Professional Learning Model

Professional Learning in ML-PBL

The Professional Learning (PL) program in Multiple Literacies in Project-Based Learning (ML-PBL) leverages the features of project-based learning -- teachers engage with meaningful driving questions to motivate their pedagogical learning and collaboratively develop physical artifacts to represent their development.

Teachers engage in an abridged set of lessons from the curriculum as science learners, to consider how learning will unfold for their students and better understand the coherence within the learning sets. Teachers examine the phenomena from the ML-PBL units through engaging in science practices, such as developing models, analyzing data, and engaging in argumentation.

The PL sessions also engage teachers with driving questions regarding their pedagogy, such as what it means to develop a community of learners in their classroom and how students can "figure out" phenomena. The facilitator demonstrates PBL practices, guides teachers to share and make use of each other's science ideas and pedagogical experiences. experiences in the session, and elicits in their classrooms. In this way, teachers acquire equitable discourse moves through engaging in, and analyzing the power of meaningful discussions.

In the PL sessions, teachers generate two final artifacts: one is the physical artifact that the students build as a culmination of the science unit and the other is a model of students' developmental progression of three-dimensional (NGSS) learning developed in the unit. In additions, teachers collectively make sense of the ML-PBL materials and the summative and formative assessments, working together to explain the sequence and flow of ideas in the units and understand how the parts of each lesson can inform instruction.

Together, as a PBL community, teachers use their stories of success and challenges to break lessons down into key usable parts: Learning Performances (the three-dimensional learning goals of the lessons), Figuring Out Statements (that describe what the students will learn), Look Fors (guiding formative assessment), and Evidence Statements (description of the lesson artifact that the teacher can use to assess learning). Teachers leave the sessions prepared and excited to teach the units to their students.