Here's a link to a great Scholastic.com article centered on
Project Based Learning.

An actual Project! Sarah's Shark Finning entry for
What's Your Issue?

How Littky's The Met assesses student progress.

Assessmnet--
It's all in the Rubric

Motivation is the most critically important variable in the learning equation.

What follows is the educational rationale for what passes for teaching in room 2-212 at Bak Middle School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida. The class is US History and the students are all gifted and advanced students. The school is a performing arts magnet. Students audition to “get in.” The teacher is an old bald guy. This is all “real”. Everything that goes on in the classroom has a solid pedagogic rationale.

It is clear that gifted and “advanced” students differ greatly in their ability, knowledge base, reflectiveness, and style of learning. This is a wonderful opportunity to employ successful teaching strategies. Combining the top academic students with teachers dedicated to Middle School Philosophy and a placing all the stakeholders in the richest academic setting possible is a concept whose time has arrived

Nicholls (1983) and Millington (1993) argue that if the right motivation is established, students will select tasks of suitable difficulty level and work on them in a productive manner.

That is, if attention is directed to motivation, many other apparent learning problems will be resolved. Peak motivation is achieved when the learner selects tasks judged to present just the right degree of difficulty (Csikszentmihalyi, 1979; Malone, 1981). Whether it is a reader choos­ing a book to read, a mountain climber selecting a cliff to scale, or a child playing a video game, motivation is enhanced when the learner makes the choice. Thus, in the “inclusion” classroom, learning is facilitated by allowing students to choose, within well defined limits, tasks to attempt and the degree of difficulty. As de Charms’s (1984) and Hoffman’s (1992) research shows, there is a need for the learner to be the originator of learning tasks and yet to operate within a structure. The need also exists for constant aid sustained feedback, to teachers, parents, and students. Expectations in the classroom must be well defined and achievable.

Nicholls (1983) posits three forms of motivation: task involvement, ego involvement, and extrinsic involvement. When a learner is task-involved, he or she is focusing on die task rather than self (not “What will they think of what l am doing?”); learning (understanding) is an end in itself rather than trying to look smart or not to lock stupid. Ego involvement is characterized by concern for self rather than with leaning, understanding, or finding out. In this condition, one learns only to avoid looking stupid. An extrinsically involved person learns to achieve some reward or to avoid a penalty or to please the teacher. For this individual, learning is a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

Within any class of students, not every student feels confident of his or her ability. Bright girls, for example, tend to have low estimates of their ability to tackle new concepts in mathematics (Dweck, 1986). Because competition to enter the class may be keen and ability has been brought to the forefront by the creation of such a class, some students will feel insecure. If a highly competitive and rigid environment exists within the class, students will not become task involved. By reducing competition and stimulating student interest in the tasks to be learned, tensions can be reduced and students can be freed from anxieties that block learning.

How are the Classes Taught?
Problem-Centered (or Project-based) Learning and Motivation

Problem-centered (or Project-based) learning is facilitated by cooperative learning. In cooperative learning, students work together in small groups, usually to solve a problem. Cooperative learning has many benefits. Noddings (1985) among many others, lists the following effects of small group problem solving:

 1. Students are stimulated by the thoughts of others.

 2. Students assist each other in problem interpretation.

 3. Students clarify their thoughts by explaining to others.

 4. Students learn useful procedures from others.

 5. Students experience increased motivation by cooperative efforts.

 6. Students grow from challenges to their stated positions.

 7. Students show intellectual growth from peer interaction.

In addition to Noddings’ list, there is also the skill acquisition involved in finding the appropriate medium in which to display student findings. In the digital world we find ourselves in it is imperative that students be taught how to use the myriad tools available to them. Every student leaving school today should have a working familiarity with web page design and construction, video pre and post production skills, and an understanding of communication networking and the internet. These are real-world skills that will serve our students well.

Schools in general, advanced and gifted classes in particular, tend to be competitive. Competitive situations promote ego involvement and an extrinsic orientation to learning. They make it difficult for students to value learning for its own sake. On the other hand, cooperative learning environments foster understanding as a goal; learning becomes an aid in itself rather than a means to some other end. Teachers should strive to reduce competition and ego involvement among gifted students and to help students experience the satisfaction of solving problems and making ideas their own.

Realistic Inquiry Experiences

In summary of all that has been said so far, it seems the ideal learning experiences for gifted and advanced learners involve the following conditions:

l.  A sense of internal control or self-selection on the part of students
2. Intrinsic interest in the tasks to be learned
3. A sense that the learning tasks relate to the real world, and are not simply “school” activities
4. A real search for meanings, solutions, or understanding
5. A discovery of the plan or system when skilled behavior is the goal

Some of the major forms of realistic inquiry experiences in school include the following:

• Discussion (Good and Brophy, 1984) 

• Role playing (Gallagher, 1975)

• Discovery and guided discovery (Anthony, 1973; Bruner, 1960)

• Inquiry (Taba, 1962; Suchman, 1961)

• Small groups (Good and Brophy, 1984; Feldhusen, 1986)

• Seminars (Kolloff and Feldhusen, 1986)

• Games and simulations (Greenblat, 1982; Maker, 1982b)

• Induction and deductive logic (Halpern, 1984; Nickerson, Perkins, and Smith, 1985)

• Critical thinking (Ennis, 1962; Harnadek, 1976, 1980)

• Mentors (Haeger and Feldhusen, 1987; Edlind and Haensly, 1985)

• Field flips (Feldhusen, 1986)

• Experimental research (Dallas Independent School District, 1977)

• Library plus online research (Polette, 1982 and Gardner, 2003)

• Tutoring experiences (Ellison, 1976)

• Problem solving (Glaser, 1984; Tuma and Reif, 1984)

• Future studies (Flack and Feldhusen, 1983; Whaley, 1983)

All of these teaching methods can involve gifted and advanced students in generative learning (Wittrock, 1977) that is, a process in which students themselves are actively involved in higher level cognitive activities through which they can create their own understanding of concepts and principles and  their own cognitive guides for skilled behavior.

Wittrock points out that generative learning experiences make it possible for students to relate current learning to prior experiences and perceptions stored in memory. Generative learning contrasts with reception learning (Ausubel, 1978), an approach to instruction in which the emphasis is as transmission of well-organized information to the student. In the latter approach, the student acts more as a passive receiver of knowledge and less as an active pursuer of understanding.

The sixteen strategies (there's four and then another 14 or so that follow...) proposed here can all be used by teachers to achieve the following goals for gifted students:

1. Teaching of broad concepts and principles in the discipline

2. Developing a broad range of process or thinking skills

3. Helping students became self-directed learners

4. Stimulating intrinsic interest in the content

Teachers who are concerned about the teaching of basic skills will see that the relatively automatic behavior that must become a part of every student’s repertoire (Samels and Eisenberg, 1981) can best be developed through initial learning experiences in which gifted and advanced students develop a cognitive schemata or plan for the skill through their own self -directed exploration or investigation. Automatization of a skill evolves best though repeated experience in using the skill in real contexts or new and more complex leaning situations.

General Guidelines for Developing Strategies
in a Project-Based Classroom

The various methods and strategies discussed are based on a conception of learning that sees the gifted and/or advanced student as an active, generative, problem-solving learner, creating his or her own understanding and conceptual framework within the disciplines.

We now examine a set of very general guidelines that teachers of the inclusion program can use in a wide variety of teaching situations. These are general strategies for implementing curriculum plans. Curriculum specifies goals and objectives, subject matter content, concepts and principles, thinking skills or processes, basic skills, attitudes, and values to be learned by gifted students. In this chapter we have focused on instructional strategies that seek to motivate and involve the student in an active, self-directing role in the learning process. The following general guidelines embody the general approaches for such learning for gifted students:

1. Make extensive use of generative instructional strategies such as discovery, discussion, small group problem solving, and other nondidactic methods.

2. Use instructional strategies appropriate to the content. Obviously, certain subjects and topics are best taught by one instructional strategy, whereas other topics are best taught with other strategies. While small group problem solving might work well in science, practice might work better in math. Good teachers constantly make their strategy choice based on judgments about the content and student learning styles (Gardner, 2006).

3. Encourage students to develop their own methods of reasoning including self-generated algorithms; encourage alternate ways of thinking and performing tasks.

4. Allow students the freedom to organize their thinking.

5. Provide a learning environment with a variety of options that enable students with different learning styles to choose activities and materials that fit their own learning styles.

6. De-emphasize competition and encourage cooperative learning.

7. Establish a learning environment conducive to task involvement Nicholls and Burton suggest that, “The teacher’s task is to create and sustain task involvement and to prevent children’s preoccupation with task-extrinsic incentives or with how their ability compares with that of others.” This is no easy task, but striving toward it will produce a richer intellectual climate for gifted and advanced students. Grading policies and evaluation methods should be examined to consider the effect they have on motivation.

7.1 Alternative means of assessment should be incorporated into every classroom. The process may begin with a modified type of portfolio and should be expanded into the multimedia arena.

8. Use little or no drill and practice. Since gifted children are often advanced in skills, it is necessary to first assess what the students know, then teach the skills needed. Practice is useless unless the skill is newly acquired, and gifted children need far less practice to acquire skills than average students.

9. Make differentiated assignments to meet the various needs that each student in the classroom has. It is accepted that the skill levels for any particular task will vary widely within every classroom.

10. Encourage students to set their own goals and to make decisions about what to study. Provide mechanisms suds as planning forms and lists of options to enable students to develop their own learning plans (Feldhusen, 1986).

10.1  Failure is accepted (provided learning has taken place.) Bold experimentation on the part of students will only be realized when the academic climate allows for both trial and error. Taking academic risks is encouraged and rewarded. You can add your own cheesy Edison quote here!

11. Resources for these types of classes are not limited to a single teacher in a single subject area. The use of interdisciplinary team teaching and co-teaching with an assigned resource teacher makes effective and sustained team curriculum design and implementation essential.

Conclusion

Imposition strategies alone, such as lecture and other modes of “showing students how,” can have an adverse effect on how students learn. On the other hand, it is argued that negotiation strategies are powerful in establishing a learning environment that allows students to create, integrate, and synthesize ideas and the way these ideas are presented and shared. By learning in an environment that encourages cooperation and free exchange of ideas, students become capable of setting goals and achieving them with guidance, not imposition, by the teacher.

Although students vary greatly in their orientation to learning, it is, in a practical sense, impossible for the teacher to design a separate learning experience for each student. Attempting to do this risks having the teacher as the puppeteer and putting the learner in a puppet’s role. An alternative strategy is to challenge students to set goals and make decisions about how to attack a problem and present their solutions in the most appropriate fashion. In this way, learning becomes an adventure in which the students are anxious to participate. The basic thesis is that in matching instructional strategies to learners, the matching is best done by the student with guidance from the teacher.

Motivation plays a key role in the learning process. By attending to the motivational effects of what develops as a classroom culture, it is possible to enhance learning a great deal. It has been said that we learn what we want to learn. Whether gifted and advanced students (or students at the other end of the educational spectrum) want to learn topic X depends on their beliefs about the learning process and how they feel about their role in the activity. Task involvement is a desirable goal. By de-emphasizing extrinsic rewards and competition, we can stimulate students to be interested in the subject for its own sake and enjoy the love of learning.

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