This paper explores enabling conditions for scaling high-quality project-based learning (PBL) to understand factors that influence how PBL spreads, whether and how it can be sustained and the extent to which it informs meaningful change in schools. We report on a year-long collaboration across three research projects. Each project team analyzed…

A 9th grade Honors English class creates and publishes original poems, art, fiction, and nonfiction products through an activity called "Type Three -- Twenty Time = T4." The instructional method merges elements from Renzulli's Type III process with elements from Brookhouser's 20Time Project-based learning model. Each student researches…

In this article, the authors share what they learned from their study of writing communities, which they refer to as writing groups, during the 2017-18 school year. The authors propose a conceptual framework for writing groups that engages students in the process of designing and participating as writers with their peers. The framework emphasizes…

"Transcendentalism" refers to philosophical, religious, and literary beliefs held by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, and other writers in New England during the 1830s and 1840s. Emerson believed in the significance of one's intuition and individuality. He expresses these beliefs in his…

Harnessing a cluster randomized controlled trial, we estimated the impact on students' advanced placement (AP) examination performance of a project-based learning (PBL) approach to AP compared with a lecture-based AP approach. Through PBL, teachers primarily play a facilitator role, while students work on complex tasks organized around central…

The driving question for this brief is based on the most common question that teachers, principals, school leaders, coaches, and grant writers ask the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) about Project Based Learning (PBL): What evidence exists that shows the impact of Project Based Learning on student learning in core content areas? Research shows…

In this article, the authors examine their collaboration on a joint ELA-art-mindfulness project before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following chronicles the impact of the pandemic on the project and on student engagement, key takeaways from teaching and collaborating during a virtual school year, and the implementation of said takeaways…

English Language Arts has historically been tied to the civic purposes of schools, and this qualitative study of a social design-based project (Gutierrez & Vossoughi, 2010) examines the intersection of language and literacy learning and youth civic engagement, a problem space I call "Civics English." In this dissertation, I describe…

Project based learning (PBL) provides opportunities for teachers and students to create learning spaces that are authentic and relevant. Much of this work is taking place in STEM contexts, with few studies exploring PBL integration in English language arts (ELA) classrooms. In this co-design project, we collaborated with 13 9th grade ELA teachers…

This article discusses one teacher's efforts to give their students a mentor text for a persuasive, research-based writing project. The author's shift from assigning predominantly fiction to focusing more on nonfiction came as a result of their efforts to help their students move from students' current writing style -- that of a five-paragraph…

This article considers the pedagogical nature of an intra-action involving the author, his high school student's final project in an English class (a golem), and his school administrators. The author relies on narrative scholarship to both tell and interpret a story of his experience as a high school English and drama teacher, to illustrate the…

Through a case study of a seventh-grade ELA teacher, this article examines New Literacies pedagogy and more specifically a digital video project amid high-stakes testing pressures that often place limitations on teaching and learning.

Tour Across America is an interdisciplinary, project-based, multimodal (IPM) activity where students get the opportunity to apply what they learn to a real-life situation while illustrating the interdisciplinary nature of literacy. It provides students with a high-interest, creative platform to review, reinforce, and integrate learned literacy…

What if you could challenge your second graders to design an outdoor STEM classroom with a butterfly garden, birdbath, and sundial? With this volume in the "STEM Road Map Curriculum Series," you can! "Investigating Environmental Changes" outlines a journey that will steer your students toward authentic problem solving while…

Discover the ways teachers and researchers apply up-to-date TESOL research to meet both content and language acquisition criteria while also affirming students' cultural knowledge, life experiences, and language abilities. Like the high school grades themselves, the chapters in this volume are organized by academic content area including language…