Meaningful Learning: Double Journal Entry #13

Traditional instruction with textbooks and discussions is beginning to wear.

Fortunately there are other options for instruction: Project Based Learning, Problem Based Learning, and Learning by Design. All of these have proven to produce just as or higher test scores and challenge students using higher level thinking skills. Students have also been noted for a higher level of motivation, attitude toward learning, and skills, including work habits, critical thinking skills, and problem-solving abilities (see, e.g. Bartscher, Gould, & Nutter, 1995; Peck, Peck, Sentz, & Zasa, 1998; Tretten & Zachariou, 1995

Project Based Learning is where students create a project that is meaningful and authentic to thier lives. Students help form the project and work together to complete it.
Student Benefits:
-ability to define problems (Gallagher, Stepien, & Rosenthal, 1992)
-support reasoning with clear arguments (Stepien, Gallagher, & Workman, 1993)
-ability to plan a project after working on an analogous problem-based challenge (Moore, Sherwood, Bateman, Bransford, & Goldman, 1996).

Problem Based Learning is created around a question that the teacher formulates and guides instruction by. Students work together to answer.
Student Benefits:
-supporting flexible problem solving, application of knowledge, and hypothesis generation (for a meta-analysis, see Dochy, Segers, Van den Bossche, & Gijbels, 2003
-support their claims with well-reasoned arguments (Stepien et al., 1993).
-larger gains in conceptual understanding in science (Williams, Hemstreet, Liu, & Smith, 1998)

Learning by Design gives students the opportunity to apply what they have learned to make an artifact.
Student Benefits:
develop understanding of complex systems (Perkins, 1986)


Each of these are important to a students learning because they allow for a real life application for the students. In book work students are forced to gain new information without attaching it to real world knowledge. Students come to the classroom with many different experiences and knowledges by allowing students to participate in active, dynamic, student centered learning.


Resource:
http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/edutopia-teaching-for-meaningful-learning.pdf
Teaching for Meaningful Learning
Dr. Brigid Barron and Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond,
Stanford University