How can school leaders support PBL implementation?
By going beyond cheerleading. Too many leaders approve PBL enthusiastically, send teachers to training, and then have no ability to evaluate or support what happens next. If you can't recognize the difference between authentic PBL and a dressed-up project, you can't provide useful feedback or make informed decisions about professional development.
Start by understanding PBL yourself — at minimum, sit through a unit as a learner. Visit PBL classrooms with the same regularity you visit any classroom, and develop shared language for what quality PBL looks like at different levels of implementation.
Then apply lean change principles: don't mandate PBL for everyone at once. Identify teachers who are genuinely interested, support them intensively, and let their success create the proof that convinces colleagues. Forced adoption of an instructional approach that requires this much teacher skill and belief almost always produces a superficial version that discredits the whole idea.
More on Project-Based Learning
What's the difference between doing projects and doing project-based learning?
In traditional projects, students learn content first and then apply it to a project at the end of a unit — the project is a culminating activity.
Why is PBL so hard to implement at scale?
Three reasons.
How does PBL connect to real-world audiences and experiences?
Through a design element that most traditional instruction lacks entirely: authentic audience.
Answered by Justin Baeder, PhD, Director of The Principal Center and author of three books on instructional leadership.