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HookName Inspiration Home Resources Standards Inspiration About the Author
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ResearchWhat impact did using technology-infused Project-Based Learning have on student attitudes and confidence about learning? Can implementing Project Based Learning increase student engagement among Latino and African American middle school males in the classroom?
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Introduction
Background and Need
The goals are to meet the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSS], 2010) and to instill 21st Century skills in all our students, not just Latinos and African Americans. Teachers need to prepare the students for successful college and careers after high school. Educators and administrators refer to the 4 C’s--to strengthen the student’s oral and written communication skills, to encourage their natural creativity, to provide well structured opportunities for them to collaborate with their peers and to provide opportunities where the student will think critically. The goal is to produce students who have the skills necessary to be successful in college and careers after they graduate high school. However, some of the students who have been educated under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era struggle, fall short and lack the skills necessary to be successful. The NCLB is a policy which allowed schools to focus their efforts on reading and math scores. Under the NCLB era schools would focus their resources toward strengthening their students’ English and math scores. One of the drawbacks of the NCLB policy was it took place in an era where students learned to look for one right answer. It was an era where students have been taught to answer in a certain way. According to Webb’s (1997) Depth of Knowledge (DOK), these students were learning concepts at a level one—a level where students were required only to memorize or recall information. The students had not been taught how to learn. With the release of Common Core Standards, now educators expect the student to learn differently, but up to this point had not taught the student how that learning should look. Under Common Core standards the students should be learning concepts at a level 3 or 4 on the DOK wheel; requiring the student to analyze their learning and apply it. The student will be able apply a deeper level of learning-- to critique or draw conclusions based on their learning. The student will be able to make inferences and justify how they arrived at the conclusions by citing evidence. Up to this point in the student’s journey, they did not have skills to think about their thinking and explain how and why they think a certain way about a topic or question. The teacher did not teach them to support their thought findings with evidence proving the position. The educator did not teach the student how to inquire, assess a point of view, to ask questions to clarify arguments, probe, or given the opportunity to research the answer to questions. No one ever encouraged the student to explore creative ways to solve problems or creative ways to communicate what they learned to their peers. Observations revealed that some students in the classroom struggled to shift from meeting the No Child Left Behind standards to the standards that focussed on 21st Century skills infused with CCSS which focus on speaking, listening, reading and writing in all subjects. When I asked the students for an opinion, many times I got a blank stare in return because it was a foreign question to them; no one had ever asked them for their opinion up to that point. My question, therefore, confused them.
In Wagner’s (2008) Global Achievement Gap: Why even our best schools don’t teach the new survival skills our children need and what we can do about it, he includes input from educators:
Kids today don’t read and they don’t do homework. I cover all the content standards in class, but if they don’t read the textbook, they’ll inevitably do poorly on the tests.
They don’t proofread their papers. It’s as though they think spell-check will catch all their errors. They just don’t seem to care very much about their work.
Young people today have no respect for authority. They talk to each other in class as though the teacher wasn’t even there. And if they get into trouble, their parents are all over me with phone calls and emails- complaints to the school board. The problem with these kids is that many of them are growing up kind of spoiled. They … need…some adult discipline in their lives. (Wagner, 2008, p.168 ).
Wagner (2008) included the concerns from human resources manager at Unilever Foods, Mark Maddox. Maddox is “worried about people coming into the workforce today. He argued there was a failure of work ethic in the younger employees. “They don’t want to work weekends or long hours. They are disgruntled with putting in 110 percent. They don’t see [work opportunities] like how the [previous generations saw work opportunities]” (p.168 ).
Clay Parker (as cited in Wagner, 2008) from BOC Edwards shared his experience. Parker was “worried about the competition the (youth) will face”. He felt the youth’s poor work ethic resulted from the quality of teaching (p. 169). “The poor work ethic in the US is one of my biggest concerns. “It starts in schools.” “There is a tendency for some teachers to accept mediocrity, a low level of performance from students” (p. 169).
Moreover, according to the Rosinsky’s (2010) dissertation on Closing the Student Achievement Gap in California's Elementary Schools: A Teachers' Perspective on Transformational Instructional Leadership, there continues to be a “disparity among minority ethnic groups and whites when it comes to the student achievement gap”. She cited the National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) which reported that for 2007, “the 4th grade reading level of Black and Hispanic students, on average, were respectively 27 and 26 points lower than White students (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2009)”. For 2007, NAEP also reported that at the 8th grade level, “the corresponding White-Black and White-Hispanic gaps for mathematics were respectively 32 and 26 points (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2009)”. Teachers need to shift the current methods of teaching to design and implement more student-led instructional strategies allowing more of inquiry-based learning to thrive which would engage more Latino and African American boys leading to academic achievement.
In Wagner’s (2008) Global Achievement Gap: Why even our best schools don’t teach the new survival skills our children need and what we can do about it, he includes input from educators:
Kids today don’t read and they don’t do homework. I cover all the content standards in class, but if they don’t read the textbook, they’ll inevitably do poorly on the tests.
They don’t proofread their papers. It’s as though they think spell-check will catch all their errors. They just don’t seem to care very much about their work.
Young people today have no respect for authority. They talk to each other in class as though the teacher wasn’t even there. And if they get into trouble, their parents are all over me with phone calls and emails- complaints to the school board. The problem with these kids is that many of them are growing up kind of spoiled. They … need…some adult discipline in their lives. (Wagner, 2008, p.168 ).
Wagner (2008) included the concerns from human resources manager at Unilever Foods, Mark Maddox. Maddox is “worried about people coming into the workforce today. He argued there was a failure of work ethic in the younger employees. “They don’t want to work weekends or long hours. They are disgruntled with putting in 110 percent. They don’t see [work opportunities] like how the [previous generations saw work opportunities]” (p.168 ).
Clay Parker (as cited in Wagner, 2008) from BOC Edwards shared his experience. Parker was “worried about the competition the (youth) will face”. He felt the youth’s poor work ethic resulted from the quality of teaching (p. 169). “The poor work ethic in the US is one of my biggest concerns. “It starts in schools.” “There is a tendency for some teachers to accept mediocrity, a low level of performance from students” (p. 169).
Moreover, according to the Rosinsky’s (2010) dissertation on Closing the Student Achievement Gap in California's Elementary Schools: A Teachers' Perspective on Transformational Instructional Leadership, there continues to be a “disparity among minority ethnic groups and whites when it comes to the student achievement gap”. She cited the National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) which reported that for 2007, “the 4th grade reading level of Black and Hispanic students, on average, were respectively 27 and 26 points lower than White students (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2009)”. For 2007, NAEP also reported that at the 8th grade level, “the corresponding White-Black and White-Hispanic gaps for mathematics were respectively 32 and 26 points (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2009)”. Teachers need to shift the current methods of teaching to design and implement more student-led instructional strategies allowing more of inquiry-based learning to thrive which would engage more Latino and African American boys leading to academic achievement.
Statement of the Problem
When I thought about a particular group of students in the classrooms, I recalled seeing groups who were not as engaged as their peers. Some of them were disenfranchised and seemed to give up. Their classroom participatory grades and homework grades were poor. They had numerous referrals to the principal’s office and suspensions for disruptive behavior. I found it difficult to request a deeper level of thinking from the whole class while a group of students did not apply themselves to practice what was necessary to learn the concepts enough to be able to apply their knowledge in real world applications. How can educators create more interesting, student-led lessons, resulting in higher order thinking for which students will be accountable and take ownership for their own learning?
An informal survey with tenured and newly credentialed teachers, counselors, administrators and school psychologists indicated that there were some students who were not as engaged and therefore academic achievement was suffering. Teacher observations indicated that some students struggled with making connections and therefore were disengaged in the classroom. The instructional practices affecting Latino and African American boys were disturbing. Racial disparities were entrenched, built into the school system. The cycle was perpetuated in the U.S. learning system enabling the achievement gap to linger and widen.
SWSS data at the research site revealed certain patterns when student disruptive behavior escalated creating wedge between student learning and engagement. The Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) and Building Effective Schools Together (BEST) site personnel revealed more informative data. By giving the student more opportunities to restore the relationship damaged by the offense when the behavior incident occurred, the school could decrease the aggregate number of office referrals, suspensions and expulsions. The goal was to provide positive rewards for the behavior desired. The desired outcome of the site was to create an environment where the student felt safe, connected to the school, connected to projects connected to the teacher and connected to other students so that deep learning would thrive.
When I thought about a particular group of students in the classrooms, I recalled seeing groups who were not as engaged as their peers. Some of them were disenfranchised and seemed to give up. Their classroom participatory grades and homework grades were poor. They had numerous referrals to the principal’s office and suspensions for disruptive behavior. I found it difficult to request a deeper level of thinking from the whole class while a group of students did not apply themselves to practice what was necessary to learn the concepts enough to be able to apply their knowledge in real world applications. How can educators create more interesting, student-led lessons, resulting in higher order thinking for which students will be accountable and take ownership for their own learning?
An informal survey with tenured and newly credentialed teachers, counselors, administrators and school psychologists indicated that there were some students who were not as engaged and therefore academic achievement was suffering. Teacher observations indicated that some students struggled with making connections and therefore were disengaged in the classroom. The instructional practices affecting Latino and African American boys were disturbing. Racial disparities were entrenched, built into the school system. The cycle was perpetuated in the U.S. learning system enabling the achievement gap to linger and widen.
SWSS data at the research site revealed certain patterns when student disruptive behavior escalated creating wedge between student learning and engagement. The Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) and Building Effective Schools Together (BEST) site personnel revealed more informative data. By giving the student more opportunities to restore the relationship damaged by the offense when the behavior incident occurred, the school could decrease the aggregate number of office referrals, suspensions and expulsions. The goal was to provide positive rewards for the behavior desired. The desired outcome of the site was to create an environment where the student felt safe, connected to the school, connected to projects connected to the teacher and connected to other students so that deep learning would thrive.
Literature Review
The literature review addressed a systemic problem involving a significant number of African American and Latino youth, the areas related to teaching and learning and the effect Inquiry-Based Learning had on student engagement. When students were highly engaged, they were more likely to achieve academic performance. The first theme addressed the disengagement problem that exists among a major portion of the US population--young African American and Latino boys in the classroom. The theme showed the need for teachers to shift their methods of instruction. The second theme addressed student engagement and the effect Project-Based Learning infused with the use of technology had on these students’ attitudes, feelings, confidence which affected their engagement and academic achievement. The third theme addressed the potential economic ramifications of the potential workforce in the US.
African Americans and Latinos make up a significant portion of the US population and will play a major role making up a large part of the potential workforce in the US. Census data shows that by the year 2020 Whites will be the minority in school districts in large cities. This has huge implications for our education system to come. The problem is some of these African American and Latino boys are often not engaged in school classrooms. The traditional methods of instruction are not always the most effective ways to teach African American and Latino male students. The teacher cannot teach these boys the same way she teaches the other students. Their background is different, their contextual experiences and home life are different. Their informational context, their socio-economic status is different from the others in the classroom. Their motivating factors and interests were different. The method they used to solve problems was different. Their stories, challenges, struggles and setbacks differed from the teacher’s or the other students in the class. When these boys struggled to relate, they can feel lost, not connected, grew bored which sometimes gave rise to behavior issues.
A committee on increasing high school students’ engagement and motivation to learn, Student Engagement and Disengagement in High Schools, Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students' Motivation to Learn (pp. 13-14) acknowledged the problem existed. They understood the problem. Simply attending school and actually being engaged in school were different problems. Parents and administrators could make a student come to school, but learning required a conscious, purposeful effort. The student had to be engaged for deep learning to take place. “Learning (was) not serendipitous”; it did not occur by happenstance. The educator needed to create an experience for real learning to occur.
What did student engagement look like? Does engagement have a universal definition? Does it mean the same thing to everyone? Perhaps we should define what student engagement looks like before we plunge into potential solutions. What did it look like when students were engaged? What does one look for when one observes the students who are engaged. If an observer walked into a classroom and found the students working quietly on a writing assignment, can we deduce that the students were engaged in the classwork? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Although the students may be appear to be working diligently to complete the assignment per the teacher’s direction, I question the level of engagement. Are they truly engaged in their work? I walked into a math classroom and the students were quietly completing a worksheet with algebraic equations. On a different occasion I observed another classroom and there was a slight murmuring or an undercurrent of talking, scribbling and pointing. Were the students engaged in that first classroom or the second? If an observer did not know what to look for she would have said the students in the first classroom were engaged when in actuality, the students in the second classroom were more engaged. Learning must be visible in order to maximize impact. According to Marzano, there are attributes one can see when observing whether the student is engaged (Marzano and Pickering). One of the attributes the student was working on in order for him to be engaged was he was working on cognitively complex tasks. These were the kinds of tasks involved in Project-Based Learning. These were the type of tasks the student engaged because he was making a connection to his personal life. He was able to analyze and apply the learning to his community. He was connecting the learning to something outside the walls of the classroom, to what mattered to him. The teacher must incorporate strategies to maintain student engagement with these young boys. When the teacher designed interesting lessons that the student could make useful connections and apply it to their own environment outside of the classroom walls, they student was highly engaged.
Additionally, recent developments in neuroscience have also confirmed that knowledge can best be learned through its real-world application, and that an internal “need to know” can provide the motivation necessary for learning complex and challenging content (Trilling and Fadel, 2009). Some of the Latino and African American boys had to be able to make meaning of the learning and connect it to their world. Their world looked differently than that of the their peers’ or teacher’s. This is a population that will be critical to our future economy. How can we help our students learn what is necessary to be prepared for the jobs that might be there when they graduate, and for the kinds of problems they will face in a more uncertain, rapidly shifting, competitive and connected world?” Surely we do not want to face potential unrest that can arise when “large numbers of …youth are confronted with a severe lack of jobs and a strong desire for a better life, yet little hope of achieving it” (p.xv). It is critical that we shift our paradigm. ‘The benefit of having these students better prepared for jobs beyond high school are more than worth it—they are absolutely necessary to the future health and welfare of every citizen, economy and society” (p.xv).
Students who are disengaged are at risk for dropping out of school all together. Even more alarming is that studies showed that many times, students dropped out of school not solely because of poor grades, but because the students felt that a teacher or administrator did not care about their success. The student felt disenfranchised due to the lack of teacher or administrator support, encouragement and attention (Howard, 2008).
Still racial biases are deeply ingrained and perpetuated in the educational system. Some teachers view the student’s low test scores and deduce the student as less intelligent, less prepared, less capable. The student recognized, sensed that indifference as the teacher not caring or wanting him to succeed.
In this study Problem-Based Learning had a positive effect on student attitude, feelings, confidence. Authors Basi and Beyhan also investigated the effects project-based learning and traditional teaching on students’ achievement (BAŞ1 & Beyhan, 2010).
Students gained their knowledge by participating in experiences. The students gained their knowledge by experiences from Project Based Learning which has long rooted benefits because it is centered on the learner; It is student-led. A student-led learning method is more adaptable to students with different learning preferences and multiple intelligences.
Recalling that students have multiple intelligences; and how students’ intelligence is simply not based on math and logic. There are multiple intelligences on which the student’s intelligence was measured. Project-based Learning is a method that allowed for the student to solve problems in a more student-led approach based on learning preferences. The student was able to use his intelligences to explore, inquire, investigate and or analyze. The student was able to express his learnings in whatever creative method he preferred. PBL enabled the student to research, touch, feel, utilized technological tools for the learning. In the study, the students were given pre and post academic achievement surveys. The analysis revealed that there was a significant difference between the pre and post confidence scores of the experimental group and the control group.
Problem-Based learning (PBL) is a pedagogical approach to learning in which students work together collaboratively to find solutions to a complex problem. In this study, the students struggled to work with each other at the beginning but later grew to work collaboratively. It was more than simply group work because they did not always agree with one another (a valuable life skill). The students had to work through their different learning preferences and communicate their findings with each other. Other researchers found a sense of community in the classroom at they studied “The Impact of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) on Student Attitudes Toward Science” (Ferreira and Trudel, 2002).
In this study we found that the students were more engaged and enjoyed a closer sense of community as they used agency to work through the project. The teacher had to teach the concept of agency and encourage the students to apply it. This approach guided the student to solve problems in a real world scenario. It required the educator to shift from a teacher-led to student-centered pedagogical approach to instruction because learning focused on the student’s understanding and application of knowledge. Instead of the teacher lecturing on a topic then directing the students to guided and independent practice and applying what she just taught, in Project-Based learning the students learned the concepts and principles through the process of solving the real world problem. A mixed-method research design combined quantitative and qualitative approaches to data collection and analysis. The mixed-method approach helped to increase the trustworthiness of the findings. The study included 810 high school students -- 69 percent were Caucasian, 20 percent, African-American, 3 percent bi-racial, 3 percent Asian, 4 percent Middle Eastern and less than 1 percent Hispanic. To measure the students’ attitude toward science and the learning environment, the authors gave the students pre and post questionnaire type surveys. To measure the students’ problem solving skills, the students had to solve a problem before and after the implementation of PBL and kept a daily journal in which they recorded their thoughts, ideas, strategies, calculations, observations and data related to the PBL process. The results indicated that the PBL process had a significant impact on the students’ attitude toward learning science and their perceptions about their learning environment. The student journals indicated they learned more by collaborating and discussing the material with peers. They enjoyed more of a sense of control. They felt more connected to the project. The students indicated they were able to remember more science and they could see a need for the use of science (Ferreira and Trudel, 2002).
Research on a small collaborative group study in high school biology classes where the learning was driven by open-ended, authentic problems in science and math contributed to deeper learning (Goodnough and Cashion, 2006). The teachers acted more like facilitators who guided a process and the students developed the content while engaged in solving the problem. The authors included results from other researchers who used Collaborative Inquiry or CI (Bray, Lee, Smith, and Yorks, 2000), an adult learning and research strategy, which was adopted to delve into the complexities of PBL, to explore the concerns and issues that arise during design and implementation of PBL in the context of a high school science classroom. The collaborative inquiry also afforded the research science teacher an opportunity not only to explore a new instructional approach, but also to critically examine her beliefs about and practice of science teaching. When a teacher shifts from using a particular instruction model questions arise. The research questions that guided this study were: (a) What challenges and successes will arise as a teacher engages with a new approach to teaching and learning? (b) What concerns will a teacher express as she adopts PBL? and (c) How will PBL be conceptualized and implemented in a classroom? The teacher and other researchers met to share their findings. The learning was driven by a messy problem which the groups of students were to solve. Researchers heavily emphasized developing communication skills and problem solving skills. They expected students to develop an understanding of the science topic. The teacher then identified a problem area and planned the curriculum concepts and learning outcomes. She developed an interesting and thought-provoking entry event and problem hook to grab the students’ interest. She selected a variety of resources to support student learning. She developed a time line for implementation. She selected the assessment and learning activities. She took into consideration the grouping issues. The teacher used a scaffolding chart to help students explore the scenario. Small PBL groups identified what they already knew about the problem (Knows and Need-to-Knows), recorded questions or issues they needed to explore to find a solution to the problem, and developed an action plan for finding answers to the questions recorded. The students became more comfortable with the approach. When students were in a PBL learning environment, students tended to take more responsibility for their learning (Ngeow and Kong, 2001). The implementation of PBL in K-12 needed to be tailored to meet the unique needs of the diverse student population group. PBL cannot be adopted as a one size fits all kind of approach.
Educators need to be mindful that the learning needs to be student-centered, the student needs to value authentic projects in which the student is interested in order for the deeper learning and student engagement to thrive (Trilling and Fadel, 2009, p. xvii).
Problem-based learning is a teaching and learning method in which the students take on a problem without preparatory study or enough knowledge to answer the question requiring them to explore more understanding; then apply the enhanced method to generate a solution (Wirkala and Kuhn, 2011, pp 1157-1186). Critics claimed that PBL is a minimally guided approach and that is therefore less effective that provide greater instructional guidance. They claimed that most of the research on PBL has been conducted with adults most often in medical school settings. The critics were not convinced of the younger students’ knowledge acquisition. Some studies yielded mixed results.
However, in this study, the results were favorable. The teacher was also able to assess student work to demonstrate the student’s level of engagement. She researched the factors that influenced academic learning or higher order thinking. The teacher used a protocol to show whether students were engaged. Protocols are vehicles for building the skills and culture necessary for collaborative work. A protocol consisted of agreed upon guidelines. The protocol created a structure that made it safe to ask challenging questions; the researcher used the protocol for looking at student work (Blythe, Allen and Powell, 2015).
The teacher must capture the students’ interest, but must also maintain their interest and attention. The designer must infuse the appropriate technical and artistic portions of the curriculum. The educator must create the lessons that extend beyond the artistic level. There was an aesthetic perspective which prepared the student for an immediate experience of the learning (Wilson, 2005). In order for educators to keep this group engaged, the experience must be deeply meaningful and memorable to the learner. Educators must design projects for “heightened levels of immediate experience that will convey deep and lasting impressions on learners…”. The experience not only involved the relationship between the teacher and the student, but the student was able to connect the experience, the knowledge and apply it to not only the outside world, but his world. The learner must make meaning and linkages to outside the classroom environment for the engagement and deep learning to be maximized. The student had to be able to make personal connections with the learning and the experience.
Delaying to acknowledge or ignoring the call to shift and incorporate innovative learning strategies that embrace the population of these boys will negatively impact our potential economic growth. In Napa Valley the wine and hospitality industry make up a majority of the business revenue. Latinos are leading the county’s population growth as non-Latinos are aging. Latino workers are contributing to the county’s most prominent industries. Many of the Latino workers work in wineries, vineyards and hospitality. Many of the non-Latino workers are aging and will no longer be valuable contributors to the economy. In order for the county to sustain its economic success, business owners must continue to hire from one of the largest, fastest growing pool of labor. Twenty-six percent of Napa County households are represented by immigrant households (households with a Latino immigrant as a head of household or immigrant spouse) (Capps, McCabe, Fix, 2012). In order for Napa County residents to sustain the economic growth they have enjoyed, the community needs to ensure the future labor workforce will be prepared to succeed in high school, college and careers beyond.
African Americans and Latinos make up a significant portion of the US population and will play a major role making up a large part of the potential workforce in the US. Census data shows that by the year 2020 Whites will be the minority in school districts in large cities. This has huge implications for our education system to come. The problem is some of these African American and Latino boys are often not engaged in school classrooms. The traditional methods of instruction are not always the most effective ways to teach African American and Latino male students. The teacher cannot teach these boys the same way she teaches the other students. Their background is different, their contextual experiences and home life are different. Their informational context, their socio-economic status is different from the others in the classroom. Their motivating factors and interests were different. The method they used to solve problems was different. Their stories, challenges, struggles and setbacks differed from the teacher’s or the other students in the class. When these boys struggled to relate, they can feel lost, not connected, grew bored which sometimes gave rise to behavior issues.
A committee on increasing high school students’ engagement and motivation to learn, Student Engagement and Disengagement in High Schools, Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students' Motivation to Learn (pp. 13-14) acknowledged the problem existed. They understood the problem. Simply attending school and actually being engaged in school were different problems. Parents and administrators could make a student come to school, but learning required a conscious, purposeful effort. The student had to be engaged for deep learning to take place. “Learning (was) not serendipitous”; it did not occur by happenstance. The educator needed to create an experience for real learning to occur.
What did student engagement look like? Does engagement have a universal definition? Does it mean the same thing to everyone? Perhaps we should define what student engagement looks like before we plunge into potential solutions. What did it look like when students were engaged? What does one look for when one observes the students who are engaged. If an observer walked into a classroom and found the students working quietly on a writing assignment, can we deduce that the students were engaged in the classwork? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Although the students may be appear to be working diligently to complete the assignment per the teacher’s direction, I question the level of engagement. Are they truly engaged in their work? I walked into a math classroom and the students were quietly completing a worksheet with algebraic equations. On a different occasion I observed another classroom and there was a slight murmuring or an undercurrent of talking, scribbling and pointing. Were the students engaged in that first classroom or the second? If an observer did not know what to look for she would have said the students in the first classroom were engaged when in actuality, the students in the second classroom were more engaged. Learning must be visible in order to maximize impact. According to Marzano, there are attributes one can see when observing whether the student is engaged (Marzano and Pickering). One of the attributes the student was working on in order for him to be engaged was he was working on cognitively complex tasks. These were the kinds of tasks involved in Project-Based Learning. These were the type of tasks the student engaged because he was making a connection to his personal life. He was able to analyze and apply the learning to his community. He was connecting the learning to something outside the walls of the classroom, to what mattered to him. The teacher must incorporate strategies to maintain student engagement with these young boys. When the teacher designed interesting lessons that the student could make useful connections and apply it to their own environment outside of the classroom walls, they student was highly engaged.
Additionally, recent developments in neuroscience have also confirmed that knowledge can best be learned through its real-world application, and that an internal “need to know” can provide the motivation necessary for learning complex and challenging content (Trilling and Fadel, 2009). Some of the Latino and African American boys had to be able to make meaning of the learning and connect it to their world. Their world looked differently than that of the their peers’ or teacher’s. This is a population that will be critical to our future economy. How can we help our students learn what is necessary to be prepared for the jobs that might be there when they graduate, and for the kinds of problems they will face in a more uncertain, rapidly shifting, competitive and connected world?” Surely we do not want to face potential unrest that can arise when “large numbers of …youth are confronted with a severe lack of jobs and a strong desire for a better life, yet little hope of achieving it” (p.xv). It is critical that we shift our paradigm. ‘The benefit of having these students better prepared for jobs beyond high school are more than worth it—they are absolutely necessary to the future health and welfare of every citizen, economy and society” (p.xv).
Students who are disengaged are at risk for dropping out of school all together. Even more alarming is that studies showed that many times, students dropped out of school not solely because of poor grades, but because the students felt that a teacher or administrator did not care about their success. The student felt disenfranchised due to the lack of teacher or administrator support, encouragement and attention (Howard, 2008).
Still racial biases are deeply ingrained and perpetuated in the educational system. Some teachers view the student’s low test scores and deduce the student as less intelligent, less prepared, less capable. The student recognized, sensed that indifference as the teacher not caring or wanting him to succeed.
In this study Problem-Based Learning had a positive effect on student attitude, feelings, confidence. Authors Basi and Beyhan also investigated the effects project-based learning and traditional teaching on students’ achievement (BAŞ1 & Beyhan, 2010).
Students gained their knowledge by participating in experiences. The students gained their knowledge by experiences from Project Based Learning which has long rooted benefits because it is centered on the learner; It is student-led. A student-led learning method is more adaptable to students with different learning preferences and multiple intelligences.
Recalling that students have multiple intelligences; and how students’ intelligence is simply not based on math and logic. There are multiple intelligences on which the student’s intelligence was measured. Project-based Learning is a method that allowed for the student to solve problems in a more student-led approach based on learning preferences. The student was able to use his intelligences to explore, inquire, investigate and or analyze. The student was able to express his learnings in whatever creative method he preferred. PBL enabled the student to research, touch, feel, utilized technological tools for the learning. In the study, the students were given pre and post academic achievement surveys. The analysis revealed that there was a significant difference between the pre and post confidence scores of the experimental group and the control group.
Problem-Based learning (PBL) is a pedagogical approach to learning in which students work together collaboratively to find solutions to a complex problem. In this study, the students struggled to work with each other at the beginning but later grew to work collaboratively. It was more than simply group work because they did not always agree with one another (a valuable life skill). The students had to work through their different learning preferences and communicate their findings with each other. Other researchers found a sense of community in the classroom at they studied “The Impact of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) on Student Attitudes Toward Science” (Ferreira and Trudel, 2002).
In this study we found that the students were more engaged and enjoyed a closer sense of community as they used agency to work through the project. The teacher had to teach the concept of agency and encourage the students to apply it. This approach guided the student to solve problems in a real world scenario. It required the educator to shift from a teacher-led to student-centered pedagogical approach to instruction because learning focused on the student’s understanding and application of knowledge. Instead of the teacher lecturing on a topic then directing the students to guided and independent practice and applying what she just taught, in Project-Based learning the students learned the concepts and principles through the process of solving the real world problem. A mixed-method research design combined quantitative and qualitative approaches to data collection and analysis. The mixed-method approach helped to increase the trustworthiness of the findings. The study included 810 high school students -- 69 percent were Caucasian, 20 percent, African-American, 3 percent bi-racial, 3 percent Asian, 4 percent Middle Eastern and less than 1 percent Hispanic. To measure the students’ attitude toward science and the learning environment, the authors gave the students pre and post questionnaire type surveys. To measure the students’ problem solving skills, the students had to solve a problem before and after the implementation of PBL and kept a daily journal in which they recorded their thoughts, ideas, strategies, calculations, observations and data related to the PBL process. The results indicated that the PBL process had a significant impact on the students’ attitude toward learning science and their perceptions about their learning environment. The student journals indicated they learned more by collaborating and discussing the material with peers. They enjoyed more of a sense of control. They felt more connected to the project. The students indicated they were able to remember more science and they could see a need for the use of science (Ferreira and Trudel, 2002).
Research on a small collaborative group study in high school biology classes where the learning was driven by open-ended, authentic problems in science and math contributed to deeper learning (Goodnough and Cashion, 2006). The teachers acted more like facilitators who guided a process and the students developed the content while engaged in solving the problem. The authors included results from other researchers who used Collaborative Inquiry or CI (Bray, Lee, Smith, and Yorks, 2000), an adult learning and research strategy, which was adopted to delve into the complexities of PBL, to explore the concerns and issues that arise during design and implementation of PBL in the context of a high school science classroom. The collaborative inquiry also afforded the research science teacher an opportunity not only to explore a new instructional approach, but also to critically examine her beliefs about and practice of science teaching. When a teacher shifts from using a particular instruction model questions arise. The research questions that guided this study were: (a) What challenges and successes will arise as a teacher engages with a new approach to teaching and learning? (b) What concerns will a teacher express as she adopts PBL? and (c) How will PBL be conceptualized and implemented in a classroom? The teacher and other researchers met to share their findings. The learning was driven by a messy problem which the groups of students were to solve. Researchers heavily emphasized developing communication skills and problem solving skills. They expected students to develop an understanding of the science topic. The teacher then identified a problem area and planned the curriculum concepts and learning outcomes. She developed an interesting and thought-provoking entry event and problem hook to grab the students’ interest. She selected a variety of resources to support student learning. She developed a time line for implementation. She selected the assessment and learning activities. She took into consideration the grouping issues. The teacher used a scaffolding chart to help students explore the scenario. Small PBL groups identified what they already knew about the problem (Knows and Need-to-Knows), recorded questions or issues they needed to explore to find a solution to the problem, and developed an action plan for finding answers to the questions recorded. The students became more comfortable with the approach. When students were in a PBL learning environment, students tended to take more responsibility for their learning (Ngeow and Kong, 2001). The implementation of PBL in K-12 needed to be tailored to meet the unique needs of the diverse student population group. PBL cannot be adopted as a one size fits all kind of approach.
Educators need to be mindful that the learning needs to be student-centered, the student needs to value authentic projects in which the student is interested in order for the deeper learning and student engagement to thrive (Trilling and Fadel, 2009, p. xvii).
Problem-based learning is a teaching and learning method in which the students take on a problem without preparatory study or enough knowledge to answer the question requiring them to explore more understanding; then apply the enhanced method to generate a solution (Wirkala and Kuhn, 2011, pp 1157-1186). Critics claimed that PBL is a minimally guided approach and that is therefore less effective that provide greater instructional guidance. They claimed that most of the research on PBL has been conducted with adults most often in medical school settings. The critics were not convinced of the younger students’ knowledge acquisition. Some studies yielded mixed results.
However, in this study, the results were favorable. The teacher was also able to assess student work to demonstrate the student’s level of engagement. She researched the factors that influenced academic learning or higher order thinking. The teacher used a protocol to show whether students were engaged. Protocols are vehicles for building the skills and culture necessary for collaborative work. A protocol consisted of agreed upon guidelines. The protocol created a structure that made it safe to ask challenging questions; the researcher used the protocol for looking at student work (Blythe, Allen and Powell, 2015).
The teacher must capture the students’ interest, but must also maintain their interest and attention. The designer must infuse the appropriate technical and artistic portions of the curriculum. The educator must create the lessons that extend beyond the artistic level. There was an aesthetic perspective which prepared the student for an immediate experience of the learning (Wilson, 2005). In order for educators to keep this group engaged, the experience must be deeply meaningful and memorable to the learner. Educators must design projects for “heightened levels of immediate experience that will convey deep and lasting impressions on learners…”. The experience not only involved the relationship between the teacher and the student, but the student was able to connect the experience, the knowledge and apply it to not only the outside world, but his world. The learner must make meaning and linkages to outside the classroom environment for the engagement and deep learning to be maximized. The student had to be able to make personal connections with the learning and the experience.
Delaying to acknowledge or ignoring the call to shift and incorporate innovative learning strategies that embrace the population of these boys will negatively impact our potential economic growth. In Napa Valley the wine and hospitality industry make up a majority of the business revenue. Latinos are leading the county’s population growth as non-Latinos are aging. Latino workers are contributing to the county’s most prominent industries. Many of the Latino workers work in wineries, vineyards and hospitality. Many of the non-Latino workers are aging and will no longer be valuable contributors to the economy. In order for the county to sustain its economic success, business owners must continue to hire from one of the largest, fastest growing pool of labor. Twenty-six percent of Napa County households are represented by immigrant households (households with a Latino immigrant as a head of household or immigrant spouse) (Capps, McCabe, Fix, 2012). In order for Napa County residents to sustain the economic growth they have enjoyed, the community needs to ensure the future labor workforce will be prepared to succeed in high school, college and careers beyond.
Summary
Educators and administrators need to prepare and equip African American and Latino boys using unique, innovative learning strategies beyond the traditional ways of teaching. What happens if educators, administrators and community leaders ignore the problem? What happens if the problem persists and leaders turn a blind eye to the students? Will the US economy be at stake or threatened? Will the global achievement gap widen even more if the U.S. does not capitalize on preparing this large portion of the population and equip them for college and careers after the 12th grade? Teachers and administrators must consider threatening effects should we not shift? Latinos and African Americans make up a huge portion of California’s Population. The Global achievement gap will widen even more if we do not act. Educators and administrators cannot ignore the gap; address the gap. Trilling and Fidel reminded us that out the US economy is completely dependent on having a well-educated workforce (2009, p.7) that “Learning is earning”. Even improving a group’s “literacy rate a small amount can have huge positive economic impacts.” It is the educator’s responsibility to grant everyone access to education. All students deserve to acquire it someone who cares deeply about them. The teacher must have a genuine, caring concern for the student. She must be even more firm with the approach taken to help prepare these students for college or careers beyond high school. Otherwise our economy will move into a cri$i$ mode if leaders do not shift and prepare this population to practice and develop a hard working, persevering work ethic which will prepare them for success beyond high school. This is a call for action for all educators, administrators and community leaders.
Results and Analysis
The data included Latino males, African American males, Caucasian males, Asian-American males and Pacific Islander males (see Table 1). The graph corresponded to the table information (Research Group). The graph represented the Pre and Post results by ethnic group (see Figure 2).
Sixth grade student survey data included before and after feelings after the implementation of PBL. Student surveys revealed students’ confidence level before instituting student centered PBL strategies and the results after employing student centered PBL strategies. The surveys revealed that the average speaking, writing, reading and listening skills were lowest in African American and Latino males prior to using PBL strategies. After completing a 2 month PBL unit of study on energy conservation, African American males reported an improvement in speaking, writing and reading skills based on a Likert scale of 1 to 10. The listening skills remained about the same. African American males’ confidence in speaking skills increased 2.82 points. Their confidence in writing skills increased 2.6 points. Their confidence in reading skills increased 2.5 points. The Latino males reported improvement in speaking, writing, reading and listening skills. Their Latino males’ confidence in their speaking skills increased 3.67 points (see Figure 3). Their confidence in writing skills increased 3.79 points. Their confidence in reading skills increased 3.1 points. Their confidence in their listening skills increased 1.8 points. The teacher observed the Latino males were uncomfortable with speaking publically about their work prior to the implementation of PBL. After implementing PBL the Latino males were more confident speaking in front of an audience.
PBL implementation positively impacted all groups in the study. The greatest impact was found in African American and Latino boys. The African American and Latino boys increased their level of confidence more than any other group when the educator created interesting lessons, activities, and experiences that were directly related to their personal life; the students made immediate connections to their life outside the walls of the classroom. Their self efficacy increased in terms of how confident they grew in writing, speaking and reading skills.
Sixth grade student survey data included before and after feelings after the implementation of PBL. Student surveys revealed students’ confidence level before instituting student centered PBL strategies and the results after employing student centered PBL strategies. The surveys revealed that the average speaking, writing, reading and listening skills were lowest in African American and Latino males prior to using PBL strategies. After completing a 2 month PBL unit of study on energy conservation, African American males reported an improvement in speaking, writing and reading skills based on a Likert scale of 1 to 10. The listening skills remained about the same. African American males’ confidence in speaking skills increased 2.82 points. Their confidence in writing skills increased 2.6 points. Their confidence in reading skills increased 2.5 points. The Latino males reported improvement in speaking, writing, reading and listening skills. Their Latino males’ confidence in their speaking skills increased 3.67 points (see Figure 3). Their confidence in writing skills increased 3.79 points. Their confidence in reading skills increased 3.1 points. Their confidence in their listening skills increased 1.8 points. The teacher observed the Latino males were uncomfortable with speaking publically about their work prior to the implementation of PBL. After implementing PBL the Latino males were more confident speaking in front of an audience.
PBL implementation positively impacted all groups in the study. The greatest impact was found in African American and Latino boys. The African American and Latino boys increased their level of confidence more than any other group when the educator created interesting lessons, activities, and experiences that were directly related to their personal life; the students made immediate connections to their life outside the walls of the classroom. Their self efficacy increased in terms of how confident they grew in writing, speaking and reading skills.
Conclusion: Recommendations and Summary
The data revealed that students’ skills and confidence improved after working with PBL strategies. Students reported a high level of engagement, increased participation and interest in their learning. The teacher observed that all students were engaged throughout the complex process of learning 21st skills necessary for meaningful PBL. Not only were students more engaged, they struggled with learning how to solve problems, develop collaborative skills, and communicate effectively. This process, although difficult at times, had the positive effect of increased student ownership and accountability. The students we able to experience different learning styles and strategies that improve their learning experience in the classroom.
This study supports the need to shift current methods of teaching to implement more PBL opportunities that allow students to use an inquiry based methodology, connect students to the learning, and engage in more student-led opportunities.
Teachers need to purposefully understand each student as an individual from a socio- cultural perspective. Design creative experiences that motivate the youth to take agency in the learning. Many times the family life, background, culture, home stress, access to resources and technology may be different for Latino and African American male students.
Implementing Project-Based learning increases students’ engagement. However, the teacher cannot design a meaningful Inquiry-Based experience for the student if she does not understand how to connect the experience to their life. When the educator knows the students’ interests and motivation she can design experiences that draw in the Latino and African American boys and keep them engaged in a way that they take accountability and agency for their learning, strengthen their communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking skills so they will be prepared to succeed in future classes and adult careers beyond high school.
This is a call for action. A cri$i$ is at stake. Administrators, teachers, families and community leaders need to provide equity and access for African American and Latino male students. Educators need to shift their attention to come together to bridge the gap and support our at-risk students through innovative teaching such as PBL.
This study supports the need to shift current methods of teaching to implement more PBL opportunities that allow students to use an inquiry based methodology, connect students to the learning, and engage in more student-led opportunities.
Teachers need to purposefully understand each student as an individual from a socio- cultural perspective. Design creative experiences that motivate the youth to take agency in the learning. Many times the family life, background, culture, home stress, access to resources and technology may be different for Latino and African American male students.
Implementing Project-Based learning increases students’ engagement. However, the teacher cannot design a meaningful Inquiry-Based experience for the student if she does not understand how to connect the experience to their life. When the educator knows the students’ interests and motivation she can design experiences that draw in the Latino and African American boys and keep them engaged in a way that they take accountability and agency for their learning, strengthen their communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking skills so they will be prepared to succeed in future classes and adult careers beyond high school.
This is a call for action. A cri$i$ is at stake. Administrators, teachers, families and community leaders need to provide equity and access for African American and Latino male students. Educators need to shift their attention to come together to bridge the gap and support our at-risk students through innovative teaching such as PBL.
