Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2016
Abstract
It can be difficult to find effective teaching techniques that keeps students engaged and promote higher order thinking skills continuously throughout your content instruction. The purpose of this research was to discover if project base learning is a more effective instruction framework versus our traditional framework of instruction, which involves teachers standing in front of students and providing information through a lecture. Participants included two sections of fourth grade classrooms. The controlled group consisted of 20 students and the experienced groups consisted of 19 students. The controlled group demonstrated a significant amount of student’s engagement throughout the entire unit. In contrast, the experienced group was not as high in their level of engagement as the controlled group, but did have three days of 100% engagement when the teacher provided students with hands-on activities. These findings suggest that whether you are teaching with a project based learning framework or traditional teaching, if you have students who have a high interest in the topic and are allowed to design, create, or use their hands will be more engaged in their learning.
Recommended Citation
Deitering, S. (2016). Is project based learning a more effective way of teaching than traditional teaching? (Master's thesis, Northwestern College, Orange City, IA). Retrieved from http://nwcommons.nwciowa.edu/education_masters/12/