Impact of project-based learning on key competencies

Project-based learning (PBL) is reshaping how students learn by focusing on experiential, student-driven inquiry. This approach aims to foster 21st century skills such as critical thinking and collaboration.

Despite some studies highlighting its positive impact on engagement and academic performance, the overall evidence regarding PBL’s effectiveness remains mixed. Challenges persist in measuring foundational skills when there is a misalignment between traditional assessment methods and the deep learning objectives of PBL.

ACER’s research focused on understanding the effectiveness of PBL on enhancing foundational literacy and numeracy, and 21st century competencies. We used assessments aligned with the objectives of PBL to measure its effectiveness.

Our study

We focused on the Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS)’s intervention ­- Auro PBL that aims to promote skill building through PBL.

Auro PBL integrates curriculum-aligned thematic PBL tasks through PBL booklets, which are used in regular classroom teaching-learning practices. Teachers use these booklets as supplementary learning materials following SAS guidelines.

Our hypothesis is that the effective use of these booklets during learning enhances students’ foundational literacy, numeracy and 21st century competencies.

The key research questions were:

• Is there any measurable association between the structured PBL intervention and student learning outcomes?
• How does the nature of student engagement shape or moderate these outcomes?

We gauged the implementation quality using a proxy measure comprising task completion and the accuracy of student responses to the tasks for 341 students across 17 schools.

The learning outcomes for literacy, numeracy and 21st century competencies were assessed through a competency-based assessment (CBA), consisting of both multiple-choice items and performance tasks, after 6 months of incorporating PBL booklets into classroom processes.

We conducted exploratory data analysis using boxplots and descriptive statistics to derive the findings. Although the study does not employ a pre-post assessment design, it still offers valuable insights into the relationship between the PBL approach and learning achievements.

First, we rated students’ performance level as beginners (the lowest rating), progressing or proficient (the highest rating) based on the evaluation of PBL tasks completed by students over a period of 6 months. Further, we analysed the performance of the same cohort of students in competency-based assessments conducted after the intervention period.

Findings

Our findings demonstrate PBL’s effectiveness in improving literacy and numeracy. They also suggest that well-designed, authentic PBL tasks can significantly enhance learning, which is also demonstrated in formal assessments.

The boxplots illustrate the distribution of CBA scores for Hindi, English, mathematics, and 21st century competencies (21C) in student performance across different proficiency levels.

As depicted in the graph, the difference between the mean CBA score of progressing students and beginners was 19, 23 and 16 percentage points for Hindi, English, and mathematics, respectively. Similar differences were also evident between progressing and proficient students for these subject areas, indicating substantial improvements in student achievement with higher levels of PBL engagement.

A key dimension of PBL and this study centres on 21st century competencies. However, we could not find a positive association between PBL engagement and 21st century competencies. This outcome should not be viewed as a shortfall of PBL’s ability to develop competencies such as critical thinking, collaboration and self-directed learning. Instead, it suggests the need for a deep dive into the design of PBL tasks to foster these essential competencies, as well as implementation quality

Additionally, while a positive correlation existed between PBL task completion and performance on CBA for younger students, this association was not evident among students from older grades. It reinforces previous experiences and findings that simply completing a task does not necessarily lead to improved academic outcomes — it is the quality of student engagement that matters.

If you would like to know more about the project, please write to india@acer.org