Last week I attended the PBLWorld workshop. It is a 3 day workshop hosted by the Buck Institute for Education (BIE). I am not going to get into what that conference experience was like. It wasn’t good. I would not recommend any math teacher (any teacher of any subject, actually) to ever attend PBLWorld unless they make major restructuring to the conference. It definitely is not worth $1100. If you want an earful, find me and ask.
But, they are the 800 lb gorilla of PBL. There are not a lot of resources for teaching mathematics through PBL. Heck, we can’t even agree what PBL means in math. I have seen the acronym used for Project Based Learning (this is how BIE uses it). I have seen it used for Problem Based Learning. I am helping teach a class for preservice teachers this semester called PBI, which is short for Project Based Instruction.
Way too many acronyms here. So in the interest of keeping things straight and organized, I will consistently use the following acronyms:
PBL: Project Based Learning
prBL: Problem Based Learning
PBI: Project Based Instruction
prBI: Problem Based Instruction
I think each of these has merit, and a use.
That is the goal of this post. To tease out the differences, and justify the need for both.
First off. I am not going to focus on the difference between Learning and Instruction. I don’t think it is that important. The difference is the difference between whether we are talking about the teachers (Instruction) or the Learners (um, learning :)).
So the issue is the difference between Project and Problem. Where does that fall? What does it mean for the classroom?
Projects
Projects, according to BIE has 8 pieces.
- Key knowledge, understanding, and success skills
- Challenging problem or question
- Sustained inquiry
- Authenticity
- Learner voice and choice
- Reflection
- Critique and revision
- Public product
An amazing new book by NCTM called Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships: Making Mathematics Come Alive with Project Based Learning mirrors these elements.
But, there needs to be some explanation. When they say “Sustained Inquiry” in the third element, and “Learner Voice and Choice” in the 5th, they are not talking a free for all. If we put the inquiry into the context Trevor MacKenzie uses in his inquiry books (see the image below).
(click to embiggen)
No, we are not talking about Free Inquiry when doing either PBL or prBL. We ARE talking about Guided Inquiry. This was never made explicit at PBLWorld, but they hinted at it strongly. In fact, it must be. The whole point of a teacher coming up with a guiding question (second point), and making sure that standards are being hit (first point) means we cannot be doing Free Inquiry.
And the standards to be addressed are not just the CCSSM or CCSSELA standards. The standards are also the 21st Century Practices standards. Some districts are requiring teachers to show how they are incorporating these standards into your teaching. When doing PBL, it is simple. They are put into the project right from the start, and clearly practiced at the end in step 8: Public Product.
Problems
Problem Based Teaching or prBL is very similar. If you want to read an expert on the topic, Carmel Schettino has a wonderful series of posts on the NCTM’s Blog. There are 4:
- Aspects of Problem Based Teaching
- Aspects of Problem Based Teaching – The need for community
- Aspects of Problem Based Teaching – Assessment
- Aspects of Problem Based Teaching – Student Conversations
Carmel also runs a conference in the summer of prBL, called the PBL Math Summit, and she has many resources available on her blog.
If you examine what she writes, she has essentially the following steps:
- Key knowledge, understanding, and success skills
- Challenging problem or question
- Sustained inquiry
- Authenticity
- Learner voice and choice
- Reflection
- Critique and revision
I think Carmel may actually merge a couple of these. I think it is silly to have step 3 “Sustained Inquiry” separate from “Learner Voice and Choice” but that is a Buck Institute thing. I left it, because Carmel talks about inquiry and learner choice as well. (Carmel can correct me if I am mistaken in that, I don’t want to put incorrect words in her mouth.)
The big differences are the public product, and the nature of the ‘guiding question’. The guiding question (step 2) for PBL should be open ended and allow for a great variety of learner choice. That isn’t to say that prBL questions can’t, but types of Open Middle questions or even closed ended, but interesting questions avaiable to prBL would be excluded in PBL.
The biggest difference is the Public Product. In prBL, there is not a demand for a public product as a concluding phase to the prBL. This means that many more prBLs can be done in the course of a school year than a PBL. It also means that prBLs can be done as practice elements for a full PBL. Imagine doing a couple of interesting prBLs and then opening up the question more on the next one and turning it into a PBL.
There are other people who work on the topic of PBL. John Spencer is an author of materials on PBL. I definitely get the feeling he is very ELA based. He writes in that link how he failed at a math PBL, but writes at length about how to incorporate ELA standards into his classroom.
If you are looking for math, specifically, there are people to follow and engage with.
Carmel Schettino for starters. If you are interested in expanding your horizons on this, follow her. Talk to her. She is amazing. Her publications include the following:
Schettino, C. (2003). Transition to a Problem-Solving Curriculum. Mathematics Teacher, 96(8), 534-537.
Schettino, C. (2011). Teaching Geometry through Problem-Based Learning. Mathematics Teacher, 105(5), 346-351.
Schettino, C. c. (2016). A Framework for Problem-Based Learning: Teaching Mathematics with a Relational Problem-Based Pedagogy. Interdisciplinary Journal Of Problem-Based Learning, 10(2), 42-67.
Another person is Tia Vandermeer. She works in Canada, and does PBL in mathematics.
Also, follow the hashtag #PBLChat. Many, many teachers using PBL in their classroom (and some of them are doing prBL too!)
Get the book mentioned above. It is FABULOUS! If you want the link again, here it is: Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships: Making Mathematics Come Alive with Project Based Learning. Buy it. I promise the full retail of $36 is a much, much greater value than the $1100 of PBLWorld.
