F UTURE DIRECTION FOR PBSL

This section presents findings on the teacher’s newly formed learning about goals in a project by comparing how the teacher spoke about planning for projects before and after the project implementation. In the pre-interview, the teacher stated that she starts planning for the projects by looking at the goals in the curriculum to check what the students need to know in different subjects, then she checks to see what goals can be combined together to form bigger entities.

That is, the teacher wanted to create an integrated model for teaching different subjects through projects.

If I see that there are goals that would make a bigger entity and that could be done by working on projects, I will start making connections to the subjects that I am teaching and try to make a wholesome learning experience.

Attempts to integrate different subjects such as language and history were observed, however, this was not seen throughout the project. Implementing the WST and electricity project resulted in the teacher to develop a new understanding of broad and narrow goals. The teacher’s past experiences with

projects have mostly been concerned with projects that have ‘broad goals’.

According to the teacher, broad goals are ones where there is no one right answer and these goals can be suitable for many subjects. Examples of such broad goals are social skills and scientific investigation. This was the first time the teacher was doing a project such as WST and electricity in which the students had to learn specific facts about WST, circuits, and electricity in order to come up with sound conclusions for the scientific investigation. The below two excerpts represents the teacher’s description of broad and narrow goals.

Oh broader, like they would be more wider. For example if I would think about this goal that would be suitable for each subject would be that if the child is able to work with a pair or a group that’s quite broad goal but then specific goals would be , I know that a circuit would need a source of energy it needs something to conduct electricity and you know so that would be quite narrow aspect.

Usually when I have done some projects they have been .. um.. mixing those social skills for example.

They’ve been learning about social skills and peer communication and they’ve had like bigger goals but this specific project has had like such like.. you know.. topics which have had quite narrow aspect on something. So its about circuit for example, there is just you know. Like of course exploring is a really good thing but may be like.. I should’ve just done the check ups for example to clarify already before the test like what happens.

In order to elaborate this further, the teacher drew a comparison between the electricity project and a project on health habits which she had done previously.

In the health habits project too, the students performed a scientific investigation where they made surveys, observations, and conclusions. However, the teacher thought that the health habits project, which had broad goals, was easier for the students as the topic of health habits was close to the students’ life and their experiences, and therefore, they already have a deep understanding of the topic.

Whereas, the electricity project, which has narrow goals, was hard for the students because the students do not usually have a deep understanding of specific aspects of the topic.

The conclusions are a little bit, something you can’t tell before hand, harder to control may be.

Because there is only one explanation. “This is the surface tension which is about the molecules getting together on top” “And this is the electricity and the current is flowing through because of this and this and this”, so its kind of like yea.. I don’t know, hard to explain.

The teacher suggests the use of check-ups throughout the project to see if the students are going off-topic and to redirect them, however, she also mentions that there was not enough time during the project to do this. For the future, the teacher suggests that she will start the project by having the students go through some material related to the topic of the project so that the students have a preunderstanding of the topic even before the start of the project.

Next time when I’m teaching electricity , I would only may be give them time to get to know the material first, or may be we would explore first and then we would get to know the material and then the concepts would get deeper understanding and then we would go them through together with the some kind of base material but now they had to go through after exploring. They had to go through the material by themselves, because I thought that it would be good to do it afterwards to kind of like get better understanding of the theory.

Another important point to consider in the light of this finding is that of teacher’s content knowledge in the science concepts that were being taught. The health habits project was not only familiar to the students but also for the teacher, therefore, the teacher was perhaps able to accept a variety of conclusions from the students and was able to direct them flexibly. However, in the electricity project, the teacher’s and the students’ unfamiliarity with the topic led them to depend heavily on the teaching materials. They wanted to arrive at answers that were specified as correct in the teaching materials, therefore, there was no room for accepting a variety of conclusions and there was limited flexibility in directing student learning. This could have led to the understanding of the science projects as having narrow goals. The role of the teaching materials and teacher’s content knowledge in the projects is further elaborated in section 6.6 and 6.7.

In summary, this finding shows that the teacher wanted to create integrated modules for projects, and while this was attempted during the project, it was not seen throughout the project. After the project implementation, the teacher thought of the WST and electricity projects as having narrow goals that required students to learn specific facts about the topics. The teacher’s and students’

unfamiliarity with the topic being taught was also seen to influence how this conception of goals was formed. For the future, the teacher plans on including

more broad goals and introducing the science topics to the students before the start of the project so that the students have some familiarity with the topics.