PBL + Dropout Prevention

An #Alted Promising Practice

Oct 25, 2023

Project-based learning is a concept of students being involved in their relevant learning and solving community problems to create community-based solutions. If you are a school recognized for low performance under ESSA (most alternative schools fall into this due to the nature of the school and the federally mandated antiquated systems that evaluate schools), you must use strategies for your school in the What Works Clearing House. PBL is now on that list! PBL has a massive list of reasons to consider this as a primary instructional practice, but for dropout prevention, it is a gold standard. You may be asking…what is the What Works Clearinghouse? Guess what…research on Hope is being conducted as we speak to be added to the WWC.

Project-based learning can be found in best practices for community schools and linked learning (two CA school grant initiatives).

An Aside-WWC

The What Works Clearinghouse

Their Website Definition is below

What We Do

For more than a decade, the WWC has been a central and trusted source of scientific evidence on education programs, products, practices, and policies. We review the research, determine which studies meet rigorous standards, and summarize the findings. We focus on high-quality research to answer the question “what works in education?”

Why Does Quality Matter in Education Research? Not all education research is equal. Identifying well-designed studies, trustworthy research, and meaningful findings to inform decisions and improve student outcomes can be tricky. That’s where the WWC comes in.

Who We Are

The What Works Clearinghouse is an investment of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education that was established in 2002. The work of the WWC is managed by a team of staff at IES and conducted under a set of contracts held by several leading firms with expertise in education, research methodology, and the dissemination of education research.

PBL-the research

Here is the PBL brief about being in the WWC-https://www.pblworks.org/blog/weve-arrived-pbl-evidence-based-practice-under-essa

Hattie’s work: Hattie, in his first and second edition of his books, notes Piagetian methods as highly effective (1.28 effect size). Note Hattie’s work is sometimes hard to understand due to linguistic differences in English and how the work is coded. However, his second edition spells out many misnomers. PBL is derived from Piagetian methodology.

To further your schema in PBL and the Piagetian effect size, the article below describes the history of PBL and the cognitive constructivist approach to this work. PBL is infused in many learning theories. https://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning-history

I have not found any research with direct statistics on PBL reducing dropout rates. There is a figure stated, but not cited, that PBL increases graduation rates by 17%…but again, I could not find that research, and it is not cited in the many articles I found that figures.

But, if we dive back into Hattie’s work, we look at the effect size of components of PBL, including:

Executive Functioning- 0.62 effect size

Self-Reported Grates- 0.96 effect size

Relating Creativity to Achievement- 0.40 effect size

Critical Thinking- 0.84 effect size

These are all things PBL ensures. While there is a gap in the research of PBL and dropout prevention between what PBL Works has collected for over 30 years, the What Works Clearinghouse independent studies, and Hattie’s work, we know that PBL engages and has students demonstrate higher levels of learning and can conclude that PBL supports pathways to graduation, but we need more research on how.

*It should be noted that high-quality PBL lessons are being discussed, not stand-alone projects that do not follow the HQ PBL framework.

PBL Basics

PBL has a framework to ensure high-quality projects and components. Below is an menu that I created for my staff after three years of training from Applied Coaching. All of the following are needed for a High Quality PBL.