Starting at the End

Alaska Project-Based Learning Expert Helena Fagan Insists That Good Projects Are Designed "Backward"—That Is, What Do We Want Kids To Know When They're Done?

Q: The interest in project-based learning is really high right now. What is it about project-based learning that makes it a valuable contribution to what teachers are doing?

Fagan: I think the reason teachers get excited about it is that kids tend to engage on a much higher level. And, because they're so engaged, the level of their work is incredible. I find kids producing work that I never saw when I was teaching in a more traditional manner. They amaze me with what they can do when they really care about and engage in authentic work.

Q: You're relying on kids to find the information, to discover learning for themselves. Is there a danger that they might not get what you need them to get?

Fagan: That's a misconception about project-based learning, especially by people who jump in and do it without understanding how to build those skills. Part of the project design is making sure you've scaffolded the skills they need. I use the "backward design" work of Grant Wiggins (as presented in the book Understanding by Design, which he coauthored with Jay McTighe). You start at the end with your standards and assessments: What is it they need to know? What is it going to look like when they have that knowledge and understanding? What skills and knowledge do they need before they can do the final assessment? Then you build those targets into your plan and your curriculum. If you don't, you're not going to get good project work or reach your goals with the majority of kids. You've got to lead them. You've got to facilitate. You don't give up your role as teacher.

Q: In other words, the teacher's not going to be sitting at her desk grading papers while the students stumble along without her.

Fagan: Right. It's hard work. The teacher constantly interacts with students, guiding and checking progress. Also, direct instruction remains an important piece of classroom work.

Q: How does a project-based unit look different from a traditional unit?

Fagan: Essentially, in a project where kids are doing authentic work, you're working toward understanding more than you're working toward knowledge.

Q: What's the difference between knowledge and understanding? I think we tend to use them interchangeably and to think they're the same thing.

Fagan: Often, our exams and our assessments call for a lot of the "spit-back" kind of knowing—"I taught this, and now you tell me what you've learned." Understanding is taking what they're learning and doing something new with it or applying that knowledge and actually using it—and, I think, getting it on a deeper level.

Q: So they take knowledge and make it their own.

Fagan: Right. They can make connections to their own prior experiences, to their own emotional context, whatever it is, and just get it on a different level. They're using it, so it does become their own.

Q: What would a bad project look like?

Fagan: I think a bad project tends not to have enough depth for kids or enough choice. It's really just a traditional curriculum that somebody's calling a project. It's one where you walk into a classroom and there's not a lot of excitement, there's not a lot of variation in what people are doing, there's not a lot of digging. It's not as active.

Q: Some educators are still hanging onto the idea that the classroom should be orderly and quiet, that it shouldn't be noisy. They would be alarmed if they walked into a classroom and all the kids were up and talking and moving around.

Fagan: In fact, really quiet classrooms with students in rows all day long make me nervous. I like noise, productive noise. We've often taught our kids to sit still and do their work, yet if you go into an arena where adults are working on something together, they're not sitting in rows being quiet. They're moving as they work. They're going to a computer to find something they need; they're talking to someone else who has information they need. Kids can do that, too, really well.

Q: But when kids collaborate, a strong student who catches on quickly may end up taking over. The other kids don't get a chance to be deeply involved.

Fagan: That is an issue, and I've dealt with it in a lot of different ways. You want to make sure students have particular roles—that each student in the group has a role they're required to carry out. We put groups together in lots of different ways. Sometimes at the beginning of the year, even with high school students, I'll put new students with returning students so that they're mentoring, helping to nurture those skills. I've done the traditional mixed grouping—some high kids, some medium kids, maybe a low kid—and have them help each other. Depending on the culture of the community, sometimes that works well. Kids need to understand their role as community members. You always have a few kids who don't produce very much no matter what your program is. Sometimes, I let those kids choose to work together. What I find is that if they don't succeed, they weren't succeeding before anyhow—someone else was doing their work. But what I've seen happen quite often is that when those kids are together, they'll tend to produce. What I've discovered—not always, but often—is that they are intimidated by the higher functioning kids and they're afraid to put anything out there, that it won't be good enough. So they just don't do anything. But when they're with students they're more comfortable with, they actually do produce good work.

Q: Many researchers recommend using different kinds of groupings throughout the year. So sometimes you have mixed groupings, and sometimes you have groupings of the same kinds of kids, because there are advantages and disadvantages to both kinds of groups.

Fagan: We switch groups all the time. That way, if there is a high-level student who feels she's dragging somebody along, you sometimes want to group her with other high-level students so together they can fly as high as they want. It's a balancing act.

Q: Are there other pitfalls that you've warned teachers about in terms of project-based learning—things they should think about, things they should avoid?

Fagan: One thing is trying to do too much. We do standards-based units, and a lot of times I'll see teachers writing down 10 or 15 standards this unit is going to teach to, and you can't do that. You need to narrow your focus. With project-based teaching, it's the old mile-long, inch-deep thing vs. going deeper. So we talk a lot about narrowing the focus and choosing the standards to which you really want to teach. What are the main concepts you want students to understand? Then, you can have another list of standards you're touching on but not assessing. Trying to do too much at once is a big problem.

Q: A lot of the huge standards documents out there seem kind of intimidating. Teachers are being expected to do a million things. How do you overcome the feeling that if we narrow it down too much, then there's all this other content or all these other skills that students are not learning—the fear that we're not going to cover everything by the end of year?

Fagan: You need to do some curriculum mapping. That's often what I do if I'm working with a small group of teachers. With a curriculum map, especially if you're integrating subject areas, you look at your standards, look at your curriculum, and decide what you really need to teach this year, what the important pieces are. Then you map out where those will fit in during each quarter. Finally, you look across the year and make sure you've included everything.

Q: Are the best projects interdisciplinary?

Fagan: Often they are the best because authentic work always crosses into many content areas. I've also seen wonderful projects designed for one content area.

Q: What about teachers collaborating across the traditional boundaries and barriers? That's not something teachers jump into easily, is it?

Fagan: It depends on the teachers and the culture of the school. Often teachers love collaborating because teaching's such an isolated profession. I love it. I like it so much that I don't think I could go back today and just shut my door. It's so expansive to get somebody else's ideas. It's more powerful for the kids, and for you as a professional. It's more exciting. Some personalities resist that and it just doesn't work. Hopefully, teachers who are integrating are doing so because they want to. It's difficult when you go into a district that's demanding that teachers work together. It might take a long time for anything remarkable to happen. Natural companion subjects, such as social studies and English, are where you often see teachers working together even without a district mandate. When I first worked with teachers in the Yup'ik village of St. Marys on the Yukon Delta, they had not done any project work, nor had they worked together. It was small, pre-K through 12 in one building. During the project institute, we built a schoolwide project because they were timid about designing individually. We targeted standards for the whole school based on test scores and where they knew their weaknesses were. It was quite amazing. It drew the staff together. They hadn't opened their doors to each other before. It made a tremendous difference in the school culture.

Q: What was the project they decided on?

Fagan: Their biggest problem, they felt, was kids' attitudes toward school. Kids were dropping out and fighting at school. Besides the attitude issues, the language arts scores were quite low. So they targeted one of the state's "healthy life" standards that has to do with understanding how attitude affects learning and then targeted a writing standard for each grade level. Their projects looked different at each level, but the final piece was a Yup'ik values fair. It was an open house night and the whole community attended. They started with a potluck, and then the students showed their understanding of these values in different ways. The older students did a project around a community hunt. They wrote a new song and dance about hunting for the community and they translated it into Yup'ik and created the dance movements. Some of the younger kids were examining Yup'ik values through poetry and writing their own verse. Others interviewed the elders and recorded their stories and looked for the values. Then they wrote their own stories to express their understanding of the values. It was very powerful.

Q: Do you have guidelines for helping schools or teachers pick their topics, what to zero in on?

Fagan: Actually, I don't have a real set of guidelines that I hand them, but we talk about how you have to pay attention to your community, your culture—and not just the culture of the larger community, but also of your school and of your class. For example, you need to know whether you have students who are hams and are going to want to do something dramatic. If you're in a Yup'ik school, that might not be where you'll want to start. Look for real needs in the community so kids can actually get involved. Look for ways you can bring the community in.

Q: Is there another project that really stands out in your mind as having been really successful or interesting?

Fagan: I start usually by sharing successful projects so teachers can see what kids can do. One project that one of my MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching) students wrote last year and implemented was quite successful. He was working with what they call a "core math"class. It was a group of kids who were not meeting the standards in math in the middle school. It was mostly Native children with a high percentage of males. They were turned off to school generally. His project revolved around building traditional bentwood boxes, and he taught the math through that. He had Tlinkit artists come in and show them the designs and what they meant. They studied the geometry of the designs. He did a wonderful job of integrating skills and the kids were fascinated. They were right there with him the whole way.

Q: How did you develop the "Project Design Template" you use in your training?

Fagan: That's really based on Wiggins' work. I don't want to take any credit for his work. I've just kind of borrowed it and modified it. If you use the template, you'll have a solid unit designed.

Q: What are the important assessment issues for teachers doing projects?

Fagan: You have to make sure that the culminating tasks really do measure the standards. That's another problem area for teachers. They'll come up with a fun activity, and if I ask, "Well, what are you measuring that they've learned from this?" they often can't tell me. You have to align that very carefully and make sure the standards you're pinpointing are being assessed and that your scoring guide, in turn, actually measures those standards. People often have all these different factors they're assessing, but it's not truly the meat of it. They'll tend to put too much emphasis on scoring, say, the aesthetics of the project—does it look pretty? Or is it creative? That can be a tricky part, making sure that you actually assess understanding.

Q: It seems as if assessment can be the trickiest part of teaching.

Fagan: It can be and that's why I like this model so much. It's front-load heavy, but once you've targeted your standards and designed your assessment, you know exactly where you're going. It's so clean.