Information Resource

Project Based Learning and Student Engagement

PBL builds up students’ sense of being able to accomplish things and allows them to
develop ownership of their work. If we can develop that in kids, we’re going to see them
become amazing citizens and do amazing things as they go on in the rest of their lives.
Deborah Peek-Brown
Michigan State University

A
major concern in many schools is student engagement and reengagement. Project based
learning (PBL) has long been advocated not only as a process for enhancing engagement, but
as facilitating development of a range of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. For example,
through well designed and implemented projects, students are seen as learning to analyze and
synthesize problems and situations and as developing critical and higher-order thinking. Project
based learning also is viewed as enhancing discipline, goal setting, planning, and organization. And,
by working in teams, students can strengthen collaborative, social, and communication skills.

What is Project Based Learning (PBL)?

There are many definitions for PBL. Our synthesis delinates that it is a
dynamic, active, inquiry-based, and student-centered classroom teaching method that facilitates
motivated student learning by engaging them in exploring/investigating serious, authentic
real-world and personally meaningful questions, problems, and challenges related to the
designated curricula.

Discussions of PBL stress that the intent is to build students’ creative capacity for dealing with
complex matters and facilitate deep, transferable, and often interdisciplinary learning. Also
emphasized is PBL’s potential for enhancing collaborative behavior, critical thinking, intrinsic
motivation and curiosity, perseverance, and appreciation of self and others. Assessment of acquired
knowledge, skills, and attitudes is done during and at the end of the project through process and
product analyses, with an emphasis on self and peer evaluation. In stressing mastery of learning,
students are encouraged to maintain their focus on what they are learning rather than on grades.
The process involves students working in small teams often for several weeks. (However, simple
projects can be accomplished more quickly.) Team members collaborate in deciding how to work
on the project. They design, develop, and construct hands-on solutions. There is emphasis on
accessing a variety of sources. Technological tools enable gathering, synthesizing, and analyzing
knowledge and facilitate communication and collaboration beyond the classroom. The teacher's role
is to guide, support, and ensure that individual differences, vulnerabilities, and disabilities are
accounted for. Student work is refined using feedback from experts, instructors, and/or peers. When
the project yields products that warrant widespread sharing, the internet often is used.

It has taken many years, even decades, to develop an evidence base that
focuses on the building blocks of effective PBL, largely because PBL itself
has been difficult to define with precision. Kristin De Vivo

_____________________________
*The material in this document builds on work done by Alison Wunderland Marie as a participant with the national
Center for MH in Schools & Student/Learning Supports at UCLA in 2022.
The center is co-directed by Howard Adelman and Linda Taylor and operates under the auspices of the School Mental
Health Project, Dept. of Psychology, UCLA.Website: http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu

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 Examples of Project Based Learning
Project based learning opportunities can be developed virtually for every school subject, as well as
for service-oriented projects focused on helping others, enhancing personal wellness, improving
schools and neighborhoods, environmental concerns such as dealing with pollution and climate
change, what the future will look like, etc.
Karen Capraro (2017) offers a concise look at a PBL she conducted. She notes that in
mathematics we learn measures of weight and time and units, but she asks, at what point
do children learn about money? Coins have different values based on their shapes and
displayed content, and there is little to no indication of value on any of our coins. Initiating
a PBL approach and using the information contained on coins, she was able to facilitate
learning not only to count, but also about the names of states, information about some
presidents and about decades and centuries, and more. In facilitating the process, she
incorporated simple statistics and graphs (e.g., applying data counts from non-state and
state quarters and putting the information into a pie graph). Additional data were provided
to color in states on a map.
For a range of ideas, see Project-Based Learning: 50 Smart Ideas
And here are a few videos on PBL with examples:
Projects and Project-Based Learning: What's The Difference?
Student's Learning Journey in Project-Based Learning
10 Super Examples of Project Based Learning for Kids
Water Quality Project
More resources are provided on the end of the document.

Research
While many studies have had significant methodological limitations, a series of recent work has used
randomized controls. Taken as a whole, PBL research has reported positive effects for student
engagement, achievement, and aspects of social and emotional learning across grade levels and
racial and socio-economic groups.
For example, Culclasure et al (2019) reported findings that students using project based learning
performed better than those who did not on inventories of social-emotional skills. A study of
primary school pupils by Kaldi and Govaris (2011) reported moderate positive changes in self-
efficacy, motivation toward tasks, and attitudes towards peers from a different ethnic background.
Almulla’s (2020) findings suggest that PBL improves student engagement by enabling knowledge
and information sharing and discussion.
In their 2017 review, Barbara Condliffe and her colleagues, conclude:
“PBL is grounded in cross-cutting ‘design principles’ often related to what is taught, how it is
taught, and how students should be evaluated in a PBL classroom. PBL design principles
emphasize the importance of the project as the central vehicle of instruction and of students as
active participants in the construction of knowledge. There is little consensus among developers
of PBL design principles, however, about how PBL fits in with other instructional methods, how
long a PBL unit should last, the roles of student choice and collaborative learning, and how
learning should be assessed. The lack of a uniform vision complicates efforts to determine
whether PBL is being implemented with fidelity and to evaluate its effects.”

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Clearly, many questions remain to be explored – including the challenges of implementation. At the
same time, a recent series of randomized control studies funded by Lucas Education Research
reports that well-designed and rigorous implementation of PBL significantly improves learning (see
www.lucasedresearch.org/research/research-briefs). This body of work also reports that the PBL
programs studied improved aspects of social and emotional learning, with consistent effects across
racial and socio-economic groups.

Kristin De Vivo (2022) summarizes the findings of the Lucas Education Research
funded studies as follows:
• Embedding project-based learning in Advanced Placement courses increased the probability
of students earning a passing score on AP tests by about 8 percentage points in the first year
and 10 percentage points after teachers had two years of experience with the project-based
curriculum (Saavedra, Liu, et al., 2021).
• Middle school students in California who learned science with a project-based curriculum
outperformed their peers by 11 percentage points on a science assessment and also did
better on the state’s end-of-year math and English language arts assessments (Deutscher et
al., 2021).
• Third-grade students in Michigan who used an interdisciplinary project-based science
curriculum performed 8 percentage points better than peers in traditional classes on a key
science assessment (Krajcik et al., 2021).
• Second-grade students in Michigan who used a project-based social studies and literacy
curriculum demonstrated five to six more months of learning in social studies and two to three
more months in informational reading than a comparison group (Duke et al., 2020).

It should be noted that critics of PBL suggest that an overemphasis on group work can result in some
students laying back with resultant negative effects for themselves and others. In addition, the move
from traditional teaching is seen by some as too demanding on teachers and students, especially
given the added challenges that have arisen from the COVID-19 pandemic. Still others worry that
a move from traditional approaches will have a negative impact on struggling learners and will
exacerbate the achievement and opportunity gaps. These are matters for future study, but available
research suggests that the concerns are not major problems when PBL is appropriately implemented
and teachers are effectively supported.

Concluding Comments
After exploring the topic of PBL to provide the Center with material for this resource, Alison
Marie concluded that learning involves more than just rushing through an assignment to get
it done. It is a process of discovery and creation. “It’s feeling the wind in your hair and being
immersed in the journey and not being preoccupied with the destination.”
Engaging and maintaining student engagement and reengaging disconnected students are
major concerns for teachers. Well-implemented PBL holds promise for helping address these
motivational matters, as well as enhancing knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
PBL fits well into efforts to personalize learning and teaching. The emphasis on student
engagement is essential to in establishing a good match for learning in the classroom and
enhancing equity of opportunity for success at school and beyond.
We do recognize that increasing use of PBL in classrooms adds another capacity building
demand on schools that already have many increased challenges arising from the COVID-19

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 pandemic. At the same time, we know that many teaching practices are in place that are
close to PBL and, with only a few minor tweaks, can be built upon. As always, the challenge
for schools is to ensure that teachers are effectively supported every day and especially when
they are learning new practices.

A Few Resources
PBL Works website
Project Based Learning: Explained. – video
Project-Based Learning (PBL) Series of Edutopia articles
Project-Based Learning: a Primer
Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning
Project-Based Learning (PBL) Benefits, Examples & 10 Ideas for Classroom Implementation
A Project-Based Approach to Teaching Elementary Science (Edutopia)
Reinventing AP Courses With Rigorous Project-Based Learning (Edutopia)
Tools for Project-Based Learning
A Guide to Using Project-Based Learning in the Classroom
Project-Based Learning: Teaching Guide
A Planning Guide For Project-Based Learning In The Elementary Classroom
Grossman, P., Hermann, Z., Schneider Kavanagh, S., & Pupik Dean, C.G., (2021). Core
practices for project-based learning: A guide for teachers and leaders. Harvard
Education Press.

References Used in Developing this Information Resource

Adelman, H.S. & Taylor, L. (2018). Improving School Improvement. Los Angeles: Center for MH in
Schools & Student/Learning Supports at UCLA.
Almulla, M.A. (2020). The effectiveness of the project-based learning (PBL) approach as a way to
engage students in learning. SAGE Open 1–15
Blumenfeld, P.C., Soloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991).
Motivating Project-Based Learning: Sustaining the Doing, Supporting the Learning. Educational
Psychologist, 26, 369–398.
Bouta H., Retalis S. (2013). Enhancing primary school children collaborative learning experiences in
maths via a 3D virtual environment. Education and Information Technologies, 18, 571–596
Capraro, K. (2017). Making “change” in second grade: Exploring money through project-based learning.
Young Children , 72, 30-37
Condliffe, B., Quint, J., Visher, M., Bangser, M., Drohojowska, S., Saco, L., & Nelson, E. (2017).
Project-based learning: A literature review. MDRC.

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Culclasure, B. T. , Longest, K. C. , & Terry, T. M. (2019). Project-based learning (Pjbl) in three
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