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This article promotes project-based learning in English education as a way to combat the loss of cultural relevancy under the pressures of standardization.
In the last 20 years, federal accountability policies have contributed to a high-stakes testing environment encouraging teacher-centered classrooms and the teaching of basic skills in isolation, which has resulted in narrowed curricula (Au; Mintrop and Sunderman; Ravitch). Although these policies were intended to improve instruction, teachers are less likely to create innovative and culturally relevant curricula when textbooks and standardized curricula are required by the state or school district (Apple; Stairs, Donnell, and Dunn). This trend toward standardization with its focus on basic skills conflicts with the idea of problem-posing education grounded in authentic inquiry. Although it is important for students to meet standards and pass high-stakes exams, as educators, we must ensure that we are cultivating critical-thinking skills, both for our students and for ourselves. Project-based learning, a specific pedagogy consistent with Paulo Freire's problem-posing theory of education, is one way to create student-centered learning experiences that allow students to construct knowledge and learn critical-thinking skills.
A Glimpse of Project-Based Learning
Before explaining the theory behind project-based learning, I want to offer a glimpse of what this pedagogy looks like by presenting a scene from my middle school teaching experience. In one project, students were asked to identify an issue in the community and then develop a solution that drew on current research and historical ways of responding to it. During community mapping a week before the conversation that follows, my students walked through neighborhoods adjacent to the school and photographed positive and negative artifacts. Students were not told what was "positive" or "negative," but were instead asked to make their own choices and provide a written rationale. We then examined these artifacts as a class, celebrating what was positive and identifying a problem we wanted to solve.
To pick one problem on which to focus, students worked in small groups to develop a list of problems. We then posted these lists on the walls, and I gave each student three stickers so they could "vote" for their top three issues. By the end of this activity, problems related to violence, particularly gang violence, had a chain of colored stickers...