EPBL – challenging the comfort zone
One of things teachers learn as they gain experience is how to make lessons predictable (Brown & McIntyre, 1993). We do not mean this is in a pejorative sense of making lessons dull and stuck-in-a-rut, but rather that teachers plan so that they are in control. This means that if they do x, students will do y and it will take then z amount of time and they will learn w – and in recent years w will have often been made clear as lesson objectives, which will usually be landmarks in learning progress. Teachers have their own rules and practices and students are fairly good at learning the rules of particular teachers in particular subjects or year groups.
One of the very real challenges of EPBL is much of that predictability disappears and as a consequence many teachers can feel like novices as they give up their familiar control and hand much of it over to students. This a strong disincentive – many find it very difficult and some almost impossible. The heart of the challenge is that while you can plan, based on your predictions about what students will do and learn and where they might struggle, you cannot be sure that this will happen and to some extent you have to respond to what unfolds. We will give this form of planning the name contingent planning, part done in advance and part done by the seat of your pants.
Some basics
An important principle is that EPBL should chime with a school improvement priority, unless it is just being pursued by a highly motivated and maverick teacher, who has a particular bee in their bonnet. One would expect that it might be aligned with the desire to encourage students to take more ownership, be more collaborative or more engaged or more creative. Secondly as indicated in the later HOW TO piece on Brokerage, it is hard to plan and execute EPBL alone as it generally more demanding of time, people, spaces and resources and this needs cooperation.
Good topics
There is an immense amount of help in most localities if you know where to find it – in universities, local authorities, businesses, public bodies such as archives and museum service, heritage organisations, other voluntary organisations, faith bodies, individuals etc. Below is a list of topics that are good topic foci with, in most cases, the suggestion of some organisation who might be able to help:
- Growing and Cooking Food - Royal Horticultural Society;
- Heritage and Local History – Historic England, National Trust and local history and heritage societies, the census;
- Recreation, sport and leisure- local sports clubs and societies;
- Migration – parents and cultural societies;
- Planning – Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), local planners;
- Health –local surgery and hospitals, medical charities (e.g. British Heart foundation);
- The Arts – the Arts Council, local and national galleries, local theatre and drama clubs.
- Military service and conflicts – the Imperial War Museum, the British Legion and regimental museums.
- STEM – STEM ambassadors, universities and colleges, and IT, engineering, biomedical and pharmaceutical companies
- These are good topics because there are people and organisations out there who are keen to engage with schools. An important issue to address before you go very far is whether there are costs involved in using any service.
Professional Learning Task: Topic and resources
Concentrate on a particular year group and pick 3 topic areas that you think would make a good focus for EPBL, based on your existing knowledge of resources and contacts or good activities that the topic can generate. .