Literary Review

Doing the Project and Learning the Content: Designing Project-Based Science Curricula

for Meaningful Understanding by David E. Kanter

Published in Wily InterScience on December 15, 2009

Meghan Rotkosky

National University

TED 690: Masters Capstone

 Abstract

Authors: David E. Kanter

Title: Doing the Project and Learning the Content: Designing Project-Based Science

Curricula for Meaningful Understanding

Publisher: Wiley InterScience online journal, Edition 94: 525-551

Year: 2009

Reviewed By: Meghan Rotkosky, National University, TED 690

This article was peer-reviewed and published in Wily InterScience; this article

discusses the benefits and challenges of utilizing the project-based learning pedagogical

strategy to assist students in not only content comprehension but also ways to

meaningfully apply their knowledge. The author examines the balance needed for

students to achieve an understanding of the content while being able to apply these

concepts to future curriculum, the challenges inherent in project-based learning as well as

the struggles of organizing each project-based unit, and the ways in which teachers can

augment projects to help create meaningful connections between prior content, future

content, understanding, and real-world scenarios.

 Literary Review

In the interest of full disclosure, I know a bit about project-based learning and

designing PBL plans from my time student teaching. I was placed into two separate

science classes and one was an 8th grade physical science class that was taught

exclusively in PBL format. I felt like there were many advantages to a PBL classroom but

was limited to what my master teacher had already planned for the projects throughout

the year. This article was a great way for me to see evidence of PBL learning through a

different scope and read about challenges that other teachers have faced with this

teaching strategy.

In this article Kanter measured learning through project-based science plans in

652 middle school students. He concentrated on a project called I, Bio, a PBL unit

designed to focus on the topic of energy interconversion, that is, how the human bodys

organ systems, composed of specialized cells, work together to derive energy from food,

(p. 529). Kanter details several challenges that were found during the execution of this

project and the ways the project can be altered to decrease the likelihood that these

challenges will get in the way of students comprehension and ability to apply their

understanding of the content.

Each PBL lesson plan should focus on several points: creating a demand for the

knowledge that students will be learning, appropriately developing a plan to construct

that knowledge, helping students to organize their content learning, and assisting students

in bridging this knowledge with content that they have previously learned and content

they will learn in the future. These steps should be taken with each PBL lesson plan but

Kanter details several challenges to students comprehending content using this strategy.
 The design challenges that Kanter explains throughout this article are familiar to

me from my experience with project-based learning units and I dont doubt would be

familiar to any educator using PBL strategies. Kanter details these challenges as students

having difficulty with unfamiliar content, challenges applying all of the content that they

learn, and students being able to apply all of the content in time. When reading the article

I felt like these were common sense issues when thinking about PBL planning of course

you want students to be able to comprehend the content, apply it to real world situations,

and in the appropriate time frame. The thing that I enjoyed the most about reading this

article is that Kanter was able to suggest approaches that will help teachers and students

successfully complete the PBL lesson but also achieve the required content learning goals

for the curriculum unit.

The suggestions range from making sure that students understand the why of

the project what are they learning and why is it important that they learn? Its not

enough to tell students that its part of the content standards or that students need to learn

these concepts in order to do well on a standardized test. Another way to assist with these

challenges to have students see if they can anticipate the gaps that they have in their

learning. Asking the students if they can complete the PBL lesson with only the

knowledge they have at the time will show them that there is more information and

learning needed before they are able to complete their projects. This strategy is the one

that resonated with me the most I believe that discussing the content with students and

hearing feedback from students is an important step in PBL learning for both educators

and students.
 The challenge of ensuring that students are able to not only understand the content

but also apply it is the essential task of project-based learning. Kanter stresses the balance

of making sure that students have just the right amount of content: not too much that they

forget what isnt important for the project but enough that they can bridge that content

understanding with prior and future content.

The end of the article showcases the empirical evidence that Kanter has collected

from students using pre- and post-assessment scores to see if augmenting project-based

learning plans aids in comprehension and the ability for students to take their content

understanding and creating meaningful connections to other similar content. The results

were clear that project-based science learning plans helped students achieve a deeper

level of understanding of the content and assisted the students in using that knowledge to

create significant links between content.

Overall I thought that this article was helpful. Each PBL lesson plan that I have

been involved in had its own issues that the students or teacher needed to attempt to solve

in order for students to get the most out of the content and work collaboratively to

achieve the learning goals. This article gave specific challenges and first-hand experience

into how those challenges could be resolved. I think that any educator interested in

project-based learning would find it helpful and interesting.

Reference:

Kanter, D.E. (2009). Doing the Project and Learning the Content: Designing Project-

Based Science Curricula for Meaningful Understanding. Wiley InterScience, 94, 525-551.

Retrieved August 2017, from www.interscience.wiley.com