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PBL: Agency & Depth Ingersoll Home Learn More Standards Inspiration About the Author |
Inspiration |
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A large chunk of what I have researched, and what stands out in my project, is Project Based Learning(PBL). As I have researched this topic, I have become more and more excited about the concept of this student-centered model of teaching. That being said, PBL was not what initially piqued my interest, and it definitely wasn't my passion.
Originally, I was very interested in skill building. I teach social science in the high school setting. There had seemed to be a misconception of what teaching that subject really entailed. Whether it was people outside of academia, or new students entering my classroom, there was a preconceived idea that learning in a social science classroom(especially History) was simply memorizing names and dates. My first emotion when making this discovery was frustration. My first though being: "How could they think that??". History uses names and dates as a medium to make connections, understand trends, recognize bias, and understand points of view. Skill sets that are not easy to learn! Skill sets that I spend an entire year developing in my students! Once I dusted my ego off and let the frustration subside, I recognized that these beliefs couldn't possibly be baseless- especially if I was hearing the same opinion from many different people spanning many different ages. THIS was my initial passion for this project. I wanted to figure out what was causing this and what could be done to change it. As I started to research student-centered lessons and methodologies, I started to notice a trend. The subjects that were popping up were almost all in STEM subjects. It seemed as though it wasn't just the people in my personal life that believed history was boring, Google was working against me too. Before this whole process began, I did a lot of reading on agency and efficacy: What develops it, what stifles it, what environments foster it, etc. If the whole world thought that History was simply memorizing names and dates, no wonder my subject of choice was perpetually receiving the label of "boring". So that became my foundation. I wanted to find a student-centered methodology that could be used to emphasize the skills in History that develop deeper understanding while fostering agency in students... And thus began my journey into PBL. |
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