Learning by Doing

I want to tell you about a young kid in Seattle.

 

His family was poor. Conflict in his home occasionally turned violent. There was sexual assault by an outsider to his family. He didn’t do very well in school because of his at the time undiagnosed dyslexia and attention deficit disorder.

 

As a student in Seattle Public Schools, this young man was labeled “not college bound.” In his senior year of high school, he was rejected for admission to the University of Washington.

 

Then something very special happened. His high school journalism teacher in his senior year pulled him aside and said,

“Your writing needs work, but you sure can talk. This weekend I want you to do an assignment for me. Go to some event, prepare a report as if you were a radio reporter and come back Monday and present it to the class.”

 

That teacher was Lucille Chapin at Lincoln High School in Wallingford and I was that student. My teacher planted a seed: after I completed that assignment, I knew I wanted to be a radio journalist.

 

That Saturday — the first Saturday in May 1967 — I reported from the Montlake Bridge on opening day of boating season. I recorded on my portable Wollensak cassette recorder the sound of boat horns blasting away when the parade of boats began at noon. It sounds crazy, but on my way back home I stopped at a phone booth and cold called KJR Radio, the city’s number one station at the time. I told newsman Les Parsons what I had just done. I held the phone handset close to my recorder and played the sound of the boat horns. He asked me to describe what I had seen, how many boats, what the crowd lining the canal was like. It was all quite heady; an hour later KJR played my first ever broadcast report.

 

In class on Monday, I played a tape recording of my radio report which ended with “this is Tim Burgess for KJR News.” Ms. Chapin gave me an “A” on that assignment.

 

What Ms. Chapin did with me way back in the 1960s is similar to what is today called “project-based learning,” meaning hands-on, deep engagement and experimentation to master a subject or a skill, alone or with a small group. Doing, not just reading or listening to a lecture. That one weekend assignment excited me. It fired me up and motivated me to stop at that phone booth. It helped me land a job at KJR as a full-time radio reporter for the next four years. It boosted my self-confidence.

 

I share my story because earlier this week the George Lucas Educational Foundation released four studies—each a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard of research—demonstrating that project-based learning (PBL) boosts student performance significantly across several subjects and student demographics.

 

One study followed students using a PBL-centric curriculum — Knowledge in Action — inspired by University of Washington Professor Emeritus of Social Studies Education Walter Parker. In an Advanced Placement US Government class, for example, students were tasked with preparing and staging a mock political campaign; hands on learning by doing.

 

Researchers found that students taught AP US Government and AP Environmental Science with a PBL approach outperformed peers on exams by eight to ten percentage points and were more likely to score high enough on an AP test to be eligible for college credit. 

 

According to Parker, the research shows that “rigorous project-based learning ‘works,’ and works broadly, even in high-stakes, exam-driven classes like AP (where it is least likely to be attempted for fear of reduced exam scores). In high schools across the nation — including large, poverty-impacted urban districts — students in courses using the Knowledge in Action model did better on exams, enjoyed learning, and learned the central ideas more deeply.”

 

The other PBL research studies released this week found similar gains for third-grade students in science, for second graders in reading, and for sixth graders in mathematics and English language arts.

 

What might these research findings mean for public education here in Seattle? Might students who struggle with traditional teaching practices — like I did — do better with a project-based learning approach? Might it help erase inequity? Our public K-12 system every year leaves behind about a quarter of Seattle children of color who drop out before high school graduation. Perhaps project-based learning would excite these students, keep them engaged and make a difference.

Project-based learning works. Maybe it’s time to offer it more widely to our students. The evidence of effectiveness, as documented by the studies released this week, is strong.