Anchored Instruction

Project-Based Learning aims to support profound understandings of curriculum topics (and more) by involving learners in complex challenges or problems over extended time. The orienting question should be authentic and interdisciplinary, and engaging with it should support creativity, resiliency, and passion on the personal level, as well as communication and other social skills on the interpersonal level.

Problem-Based Learning is a small-group-based classroom approach that is structured around open-ended problems. The orienting goal is not a defined solution, but the development of knowledge, communication skills, and collaborative competencies – that is, learning is seen to happen at both individual and group levels.

Social Constructionism is based on the assertion that meanings are developed with others. The theory is focused on social constructs – that is, shared assumptions and jointly construed understandings of such notions as “money,” “atoms,” “common sense,” “self-concept,” and “reality.” The notion that is used to account for dramatically different worldviews across societies and eras.

Originally focused on adults developing professional skills, Situated Learning is concerned with how newcomers become full participating members in established communities. Highlighting that knowing and doing are inseparable, the theory asserts that learning can be powerfully interpreted as a process of apprenticeship.

At its root, Active Learning is a critique of and response to “passive learning” – that is, delivery-based teaching methods that position the learner as a passive recipient of external knowledge. Active Learning thus encompasses a range of learning formats in which students are active, ranging from simply experiencing what is being learned (e.g., riding a bike) to more formally structured approaches.