, collective and responsible attitude to learning, drawing on a range of competencies including teamwork, leadership, active listening, patience, compromise, adaptability and decision making.

  • PBL delivers gains across a range of cognitive and metacognitive skills. Powerful, purposeful reading, writing and oracy are prioritised, and the ongoing self an peer assessment and critique develops higher order thinking about learning, progress and performance.

  • Finding solutions to proper problems demands creativity, with children needing to demonstrate an openness to divergent thinking, problem -solving and innovation.

  • Well crafted PB fosters in all children a powerful sense of purpose and agency, instilling in them a belief that they can bring about change; that by working together they can make the world more peaceful, sustainable and fairer for everyone.

  • Ultimately the child themselves becomes bigger: more confident, resilient, capable, determined, peaceful, ready and able to tackle the now and next.

How does it work?

I like to think about projects moving through key phases of learning. The terminology - Romance, Precision, Generalisation - came from an essay written by the English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. While these phases are most easily thought of as sequential, in practice they are usually adopted more flexibily:

  • Awe and wonder, provocations and possibilities and plenty of first hand browsing through rich resources and hands-on experience. Just no teaching. Romance seeks to provoke new thinking, stimulate questions and build anticipation.

  • Precision brings the rigour and often feels the most traditional in terms of classroom delivery as children work hard to secure the essential substantive and disciplinary knowledge needed to pursue the project. This phase is underpinned by purposeful reading and writing and authentic assessment.

  • PBL expects children to take their new knowledge and apply it as they seek answers, solutions or responses to the project impetus. Afterall, what good is new knowledge if you don’t do anything wit it? This is deep learning to last a lifetime.

  • Essential to sustain purposeful endeavour and a genuine sense of responsibility and accountability. But also a wonderful way to engage and inspire families and the wider community. Showcase raises the bar and everyone jumps higher!

  • All stakeholders are involved in reflection and evaluation - children, staff, project partners, families - as we gather import qualitative data on the true impact of the project. This will amplify gains and spotlight areas for improvement next time. Schools also need to make arrangements for the digital storage of projects for portfolios.

  • The purpose of PBL is that it delivers beyond the confines of the classroom and well beyond the duration of the original project. This is gold-standard project-based learning to last a lifetime.

Principles not prescription, repertoire not recipe

At KindEducational we are not selling ready-made projects, pre-written schemes of work or an off-the-peg solution to your curriculum conundrum. We believe that the time invested in the design, planning and delivery of the projects will build essential capacity across the setting, deepen teacher knowledge, reinvigorate pedagogy, and transform the engagement of your children, empowering them to achieve the extraordinary and delivering a legacy of learning to last a lifetime.

The steps we will take together

Nudge:  a provocation to get your attention; making the case for radical transformation

Shift:  building capacity, securing buy-in, making space to allow amazing things to happen

Step:  plan and deliver a pilot project

Leap: supercharging projects through expert partnerships

Launch:  mapping for progression, going whole-school

Assure:  making the transformations deep dive-proof and ensuring sustainability