What I’m learning, what I’m teaching, and what I’m learning about teaching
The C3 Framework for Social Studies: Minimally Guided Instruction or Disciplined Inquiry?
This past week, I briefly engaged with post on LinkedIn from Drew Perkins, the president and director of Thought Stretchers Education, which offers professional development around project-based and inquiry learning. Perkins also hosts a podcast, which I listen to periodically. On the podcast, Perkins has often engaged the debate between advocates of inquiry-based learning and proponents of direct instruction. Perkins’ professional work has focused on inquiry-based learning, but I have appreciated his willingness to engage the other side, and take their points to heart. He has often pointed out that both sides have a tendency to create a straw man argument by painting their opponent in broad strokes. One side paints a picture where all forms of direct or explicit instruction are dry, teacher-monologue lectures with no student interaction; similarly, the other side portrays all forms of project-based, problem-based, or inquiry learning as unguided discovery learning. I have appreciated that Perkins has continually pointed out that there is a lot of daylight in the middle where great teaching and learning takes place. In his LinkedIn post this week, he was again pushing back on the straw man approach from one side, and advocating for more nuance.
An Example of Climate Education through Project-Based Learning
I distinguish between project-based learning (PBL) and project-based assessment. I have regularly used project-based assessment in my classes, often trying to make them as authentically real-world as possible. For me, project-based assessments come at the end of a unit of learning. The students have already acquired the knowledge and understanding and developed the skills expected of them in the unit (going forward I’ll refer to the knowledge, understandings and skills of a unit as KUDs; the D stands for “Dos” and refers to skills). The project is then a form of authentic assessment where they have to apply their learning to address a real-world issue or problem. They complete a project and create a product that demonstrates their learning. Because the project is a form of summative assessment, students are expected to complete the project relatively independently.
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