Robinson's challenge to revolutionize education to an agricultural approach, compared to a linear one, is essential. There is not a single path, or line, which education must go down. Not everyone will take the same route to get to the end result, because different people will have different results. I liked Robinson's comment that not everyone must go to college. While going to college and getting a degree in higher education does provide numerous opportunities, college is not for everyone. I think of the profile for the SC graduate, and of our district, which mentions preparation not only for college but also for careers. Ensuring that our students are ready for whatever path they choose still involves a move towards an organic process. As educators, we must "develop our own solutions" for what will work best for our students. I believe this statement can also be directly applied to PBL. When using PBL, students will have to develop their own solutions to the questions they pose. This shift is not an easy one. As Robinson stated, "we must disenthrall ourselves from certain ideas." For educators, I believe the idea is not giving students the answers, and for students it means not waiting to be told the answer. I believe PBL is the way to disenthrall ourselves from many of the linear ideas. PBL is organic. There is not a 'right' way to do PBL which is what I love about the model. PBL is open which allows for the integration and diversity needed to change our mindset. While I believe this paradigm shift must first take place within our schools and district, it must be closely followed by our society. Through inquiry, posing questions, and developing their own solutions, students and educators alike can change the way people think about education.
I believe that Robinson's challenge is indeed a challenge. I feel that I have done a better job this past year at incorporating more PBL into my classroom than my first year, and I plan for the trend to continue. In my classroom, I have done a lot of integration and projects with social studies and literacy skills. I plan to continue to incorporate those, but want to expand to include more science and math. In my 4th grade classroom, my students have come to love researching and creating products. My students become so much more excited about their learning through the use of projects. Some challenges I have faced using projects though are providing on-going feedback and encouraging them to critique their own work and allowing the students to share their work with an authentic audience. While time and planning are also challenges, I believe that they are also a necessary part of using PBL in the classroom. It is going to take a lot more time and planning, but by spending more time in PBL both students and educators can help change the mindset of how education should be.
I, too, have trouble getting students to critique their work or a peer's work in order to make it better. Just like we talked about in class today, students are so used to turning things in to be graded with no notion of revising their work. Unfortunately, this has trained our students so that they do not know how to self-assess (or they simply don't want to put the time in to actually editing their work). I will incorporate mini-lessons in my PBLs to actually teach students how to give and receive constructive criticism in order to make their projects better.
ReplyDeleteI think you hit on the most important idea as we move forward as educators in the 21st century; "There is not a single path, or line, which education must go down". With the PBL approach we will be able to give students the capacity to choose their path, thereby validating their abilities and approach to learning.
ReplyDeleteHi Helen,
ReplyDeleteLike you I appreciated how Sir Ken Robinson explained the difference between a linear approach and an organic or "agricultural" approach where there are multiple paths to student growth and to positive learning outcomes. I agree that these are reflected in our profile of the SC graduate, providing equal weight to college and career and honoring different paths students take. I want this to be reflected in our classrooms too so that there are multiple pathways for success within pbl and within the larger realm of our students' educational experiences. I am thankful that you have already had some positive experiences with implementing pbl with your fourth graders and I am looking forward to the work we will do to grow in the areas of critique and revision and ongoing feedback you've already identified as areas you want to grow in.