Many schools across the country are now using project-based learning as their main academic focus. But do the pros really outweigh the cons?

Project-based learning, or PBL, is a teaching style designed for the kinesthetic learner who learns best with hands-on experience. According to the Buck Institute for Learners (BIE), with PBL, “Students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to authentic, engaging and complex questions.”

Having students actively explore problems and challenges is the only way to learn certain things, say the PBL advocates. Take riding a bicycle, for example. No matter how many books a person reads on cycling, they won’t learn how to ride until they actually get on a bike and try to ride. According to PBL proponents, this style of learning encourages students to develop life skills that would often be neglected in traditional class settings.

Another quality of PBL is that students develop communication and leadership skills from learning to complete projects in teams. “Social learning allows children to practice and become proficient with the twenty-first-century skills of communication, negotiation, and collaboration,” writes Stephanie Bell on the BIE website. Supporters also say that the knowledge students gain from solving math and science by this method will help develop skills for the global economy. In addition, students are given the chance to be creative, to perform their own research, and to make contributions to the class.

A 2002 BIE study compared student mathematics achievements in two similar British secondary schools, one using traditional instruction and the other using PBL. The three-year experiment showed that “in the project-based-learning school, three times as many students passed the national exam.”

Despite those positive results and over 5,000 schools nationwide having implemented PBL, there are still many questions. First and foremost are the students actually learning the necessary materials to do well in standardized tests, and even more so will the students have the skills to succeed in college?

Last year the Academy of Sustainable Education, which was part of Santa Fe High and which would later become ECO, the new school on what was formerly known as South Campus, based its curriculum on PBL. The students worked together on “fun” real-life projects while learning fundamental skills without even realizing it. But some students felt they couldn’t learn that way.

Edgar Sarceño, who started the year at ECO but returned to Santa Fe High, was one of those students. ”It was really fun, but I feel like I wasn’t really learning enough, like it just wasn’t the way for me,” he said.

However, for Ramon Treto, PBL is a good fit. “I don’t see myself learning without it. It’s awesome, ” he said But some issues with PBL go further than learning style.

According to Joseph D. Schmidt, a former teacher of an Oklahoma high school, group dynamics can present problems. Group work, he said, “can make it difficult to determine which students contributed the most to the project, thus complicating student assessment.” Team work can also create greater potential for conflict among students since there is more interaction in a PBL environment. Additionally, lazy students may be able to take advantage of the diligent students, not participating as actively. These issues present the teacher with a new role of keeping groups running properly.

But researchers from the National Institutes of Health report, “Learning in a PBL format may initially reduce levels of learning but may foster, over periods up to several years, increased retention of knowledge.” Depending on the person, this may be convenient but not so much for someone who is maybe preparing for an upcoming exam. Furthermore, although some “preliminary evidence” suggests PBL results in improved general problem solving skills, there is no concrete evidence that PBL curricula result in any improvement in general, content-free problem-solving skills.

One thing that cannot be forgotten is the students’ learning styles. There are also the visual learners who prefer to visualize relationships between ideas and the auditory learners who prefer to soak up everything. We also can’t forget the ones who prefer reading or writing.

Emily Hilla, a sophomore at Santa Fe Prep, says that apart from PBL making class “not boring,” she finds this method “makes it easier to learn.” On the other hand, Roland Berry, a Santa Fe High sophomore, says, “All those things are too complicated. I’d totally rather just sit and read like everyone else.”