This excerpt is from the fifth post in a series on CBL written by Sandra Moumoutjis, Building 21’s Executive Director of the Learning Innovation Network, for The Aurora Institute.
For us, at the heart of these instructional shifts is making learning expectations consistent and transparent for all students across all learning experiences through our Building 21 Competency Framework and making learning more engaging and relevant to students through inquiry-based, project-based, and/or problem-based learning. These instructional shifts are also very much about equity. Oftentimes, we think of project-based or problem-based learning as either a reward for doing well or as a fun break from the normal curriculum. Sometimes we withhold these real-world learning experiences from students because we do not think they are ready and we focus on lower-level skill instruction instead. Especially now, during this pandemic, we are seeing students with more unfinished learning. But instead of engaging them in higher-level thinking and meaningful activities, we are remediating through traditional skill instruction. This approach is only creating a bigger gap in learning, and disproportionately for children of color.
Keep reading here on Aurora’s website to learn more about our approach to designing learning experiences for engagement and impact.
