Place-based Learning vs. Project-based Learning: Two Approaches for Authentic Assessment
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The messiness that comes with performance tasks is a reason why they are not implemented more in the curriculum. Yet this messiness also has two upsides: space to be creative with how students can show what they know, and the opportunity to implement structures that students need for their creativity to thrive.
Two approaches for developing authentic performance tasks that seem to support this work well are place-based learning and project-based learning. Each has their specific benefits as well as a few drawbacks. Both are grounded in inquiry, defined by Kathy Short as “a collaborative process of connecting to and reaching beyond current understandings to explore tensions significant to the learner” (2009). These tensions might be a larger conflict in the world, such as systemic racism. A tension could also be present in their immediate community, for example the use of plastic straws in the cafeteria. What the performance tasks does is frame these challenges within an authentic context and offer a process for pursuing answers and developing solutions.
Place-based Learning
This approach is founded on the idea that all individuals should build a “sense of place” and develop “an ability to care for one’s surroundings” (Demarest, 2015, p. 8). When teachers develop a unit of study with place-based learning in mind, they find a focal point within the local community. It could be a tree, a natural landform, or a historical site. Whatever the place, it offers many ways to see it at a more complex and develop a more conceptual understanding of the world.
For example, when I taught 6th graders, we would study the local creek twice a year. Testing kits, rubber waders, and other outdoor gear were hauled out to a farm that had access to the creek in the fall and in the spring. We took samples of the water to measure the level of nitrates and phosphates, as well as identify what organisms were living there. All of this information helped us assess the water quality of the creek. We could then report to the community our analysis and our recommendations for environmental improvement.
As you can likely tell, this wasn’t just an environmental science unit. Literacy was heavily embedded in the water quality study, for example writing up and presenting our findings. We also had to understand the geography of the land to determine where the run-off was coming from. “Gross” was heard more than once when students learned that high levels of nitrates in the water were likely the result of cow manure washed into the creek from upstream rain events.
And this leads to an important point about place-based learning: the connections that students make between local actions and the consequences for other parts of our community. Instruction is largely focused on, in addition to mastery of the subject (Demarest, 2015, p .5):
learner’s experience,
relationship to the place, and
personal agency.
Once students see a place as more than just a location or a thing, they start to view other aspects of their life in a more nuanced, thoughtful and caring manner.
Project-based Learning
While place-based learning offers a “more self-directed, inquiry-based experiential pedagogy” (Demarest, p. 5), project-based learning provides “an appropriate level of autonomy”, with the teacher taking “the leading role in planning guiding projects at first” (Larmer, Mergendoller, Ross, 2015, p. 46-47). Projects are set up to be highly aligned with standards in multiple subject areas, often including literacy and 21st century skills. Assessments are then developed for each standard and associated task, which should reveal students’ capacity for that content or skill. From Day 1, the project is introduced to the students and the rest of instruction for the unit of study is in support of that task.
This is not to suggest that place-based learning lacks scaffolding or sufficient alignment with key success criteria. Likewise, project-based learning relies on differentiation and is responsive to students’ needs. The deep purpose of this approach is to help students “understand why they are learning and perceive their learning as purposeful” (p. 39). Both the Algebra/auto finance task and the house building unit previously described are examples of project-based learning. Within each experience, teachers can tease out the larger meanings of the study and embed voice and choice within it.
Project-based learning is structured around seven elements as part of the instructional process (p. 47):
Project-design/planning
Align to standards
Build culture
Manage project activities
Scaffold student learning
Assess student learning
Engage/coach student performance
Several resources including guest speakers and online content are highly encouraged to be included in whatever study designed.
Some individuals scoff at the “structuredness” of curriculum like project-based learning. There is a concern that if everything is prepared for the learner ahead of time, that students will never learn how to structure their own time or to engage in critical thinking about what it is they are learning. As researcher Peter Gray (2013) notes:
“What is most desirable is that people have the freedom to develop their own models, their own concepts to explain what they need or wish to explain, using whatever resources they find useful - including, but not limited to, others’ teachings and writings. People naturally want to make sense of the world.”
(p. 86-87)
There is more than some truth to this. You see the overplanning often in organized sports and in some projects that look like they were delivered in a box. However, part of the benefit of project-based learning is students are not only learning in subject areas; they are also learning how to learn. The way it is set up, for example the seven key elements, should be made evident for the students as part of the “why” of this work.
So which PBL is right for you? It depends. Do you want more structure to ensure key understandings are developed? Project-based learning might be right for that unit. Is it important for another study to give kids plenty of cognitive and physical space to foster personal relationships with a focus of a study? Place-based learning offers that pathway.
Four benefits they both have in common that make these approaches highly applicable for authentic performance tasks include:
There is a focus on issues relevant to students’ lives (i.e. lifeworthy).
The teacher is not the only expert in the classroom.
Learning is presented as a process for lifelong improvement.
Students are expected to apply their learning to real-world problems and concepts.
In other words, we cannot “do this wrong” or make a poor choice in how we approach the performance task design. Just the fact that we are becoming more thoughtful and student-centered in our attempts to make assessment more meaningful and authentic means that we are that much closer to a more ideal curriculum for everyone.
References
Demarest, A. B. (2014). Place-based Curriculum Design: Exceeding Standards Through Local Investigations. New York: Routledge.
Gray, P. (2013). Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. New York: Basic Books.
Larmer, J., Mergendoller, J., & Boss, S. (2015). Setting the Standard for Project-based Learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Short, K. G. (2009). Inquiry as a stance on curriculum. Taking the PYP forward, 11-26.
Photo by Mark König on Unsplash