NSF Awards: 1907895
28 9th and 10th grade students from Person College for Innovation and Leadership (PECIL), a Cooperative Innovative High School in rural North Carolina, engaged in a seven-week Project-Based Inquiry (PBI) Global. PECIL's mission is to provide a supportive and collaborative learning environment with a focus on STEM, leadership and character, particularly for first-generation college goers. The students' PBI Global focused on clean water and adequate sanitation [UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6] to support students' interdisciplinary content knowledge development across science, math, English, and history/social studies. Students worked collaboratively to investigate and synthesize findings from team-developed compelling questions connecting SDG 6 to one or more additional SDGs. Students' inquiry questions and findings were grounded in global and local contexts. In this way, students' inquiries underscore the interconnectedness of enduring global challenges, as well as the need for multi-faceted, community-centered approaches toward meeting the targets set forth in the SDGs. The project culminated with a student showcase at which teams presented their research findings, advocated for actionable solutions, and participated with community members in a collective action event. Students in this PBI Global held a Walk for Water to raise awareness, develop empathy, and collect funds for Water for South Sudan, a non-profit working to build water wells across South Sudan; additionally, students collected bottled water donations for their local food pantry. Researchers from NC State University are investigating how PBI Global supports students' science content knowledge, motivation and engagement. Additionally, researchers are examining how PBI Global professional development influences teachers' attitudes toward engaging in inquiry with their students.
Marie Himes
Research Associate
Dear STEM For All Showcase Visitors,
Thank you for watching our video, “Inquiry-to-Action through Project-Based Inquiry (PBI) Global” made possible through the NSF DRK-12-funded project “Supporting Students’ Science Content Knowledge through Project-Based Inquiry (PBI) Global.”
This video features Person Early College for Innovation and Leadership’s (PECIL - Roxboro, NC, USA) 2022 PBI Global focused on UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: Clean Water and Sanitation in collaboration with NC State University’s New Literacies Collaborative at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation (Raleigh, NC, USA).
Our research questions for this multi-year project are
Currently, we are analyzing data and synthesizing findings from years one and two of the project. We look forward to reading your thoughts and responding to any questions you may have in the forum. We are particularly interested in others’ experiences facilitating and scaling interdisciplinary inquiry-to-action projects.
Looking forward to interacting with you!
Hiller, Erin, and Marie
Chanda Jefferson
Laura Zangori
Hello Marie and Team,
LOVE your integration with PBL to think about clean water. This is such exciting work! Did you find that students also began to think about their identities in relation to science as they worked through the PBL?
Looking forward to learning more about your project,
Laura
Chanda Jefferson
Marie Himes
Marie Himes
Research Associate
Hi Laura,
Thanks for checking out our project! Although we didn't specifically examine students' identities in relation to science during this study, we do have focus group data that speaks to how students' perceptions of enduring global challenges evolved overtime in relation to their sense of community identities.
Early in our development of the PBI Global process, we recognized that students (particularly students in the United States) might fall into the trap of "othering" these enduring global challenges, seeing them as issues that individuals and communities in lower- and middle-income countries face. One of the reasons that we decided on the UN Sustainable Development Goals as the content focus for PBI Global is the Global Goals' grounding in the understanding that all people, communities, regions, countries, etc. are called to address these issues in order for sustainable and more equitable development to take place.
Appreciate the dialogue,
Marie
Lara Hebert
Chanda Jefferson
Rebecca Lowe
Hi Marie and Team,
I wanted to say that I found your work to be really exciting and also wanted to take a moment to connect with you as a local colleague engaging in related efforts with a team from North Carolina Central University. If you want to learn more about our team and the work we are doing, we have a video in the showcase as well. https://stemforall2022.videohall.com/presentati...
Chanda Jefferson
Marie Himes
Marie Himes
Research Associate
Hi Rebecca,
Great to connect with you! Just had the opportunity to watch your video and see how you are cultivating data literacy with students to address social justice issues. Like your project, a feature of PBI Global is moving students from inquiry to action. One of the components of the project that the teachers at Person Early College were really passionate about working on this past year was supporting students in analyzing and visualizing data to develop more robust responses to their compelling questions. Students collected and analyzed their own data through the water filter and testing lab and also accessed secondary data on sites like Gapminder to add nuance and complexity to their inquiry findings. CODAP was utilized by the teachers and students at Person Early College, as well!
Thanks for stopping by,
Marie
Lara Hebert
Chanda Jefferson
Daniel Damelin
Senior Scientist
I loved when then student described how it was not expected that what they were working on would be perfect the first time around, showing how they were truly engaged in the inquiry process. The walk for water was an ingenious way to generate empathy and link the local and global. Were there other ways students connected their work between local and global issues?
Chanda Jefferson
Marie Himes
Marie Himes
Research Associate
Hi Daniel,
Appreciate your feedback and question!
Yes, students connected their work locally and globally in at least four additional ways.
One of the benchmark lessons that students engaged in as part of their inquiry was to build and test water filters. The water samples for testing were gathered from a number of local water sources. Students tested the samples for a variety of mineral deposits and potential contaminants. Once the findings were synthesized, students engaged in discussions about why the water samples might be presenting with specific characteristics and how the characteristics of samples might vary in other community contexts -- both local and global.
A second benchmark lesson engaged students in reading "A Long Walk to Water" by Linda Sue Park and analyzing images depicting water and sanitation challenges across the globe, as well as in North Carolina. As part of their multimodal text analyses, students compared the characteristics of water and sanitation challenges across local and global community contexts and how these challenges can be addressed through the targets set forth in UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation.
A third benchmark lesson highlighting local and global connections on water and sanitation with students was the opportunity to hear from and ask questions of Dr. Francis de los Reyes, head of NC State University's WaSH Cluster. Dr. de los Reyes specializes in community-embedded engineering design solutions for sustainable waste management. Students were able to learn about Dr. de los Reyes's innovations in the field of waste management, how local culture and community inform his engineering design decisions, and what the future of sustainable waste management might look like.
Additionally, as part of the walk for water, each student collected and carried two gallons of water that were then donated to the local food pantry.
Thank you for the thought-provoking question! It was helpful for me to make explicit these local/global connections through PBI Global.
~Marie
Chanda Jefferson
Daniel Damelin
Stephen Dunevant
I'd like to add to Marie's synopsis: We also participated in a global outreach charitable effort through the "Iron Giraffe Challenge" for the organization Water for South Sudan. This was our 4th year supporting this cause, which uses our donations to dig small bore wells for villages in need of fresh water in Southern Sudan. This connected directly to our reading of Mrs. Park's novel and allowed the students to explore the real world global impact of the water crisis and what efforts can be taken to overcome them.
Chanda Jefferson
Marie Himes
Marie Himes
Research Associate
Thank you, Steve!
Viewers - Steve (featured in our video) is one of the incredible educators doing the on-the-ground PBI Global work at Person Early College for Innovation and Leadership.
Chanda Jefferson
Hiller Spires
Executive Director
Thank you, Steve, for weighing in. We appreciate our partnership teachers and students at Person Early College for Innovation and Leadership. Go team!
Chanda Jefferson
Sally Crissman
Senior Science Educator
What could be more important than clean, safe water?
The connection to the UN Goal seems a great way for students to begin to think globally. My young students hauled buckets of sea water from the ocean's edge to fill the classroom marine aquarium and never forgot how heavy is water! The Walk for water is undoubtedly unforgettable! I'd like to learn more about how you are measuring student motivation.
Chanda Jefferson
Marie Himes
Research Associate
Hi Sally,
We administered Brett Jones's (2009) MUSIC® Inventory with students before and after engagement in PBI Global. The MUSIC® Inventory measures the five key components of the MUSIC® Model of Motivation: eMpowerment, Usefulness, Success, Interest, and Caring.
Citation:
Jones, B. D. (2009). Motivating students to engage in learning: The MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 21(2), 272-285.
Thanks,
Marie
Chanda Jefferson
Hiller Spires
Executive Director
Hi Sally,
We reached out to Brett Jones to ask if we could use his MUSIC Inventory for our research and he graciously agreed. As Marie pointed out above, there are five key components related to motivation. The instrument does not have anything to do with music--which initially can be confusing.
Thanks,
Hiller
Chanda Jefferson
Chanda Jefferson
Educator/Education Policy Fellow
Hello everyone, I am so happy to join this discussion! My name is Chanda Jefferson and I am a former High School Biology teacher and STEM teacher leader. Your project is incredible and brings back memories of a project that I completed with my AP research class. PBL and inquiry based learning enhances students critical thinking skills and creates unforgettable experiences that change the way students view and interact in the world. I love the fact that this project is interdisciplinary, and you partner with an English teacher. I believe we should see more of this in schools. Can you expand on the planning process and roles associated with multiple teachers working together to carry out projects like yours?
Marie Himes
Marie Himes
Research Associate
Hi Chandra,
Thanks for viewing our PBI Global video!
Dr. Spires and our team have been engaging in PBI Global with educators and students for over a decade. One of our processes when working with educators on PBI Global is to engage in dialogue during project planning to better understand how this process can be embedded in each school context. Since PBI Global focuses on cross-cutting, interdisciplinary challenges enshrined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we advocate for interdisciplinary teacher teams to co-plan and co-implement this project with students.
With Person Early College (PECIL) specifically, they have a first year seminar class that creates the structure within the school for co-teaching and co-planning. PBI Global is situated within this course during the spring semester; however, teachers across the disciplines (i.e., science, math, history/social studies, English, and Spanish) at PECIL have organized their curricular maps for the year so that the content being taught in those classes while PBI Global is going on support and amplify the students' inquiries.
We actually begin co-planning with the PECIL teachers the summer prior to each spring's PBI Global (e.g., for spring 2023, we'll begin planning in summer 2022) and engage in regular check-in sessions throughout the fall prior to the project's launch in spring.
Our team published the article "Water and Sanitation: An Interdisciplinary Project-Based Inquiry Global Process" in The Science Teacher that digs into the planning and organization of an interdisciplinary PBI Global in greater detail. Please check it out and let us know if you have any additional questions!
With gratitude,
Marie
Chanda Jefferson
Chanda Jefferson
Educator/Education Policy Fellow
Thank you for answering the question and I look forward to checking out the article you provided! Your project is amazing!
Sarah Carrier
Hiller and Marie, this is such an exciting project and I love the emphasis on student-led engagement in learning about clean water. Thank you for your work.
Marie Himes
Research Associate
Thank you, Sarah!
I see many common principles guiding PBI Global and TL4CS, e.g., recognition that uptake is tied to explicit curricular connections and striving for teaching and learning with students that is more authentic, community-embedded, interdisciplinary, and inquiry-driven. Appreciate you stopping by and checking out our project.
With gratitude,
Marie
Hiller Spires
Executive Director
Thank you, Sarah!
Jessica Hunt
Hiller and Marie, I am such a big fan of your work and was glad to view your video. I love the focused approach on building questions and gathering evidence to engage in critical, global issues that kids care about! Thanks so much for sharing your work!
Marie Himes
Research Associate
Hi Jessica,
As we are of yours! The intentionality behind the design and language used in the ModelME curriculum and Dream2B game are very aspirational to us -- asset-based, proleptic, and generative. This type of framing is something with which we strive to be more intentional during PBI Global, particularly when it comes to examining enduring global challenges across diverse community contexts with US-residing students and educators. Thank you for visiting our project page and engaging in dialogue with us.
With gratitude,
Marie
Jessica Hunt
Hiller Spires
Executive Director
Thank you Jessica!
Ravanasamudram Uma
Hi Marie and team! A wonderful project. I particularly liked the idea of Walk for Water to create awareness among students. Are there other PBI Global projects that have been implemented? If so, is it available for public access?
Marie Himes
Research Associate
Hi Ravanasamudram,
Yes, Hiller has been engaging in PBI for over a decade and PBI Global since 2015. Please check out our past PBI Globals here. We also have an upcoming PBI Global showcase on May 17/18 with the students and educators at Wake Early College of Health and Sciences that is focused on SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing. If you are interested in coming to see the showcase, we would love to have you. I'd be happy to share the details!
Thanks,
Marie
Gerald Knezek
"Letting go and having learners take control of their own learning." What a nice statement and philosophy.
My father (self made water conservationist) used to tell me that "some day clean water will be more important and more valuable than oil."
You project can really make a difference in helping us all.
Good luck toward success.
Gerald Knezek
simEquity
Erin Krupa
Assistant Professor
Gerald, your father seems like a wise visionary, I imagine that is true in some areas of the world at this moment in time and will be a concern for many more nations years from now. There is definitely a global need for affordable solutions provide easier access to clean water. Thanks for stopping by.
Hiller Spires
Executive Director
Gerald, thank you for checking out our video. I tend to agree with your father!