Over a decade ago, project-based learning transformed my teaching practice. It allowed me to make space for student agency while still addressing my curriculum, it gave me the opportunity to assess students in alternative ways, therefore genuinely reaching more students than I ever had before. I believed so deeply in it that I became an instructional coach, supporting dozens of fellow educators as they implemented these practices in their classrooms, trained parents on the ins and outs of “how teaching and learning have changed”, and became a fierce advocate for PBL in as many administrative offices as I could gain entry in order to tout its benefits.
PROJECT-BASED LEARNING
“Using Purpose Learning to Increase Belonging in the Classroom” By Jessica Catoggio, Director of Professional Learning World Leadership School
Fast-forward more years than I’d like to admit, and I now am the parent to two adolescents, each on their own educational journey, AND have the great privilege of serving as the Director of Professional Learning for World Leadership School a purpose-driven, North American-based organization whose mission is to: “Partner with K-12 schools to reimagine learning and create nextgeneration leaders.” Diving head-first into this role at the height of the pandemic gave me the opportunity to deeply examine the ways in which we partner with schools, and more importantly, the work we do directly with teachers. Weaving my own experience into WLS’ well-established work around purpose and purpose learning quickly became the piece of the pedagogical puzzle I wasn’t aware had been missing from my own entrenched PBL practice: Belonging. Purpose learning, with its deep roots in the best practices of both project-based learning and Design Thinking, provides a space for belonging in learning. Repeat: Belonging in learning. Learning in which all students belong, and have the opportunity to connect content to themself as an individual, and allows them to have real-world impact at the same time. Revolutionary. This is the meaningful environment I want for my own vulnerable, adolescent children on their formational journey to becoming world citizens. Before one can understand purpose learning, however, it is important to understand purpose itself. Stanford University’s Center on Adolescence’s body of work is the most significant research to date on this important topic. As such, at World Leadership School, we base our work on Stanford’s definition of purpose:
20 EARCOS Triannual Journal