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An evaluation of project based learning implementation in STEM

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An evaluation of project based learning implementation in STEM

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Content Running head: AN EVALUATION OF PROJECT BASED LEARNING IN STEM

1

AN EVALUATION OF PROJECT BASED LEARNING IMPLEMENTATION IN STEM

by

Lori Moritz

______________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

May 2018

Copyright 2018 Lori Moritz

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DEDICATION
This study is dedicated to my husband, two sons, kitty-witty, and puppy-wuppy, who
have supported my endeavor to complete this body of work.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge my dissertation committee for all their insight and assistance
in getting to the finish line. Dr. Datta, you have been so positive and warm, which gave me the
confidence that I needed. Dr. Ferrario, I am blessed to have had you as my framing professor.
Your feedback and guidance were thoughtful and clear. And I love the video feedback. Thank
you. Dr. Krop, thank you for all your feedback on my Chapter 2 development during the 725
class. It was such a critical class in the program, and you carved a clear path through all the
muck. It made a world of difference for me.
I would also like to acknowledge all of my previous science teacher colleagues. I think
the world of all of you, and I really hope that some of the work I have done will help. Thank you
for all your insight, hard work, and dedication to the welfare of your students. Your students are
in good hands.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication 2
Acknowledgements 3
List of Tables 6
List of Figures 7
Abstract 9
Chapter 1: Overview of the Study 11
Introduction of the Problem of Practice 11
Organizational Context and Mission 12
Organizational Goal 14
Related Literature 15
Importance of the Problem 17
Description of Stakeholder Groups 18
Stakeholders’ Performance Goals 20
Stakeholder Group for the Study 20
Purpose of the Project and Questions 21
Conceptual and Methodological Framework 22
Definition of Terms 24
Organization of the Dissertation 24
Chapter 2: Review of the Literature 26
The Need for High-quality STEM Education in the United States 26
The Push for Improving STEM Across United States High Schools 27
Promising Practices in High School STEM Education 31
Making Effective STEM Teachers 40
The Clark and Estes (2008) Gap Analytic Conceptual Framework 46
Stakeholder Knowledge and Motivation Influences 47
Conclusion 67
Chapter 3: Methodology 69
Purpose of the Project 69
Research Questions 70
Research Design 70
Conceptual Framework: The Interaction of Stakeholders’ Knowledge and 71
Motivation and the Organizational Context
Participating Stakeholders 75
Data Collection and Instrumentation 82
Data Analysis 86
Credibility and Trustworthiness 87
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Ethics 88
Limitations and Delimitations 90
Chapter 4: Results and Findings 92
Participating Stakeholders 93
Results and Findings 94
The Extent LHHS Implements High-Quality PBL Using NGSS 94
Knowledge, Motivational, and Organizational Influences Affecting Teacher 123
Performance
Summary 160
Chapter 5: Solutions and Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plans 162
Purpose of the Project and Questions 162
Recommendations for Practice to Address KMO Influences 163
Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plan 181
Organizational Purpose, Need and Expectations 182
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Approach 200
Limitations and Delimitations 201
Future Study 203
Conclusion 204
References 206
Appendices 219
Appendix A: Survey Questions 219
Appendix B: Interview Protocol 221
Appendix C: Observation Protocol 224
Appendix D: Buck Institute for Education Project Based Teaching Rubric 225
Appendix E: Document Analysis Protocol 229
Appendix F: Questions for Use Immediately Following the Training 232
Appendix G: Questions for Delayed Use After Training 234
Appendix H: Survey Results 236

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Organization Mission, Global Goal and Stakeholder Performance Goals 20
Table 2. Stakeholder Goal and Knowledge Influence, Type and Assessment for 53
Knowledge Gap Analysis
Table 3. Stakeholder Goal and Motivational Influence, Type and Assessment for 60
Motivation Gap Analysis
Table 4. Stakeholder Goal and Organizational Influence and Assessment for Motivation 66
Gap Analysis
Table 5. Summary of Knowledge Influences and Recommendations 165
Table 6. Summary of Motivation Influences and Recommendations 170
Table 7. Summary of Organization Influences and Recommendations 175
Table 8. Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Outcomes 183
Table 9. Critical Behaviors, Metrics, Methods, and Timing for Teacher Development 185
Table 10. Required Drivers to Support Teachers’ Critical Behaviors 186
Table 11. Components of Learning for the Program 193
Table 12. Components to Measure Reactions to the Program 195

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Gap analysis process 23
Figure 2. KMO influence hierarchy 72
Figure 3. Results for project design rubric assessments for all teachers 96
Figure 4. Project based teaching rubric results for the seven observed teachers 110
Figure 5. Question 12: I need more help understanding how to meet the NGSS 125
standards
Figure 6. Question 10: I need more PBL professional development sessions to help me 130
implement PBL in my classrooms
Figure 7. Question 13: The professional development that I have received for Project 130
Based Learning has been useful in preparing to deliver units in Project
Based Learning
Figure 8. Question 15: I am convinced that Project Based Learning is valuable for 137
students to engage in at least once in a school year
Figure 9. Question 20: PBL is relevant for our school 137
Figure 10. Question 21: I think that PBL is just a fad 138
Figure 11. Question 23: My students achieve higher in science as a result of PBL 138
Figure 12. Question 11: I am confident that I can design a unit using Project Based 142
Learning that aligns to the NGSS standards
Figure 13. Question 24: My department offers strong support in PBL implementation 145
Figure 14. Question 25: I work well with the other science teachers 146
Figure 15. Question 19: I have the supplies I need to implement PBL 149
Figure 16. Question 14: I have the freedom to adapt Project Based Learning to my 152
unique teaching style
Figure 17. Question 18: I have strong administrative support 153
Figure 18. Question 22: My administration holds me accountable for implementing PBL 158

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Figure 19. Example of levels 3 and 4 progress for a teacher with hypothetical data 198
Figure 20. Dashboard of teacher performance data 199

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ABSTRACT
This study was conducted to evaluate the extent to which the science teachers at a small
suburban high school in Northern California have been meeting the school goal to implement
high-quality Project Based Learning (PBL) units aligned to the Next Generation Science
Standards (NGSS). Using Clark and Estes’ gap analysis framework, the study investigated the
knowledge, motivational, and organizational factors affecting teacher performance. This study
used an embedded mixed methods design with a quantitative survey embedded into a qualitative
network of teacher observations, document analysis, and interviews. The entire science
department of nine teachers participated in the study. It was found that one of the nine teachers
delivered high-quality PBL units aligned to NGSS per the Buck Institute for Education’s
definition of Gold Standard PBL design and teaching. Knowledge factors behind this
performance included the need to conceptually understand NGSS, the need to know the
procedure for designing and implementing PBL, and the need for a regular reflection practice.
Motivational factors included the need for teachers to believe that PBL is valuable, the need for
teachers to believe that they can implement a high-quality PBL unit, and the need for a unified
vision behind PBL implementation. Organizational factors included a general culture of teacher
resistance, a lack of trust in administrative decisions and procedures, a lack of clear expectations
for teacher performance, and a lack of teacher accountability. The implications behind these
findings predict further gaps in teacher performance as teachers struggle to implement new
techniques without fully understanding what is expected of them, without knowing what high-
quality PBL looks like in the context of their own classroom, and without the proper
organizational supports to undergo a sweeping change in instructional technique. The study
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provides recommendations for teacher development designed to target the specific influences
behind the teacher performance gap.

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CHAPTER 1
OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
Introduction of the Problem of Practice
Since the early 2000s, K-12 achievement in Science, Engineering, Technology, and Math
(STEM) has been a growing economic concern for the United States (National Academy of
Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, & Institute of Medicine of the National Academies,
2007). Since current trends in innovation have a strong technical component, the United States
needs a steady influx of talent in technological fields. However, current performance on the
2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study indicates that American students
score lower in science than the majority of all other participating countries (Mullis, Martin, Foy,
& Hooper, 2016). As a result, the National Academy of Sciences et al. (2007) raise the concern
that the incumbent working generation may not attain a high enough level of skill in scientific
and mathematical subjects to perform at the standards required to sustain the demands of the
economy.
Despite the stagnancy in United States student performance in STEM assessments such
as the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (Ikeda, González-Sancho, & Mo,
2016), demand for skilled STEM workers is rising faster than the demand for other professions.
The U.S. Bureau of Statistics reports that STEM employment grew 10.5% between 2009 and
2015 while non-STEM fields grew only 5.2% (Fayer, Lacey, & Watson, 2017). The results from
the U.S. Bureau of Statistics align with a 2011 projection expecting employment in STEM to
grow 17% in the decade following 2008, while expecting employment in non-STEM fields to
grow only at 9.8% (Langdon, McKittrick, Beede, Khan, & Doms, 2011). Moreover, STEM
careers tend to require a larger proportion of degree-holders as employees than other fields. For
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example, more than two-thirds of STEM workers hold a college degree in STEM while less than
a third of non-STEM workers hold any type of college degree (Langdon et al., 2011). The fear
that the US may not be able to supply a sufficient number of STEM graduates to satisfy the
demands of the job market is accentuated by rising numbers of college bachelor’s degrees
juxtaposed with falling numbers of those degrees in STEM (Casey, 2012). According to the
National Science Board (2007), American students need to perform at higher levels in the STEM
fields to continue to succeed as a nation in the future of technological growth. To address this
issue, many researchers have focused on improving STEM education at the elementary, middle,
and secondary school levels.
Organizational Context and Mission
Little Hills High School (LHHS, a pseudonym) is one of two public high schools serving
a local city district in the North Bay region of California. The mission of LHHS is to provide
“an environment that promotes critical thinking, optimal learning, and achievement for all
students” (LHHS website, 2016). Founded in 1968, the campus supports 1076 students in 50
classrooms with 56 fully credentialed teachers (Accrediting Commission for Schools, 2016).
Each grade level consists of between 240 and 280 students with varied demographics. The
student body consists of 60% white, 27% Hispanic or Latino, 5% Asian, 3% African American,
4% mixed race, and 1% Filipino students. Of these students, 7% are English Learners, 9% are
Students with Disabilities, and 24% are considered Socioeconomically Disadvantaged, which
means they either qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, are foster children, are homeless, are
migrants, or have no parents that hold a high school diploma (LHHS website, 2016). The staff at
this high school collectively work toward the unified vision to provide “a dynamic and
innovative learning environment that supports and celebrates a diverse student body with a
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resourceful staff through the implementation of the 21st Century Learning Skills; Collaboration,
Critical thinking, Communication, and Creativity” (Accrediting Commission for Schools, 2016).
At the beginning of the 2016–2017 school year, the school partnered with the Buck
Institute for Education (BIE), and with BIE’s assistance, has begun adapting all courses to
include some units of instruction delivered using Project Based Learning (PBL), an instructional
technique that delivers course content by having students engage in real-world projects by
creating authentic products (Larmer, Mergendoller, & Boss, 2015). Although the school intends
to deliver project-based learning in all classrooms, 40% of the teachers in the science department
have had several years of prior experience in delivering project-based learning in their
classrooms. Teachers in other departments first experienced PBL in the beginning of the 2016–
2017 school year. Therefore, teachers in the science department with fewer years of experience
in PBL have a network of colleagues that can assist them in developing PBL units.
BIE Professional Development in Project Based Learning
The Buck Institute for Education (BIE) is a thirty-year-old nonprofit organization with a
mission to create, gather, share, and inform teachers about PBL curriculum and practices. It has
partnered with many other educational institutions such as the George Lucas Educational
Foundation to support high-quality PBL change initiatives in entire districts as well as individual
schools. Their mission is to assist teachers to prepare each student for a successful life. As such,
it has become a national leader in promoting change toward more PBL in the classroom.
One way that the BIE facilitates Project Based Learning in local schools is by providing
collective training seminars for instructing teachers how to create and implement PBL units. The
organization has provided multiple opportunities over the past three school years for teachers to
attend these PBL workshops. The workshops have occurred in the second week before the
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beginning of each new school year at the beginning of August. Three types of workshops are
offered: PBL 101 is for teachers with no experience with PBL, PBL 201 is for teachers with
some experience with PBL, and PBL Instructional Coaching is for very experienced teacher-
leaders, teacher coaches, and administrators to take to learn how to coach staff as they begin to
implement PBL in the classroom. Each seminar lasts for three days, with seven hours of
instructional time per day. The PBL 101 course comes with a workbook that contains copies of
planning documents, rubrics for assessing unit planning, rubrics for student assessment, and
descriptions of the components of high-quality PBL. After the three-day workshop, teachers
leave with a complete plan for their first PBL unit. In the PBL 201 workshop, the workbook
from the first workshop is still used as a tool to refine projects that have been implemented
previously. The leadership workshop is taken by experienced teachers in PBL that intend to
either coach full time or are department heads. The organization wishes for all teaching staff to
attend at least the beginning workshop before the end of the 2017–2018 school year. Eight of the
nine science teachers have taken at least the PBL 101 course prior to the 2017–2018 school year
while the ninth teacher took the course in September of 2017.
Organizational Goal
Little Hills High School has the goal that by the end of the 2017–2018 school year, it will
have sent all teachers to professional development in Project Based Learning delivered by the
Buck Institute for Education. In addition, it has set a goal to increase the number of students
determined to be college ready by advanced course taking per the California State University
Early Assessment Program (CSU/EAP) conditional status. Since a high percentage of students
that do not meet the CSU/EAP projects are missing credits in science, the organization has
focused on improving the quality of the science courses by making them more engaging to
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students, incorporating at least two units of PBL in each science course, and fully adhering to the
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). To track student interest in coursework as the
transition to incorporating PBL occurs, the school also has stated the goal to increase the
percentage of students who agree that the courses they have taken were engaging and
challenging. The organizational goals were set by the school board in its latest strategic plan
approved in August of 2016.
Related Literature
Data from studies of high school science students offers insight into how content
knowledge, teacher quality, and motivation tie into the desire for students to take subsequent
science courses. Ackerman, Kanfer, and Beier (2013) indicate that high school grades in STEM
college preparatory classes correlate to college attrition rates in STEM when they reflect a lack
of content knowledge. Project Based Learning aims to increase the level of content knowledge
by allowing students to spend more time investigating topics in depth rather than covering more
breadth of basic material (Larmer et al., 2015). After researching PBL implementation in middle
schools, Harris et al. (2015) observed that students learning through PBL performed better on
assessments that measured the big ideas of science and science practices. Harris et al. (2015)
also found that classrooms with both high and low concentrations of low-achieving students
equally benefited from the PBL experience. PBL is therefore a valid option for diverse science
classrooms that must serve both higher and lower achieving students. However, a high-quality
PBL curriculum must be supported by a teacher that knows how to deliver it.
Seymour and Hewitt (1997) discovered that low quality science teachers who provide
insufficient high school science curriculum contribute to students’ decisions against taking more
science courses. The researchers also mention that the best science teachers hold degrees in their
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field, have work experience in the field, provide many laboratory experiences for their students,
use technology, provide opportunities for scientific analysis, and emphasize study skills.
Although aligning to NGSS standards and implementing PBL in the classroom does not affect a
participating teacher’s college degree or work experience in the field, the professional
development provided for proper implementation can increase a teacher’s ability to provide more
laboratory experience, use more technology, and encourage more scientific analysis. Since PBL
requires that students solve authentic problems in their immediate surroundings, it requires that
students learn to think critically, engage in laboratory procedures, and analyze their results
(Krajcik, 2015). Professional development is provided for teachers that will use PBL in their
classrooms such that the teachers learn how to provide proper inquiry opportunities to their
students (Larmer et al., 2015). Larmer et al. (2015) suggests that to adhere to the ideals of PBL,
teachers must provide many laboratory experiences and provide opportunities for their students
to engage in scientific analysis. Finding solutions to authentic problems, inquiry, and
engagement aligns with the NGSS Lead States (2013) standards to engage in science practices,
which provides further support for developing a strong PBL curriculum in science classrooms.
In addition to higher content performance, when students are given the opportunity to solve
problems of their own interest in the relevant scientific field, they report higher levels of
satisfaction with the course.
The type of motivation a student receives appears to play a significant role in the decision
to take more science courses. For example, Ing (2014) suggests that using intrinsic motivational
techniques can improve the achievement levels of children in science courses. Instead of
offering prizes for performance or other extrinsic rewards, students should be motivated by
engaging in the learning experience and the intrinsic reward of discovering something new (Ing,
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2014). This implies that the method teachers use to motivate students to achieve high-quality
work can influence their decision to take future courses in science. PBL has been shown to
increase student satisfaction in their science courses. Hugerat (2016) found that freshman who
experienced science instruction in PBL described their course as more enjoyable than the
descriptions from students who experienced more traditional instruction in the same science
subject. Thus, it appears that PBL has the potential to improve the intrinsic motivation of
students to learn science by improving the quality of the classroom environment.
Importance of the Problem
The problem of student interest and engagement in STEM classes at the organization is
important to solve for a variety of reasons. In a 2014 Western Association of Schools and
Colleges (WASC) evaluation, the organization was placed under a two-year probationary
accreditation status, which means that WASC felt that the organization heavily deviated from its
criteria in more than one area that needs immediate addressing (Western Association of Schools
and Colleges, 2014). In the Visiting Committee Report (Western Association of Schools and
Colleges, 2014), the committee commented that they noticed two distinct schools on campus,
one for the high achieving motivated students, and one for the low-performing students. The
committee further commented that the school struggles to strategically address unmotivated
students. If the organization does not show significant improvement in student engagement for
the lower-achieving population, the school risks having its accreditation removed, which will
force the organization to take serious measures to regain the status. As the WASC committee
notes, “the staff at times appears at a loss to develop strategies to reach all students.” To reach
the organization’s goal to close the achievement gap between its high and low achievers,
something must be done to get lower achievers more involved in their learning.
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Although Little Hills High School has since removed its probationary status with WASC,
it continues to struggle with the issues that WASC has enumerated as major weaknesses in
school climate. These issues must significantly improve before the next WASC visit in 2018.
Implementing a strong PBL based curriculum in all courses may help narrow the achievement
gap and improve the social climate in the school. Since the largest gap in achievement occurs in
the STEM courses, prioritizing high-quality PBL delivery in science courses holds the potential
to make a dramatic positive effect in student performance. According to the National Science
Board (2007), American students need to perform at higher levels in the STEM fields to continue
to succeed as a nation in the future of technological growth. Raising student interest and
engagement in STEM will make it more likely that students will pursue a degree and career in
STEM (Business Higher Education Forum, 2010). In addition to helping the school maintain its
accredited status, adopting appropriate methodology in STEM to engage and interest all students
will help the students find career paths for which they may have never known they had aptitude
and passion.
Description of Stakeholder Groups
Little Hills High School has three main stakeholders that directly influence the overall
achievement of the organization. These stakeholders include the students, the teachers, and the
administration. The students at Little Hills are a diverse, multicultural group consisting of a 60%
Caucasian, 26% Hispanic, 5% Asian, 3% African American, 4% mixed race, 1% Filipino, and
1% American Indian student body. The male to female ratio is 13 to 12, which is close to a
perfect gender balance. Although 99% of all students are enrolled in courses required for
admittance to University of California and California State University (UC/CSU) campuses, only
53.6% of all graduates have taken all courses UC/CSU requires for admission. Many students
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that do not meet the UC/CSU requirements have failed one or more of their UC/CSU approved
science courses.
The teachers at Little Hills are mostly Caucasian, with only one Hispanic teacher, one
Hispanic Special Education teacher, and two other teachers of mixed heritage. The teachers have
a good rapport within departments, but intermingling of teachers between departments is
minimal as evidenced by teachers congregating to sitting with other department members during
staff development meetings and staff luncheons. The teachers as stakeholders serve as critical
members to the team in terms of engaging students in the subjects required for them to graduate
high school with a complete UC/CSU list of required courses. The teachers help fashion the
purpose behind each course of study and help relate the subject matter to the authentic needs of
society. Beginning in the year 2016–2017, all teachers have been asked to modify their
curriculum to include Project Based Learning, to sign up for professional development in PBL if
they haven’t taken PBL specific professional development in the past, and in addition, the
science teachers have been asked to adhere to NGSS.
The administration of Little Hills High School is entirely Caucasian. It consists of a
white, male principal, a white male and a white female vice principal, two executive assistants,
four counselors, four staff that handle attendance and manage the books, and a Hispanic
community liaison intended to engage the Hispanic parents with school programs on a more
intimate level. The administrative staff provide the infrastructure and support system for both
the students and the teachers to keep the delivery of instruction, campus safety, organization, and
supplies to hand to provide an optimal education for the students.

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Stakeholders’ Performance Goals
Table 1
Organization Mission, Global Goal and Stakeholder Performance Goals
Organizational Mission
The Little Hills High School’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)
Program seeks to excite, engage, and educate students in a project-based environment. A
rigorous, technology-based curriculum will prepare graduates for higher education and
future STEM-related careers. As a program of Little Hills High School, STEM supports the
goals of Little Hills High School. These goals include supporting students so they are
effective communicators, critical thinkers, self-directed life-long learners, culturally
involved, and socially responsible individuals.
Organizational Performance Goal
By the end of the 2017-2018 school year, LHHS will have sent all teachers to professional
development in Project Based Learning delivered by the Buck Institute for Education.
Students Teachers Administration
By December 2018, students in
STEM courses will demonstrate
a 5% improvement in scores on
a science subject-specific
standardized benchmark exam
in comparison to the
achievement on the same
benchmark delivered in 2017.
By June 2018, 100% of
the science teachers will
implement at least 2
units of instruction using
project-based learning
with 100% alignment to
NGSS.
By December 2017, the
administration will ensure that
100% of all science teachers
attend professional
development to learn how to
design high-quality project-
based learning lessons.

Stakeholder Group for the Study
Although all stakeholders work in unison to achieve the long-term performance goals of
LHHS, teachers play a major role in implementing the curriculum that will guide the students to
earn a grade of C or above in their STEM classes. For this reason, an evaluation of teacher
methods, practices, and support will provide essential information about the state of teaching
practices in the science courses. Consequently, the science teachers of Little Hills High School
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are the stakeholders of focus for this study. The science teachers’ goal, supported by the school
board and the Superintendent, is to implement two Project Based Learning units of instruction
that align to the NGSS standards.
The quality of science teacher development and implementation of PBL units will
directly impact student achievement in their science courses. For this reason, teachers are
expected to take professional development courses on how to implement Project Based Learning
before January 2018. If teachers have the knowledge and motivation to support the
implementation of PBL, it is predicted that both high performing, and lower performing students
will achieve at higher levels in their science courses. Little Hills High School must continue to
adhere to the ACS WASC site visit requirements and recommendations for student achievement
to maintain its accreditation status. Since LHHS so recently experienced a probationary period
of accreditation, it has increased its efforts to improve instructional delivery. If the teachers
become knowledgeable in delivering high-quality PBL, then it will promote collaboration,
equity, and collaboration amongst students, which the WASC committee would like LHHS to
continue to develop (Accrediting Commission for Schools, 2016).
Purpose of the Project and Questions
The purpose of this project was to evaluate the degree to which Little Hills High School
was achieving its goal of implementing two high-quality Next Generation Science Standards
(NGSS)-aligned Project Based Learning (PBL) units in every science classroom by the end of
the 2017–2018 school year early enough to implement effective assistance toward reaching the
goal. This analysis was done at the beginning of the school year to evaluate the current state of
PBL implementation in order to create recommendations that could be utilized prior to the end of
the year to help the teachers reach their goal by the end of the academic calendar. Therefore, it
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was understood throughout the study that the science teachers were not expected to have already
reached their goal at the time of the research. The analysis focused on knowledge, motivation
and organizational influences related to achieving this organizational goal. While a complete
evaluation project would focus on all stakeholders in the organization, for practical purposes the
stakeholders in this analysis were the science teachers.
As such, the questions that guide this study were the following:
1. To what extent is the organization meeting its goal of implementing high-quality Next
Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned Project Based Learning (PBL) units in
every science classroom during the 2017–2018 school year?
2. What are the knowledge, motivation and organizational influences related to
achieving the goal of implementing two high-quality NGSS-aligned PBL units in
every science classroom by the end of the 2017–2018 school year?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
Conceptual and Methodological Framework
To identify possible performance gaps and to recommend productive solutions to correct
them, Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis framework has been used. This framework solves
organizational problems through an iterative six-stage process as illustrated in Figure 1.
Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis framework has been designed to accommodate
various research strategies for collecting and analyzing data, including quantitative, qualitative,
and mixed methods. Quantitative studies often rely on surveys or statistical data while
qualitative studies rely on more personal information derived from interviews, document
collection, surveys, or observations. Mixed methods combine both quantitative and qualitative
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methods either sequentially, or simultaneously to achieve a specific effect. This study employed
an embedded mixed methods design. A small survey was used to gather demographic
information and general attitudes toward project-based learning in order to inform the greater
qualitative methods. A larger qualitative study was used because the sample size of the
stakeholder group was limited to nine subjects. Qualitative research included targeted
observations, interviews, and document collection. Data analysis involved thematic coding of all
observations, interviews, and documents, as well as triangulation within those documents.

Figure 1. Gap analysis process. Adapted from Clark and Estes (2008)

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Definition of Terms
The following are key terms used throughout the study and are defined here in advance of
further discussion.
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS): Participating states developed NGSS to
bring obsolete standards up to date. NGSS seeks to draw connections among engineering,
physical science, life science, and Earth and space science. To do this, NGSS outlines the central
ideas that students should understand about these topics while defining the science and
engineering practices that professionals use within those topics to gain a rich understanding of
each scientific principle. California adopted NGSS in 2013 and is currently in the
implementation phase for the 2017–2018 school year.
Project Based Learning (PBL): Project Based Learning is a teaching technique that
organizes a unit of instruction under a driving question that teams of students are given the task
to solve. The driving question should be real-world, offer a range of viable solutions, require
students to learn content standards to solve, encourage collaboration, critical thinking,
communication, and interaction with the community.
Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM): STEM is an acronym used to
describe any subjects of study in K-12 and college level coursework that are related to science,
technology, engineering, and/or mathematics.
Organization of the Dissertation
This dissertation consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 discussed the general context of the
high school where organizational change in curricular instruction toward PBL is in process,
including the organization’s mission, the major stakeholders involved, the stakeholder goals, and
the theoretical framework that guides the study. In addition, this chapter defined the key
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terminology used throughout the study. Chapter 2 begins by reviewing the current literature
relevant to teaching and learning in STEM fields. This review will include research on teacher
effectiveness in STEM, promising teaching practices in STEM, research on PBL, and how
knowledge, motivation, and organizational factors influence teacher performance. Chapter 3
first explains the assumed influences of knowledge, motivation, and organization on the science
teachers’ implementation of NGSS aligned PBL. The assumed influences provide the rationale
behind the study’s methodology. Methods include explanations for participant choice, how the
data will be collected, how ethics will be maintained, and how the data will be analyzed.
Chapter 4 assesses and analyzes the results of the data collection. Chapter 5 summarizes what
needs to change within the organization to close the performance gap as indicated by the results
of data analysis and supporting literature. Chapter 5 closes with viable options for improving
stakeholder performance and outlines future cycles of evaluation to maintain effective results.

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CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
The purpose of the following literature review is to delve into the major reasons for low
student achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in high
school. The review will first address the importance of delivering high-quality STEM education
in United States’ high schools. Next, the review will examine literature on teacher effectiveness
within STEM subjects. The review will discuss literature in promising practices in support of
strong STEM curricula, with a detailed discussion of Project Based Learning (PBL) techniques
and its influence on student outcomes. The culmination of the review will discuss the influences
of knowledge, motivation, and organization on the instructional performance of STEM teachers
using Clark and Estes’ (2008) Gap Analysis Conceptual Framework.
The Need for High-quality STEM Education in the United States
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, high-quality secondary and
postsecondary STEM education has been a growing economic concern for the United States
(National Academy of Sciences et al., 2007). Since current trends in innovation rely heavily on
technology, the United States needs a steady influx of talent in technological fields (Casey,
2012). However, current performance on the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study indicate that American students score lower than the majority of all other
participating countries (Mullis et al., 2016; National Science Board, 2010). As a result, the
National Academy of Sciences et al. (2007) raise the concern that the incumbent working
generation may not have the scientific and mathematical skills to sustain the demands of the
economy without outsourcing work to other countries. Despite the decline in performance,
demand for skilled STEM workers is rising faster than the demand for other professions. Past
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projections expected employment in STEM to grow 17% in the decade following 2008, while
employment in non-STEM fields expects to grow only at 9.8% (Langdon et al., 2011). Recent
data from the U.S. Bureau of Statistics verifies the hypothesized gap between STEM and non-
STEM employment as it reports that STEM employment grew 10.5% between 2009 and 2015
while non-STEM employment grew only 5.2% (Fayer et al., 2017). Moreover, STEM employers
seek a larger proportion of degree-holders as employees than other fields. For example, more
than two-thirds of STEM workers hold a college degree in STEM while less than a third of non-
STEM workers hold any type of college degree (Langdon et al., 2011). The fear that the US may
not be able to supply a sufficient number of STEM graduates to satisfy the demands of the job
market is accentuated by the declining ratio of STEM to non-STEM college degrees (Casey,
2012). In order to mitigate this phenomenon, researchers are investigating ways to improve
STEM education in K-12 by studying effective teaching and promising practices in the
classroom.
The Push for Improving STEM Across United States High Schools
The focus on initiating strong STEM programs in American schools is a logical place to
begin the campaign for improving the growth of American professionals in STEM fields to meet
projected economic demands. To make the most impact in improving student achievement and
desire to pursue STEM as a career, recent initiatives in STEM education include providing K-12
students with more frequent and engaging science curricula, targeting students with statistically
lower interest in STEM, and updating science standards to the Next Generation Science
Standards (NGSS).
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Evidence Supporting Exposure to Engaging STEM Curriculum in K-12 Classrooms
The current national trend to enhance STEM in public high schools is based on research
that suggests students are more likely to enter into a STEM major during their undergraduate
studies if they have frequent and positive experiences in math and science courses early in their
school curriculum. Maltese and Tai (2010) studied 116 transcripts of STEM graduate students
and found that 65% of the interviewees claimed that they became aware of their love for science
while in elementary school, suggesting that many students pursuing higher degrees in STEM
fields felt attracted to the field at an early age. In a later study, Maltese, Melki, and Wiebke
(2014) analyzed responses to 8000 surveys asking both STEM and non-STEM professionals
questions about their initial interest in STEM. The researchers discovered that taking a class in
school was the most cited experience as the initial event to ignite interest in STEM for those who
became interested in middle school, high school, or college. Since students can find an initial
interest in STEM throughout their entire school experience, attempts to improve student
engagement in STEM throughout all levels of K-12 education is important to consider.
Other studies have analyzed the factors that correlate early exposure and interest in
science to persistence in earning college STEM degrees. After studying a sample of 4700
participants in the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, Maltese and Tai (2011)
found that high school students that declare intent to major in a STEM career are three times as
likely to earn a STEM degree than students who declare intent to major in non-STEM pathways.
Therefore, if students find a passion for STEM before they reach college, they are more likely to
pursue STEM degrees, which emphasizes the need to capture student interest in STEM while
enrolled in K-12 schooling. Maltese and Tai’s (2011) study supports Wang’s (2013) findings
that suggest taking more science courses in high school correlates positively to majoring in
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STEM fields and persisting through to earning college degrees in STEM. Sadler, Sonnert,
Hazari, and Tai (2014) examined the impact of taking advanced science and mathematics courses
in high school on career interest by sampling a nationally representative group of 4691 college
students in 34 random colleges and universities in the nation. They found that students that take
calculus, two years of chemistry, or one to two years in physics show a higher interest in
pursuing a career in STEM. However, as Maltese and Tai (2011) note, this may not be a causal
relationship as students with higher interest in science may take more courses in science because
of an innate passion for it. Therefore, a focus on making science courses more engaging such
that more students develop interest in them may be what school initiatives should strive for
rather than simply encouraging or requiring students to take more science courses in their high
school careers.
Student experience in their science courses seems to play a role in their persistence
toward earning a degree in STEM as well. Woolnough (1994) investigated student experience in
science courses and found that students felt more engaged with an enthusiastic teacher that spoke
often about careers and current events in science, delivered hands on lessons, and facilitated
making connections with the content to real-word scenarios. Piburn and Baker (1993) also found
that students preferred hands on experiences in science courses. These positive experiences have
a strong impact on persistence in STEM as students who enjoy their early science courses will
likely enroll in subsequent science courses. However, Wang (2013) also finds that the science
courses must maintain their rigor, since students are more likely to persist in STEM majors
through college if they feel their high school courses provided adequate preparation for the
expectations their college courses in STEM will uphold. Although the previous literature has
addressed early interest in STEM to later desire to pursue STEM degrees, it is also important to
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look at the demographics of students that are currently less likely to enter into the STEM
profession in order to target these populations in efforts to improve K-12 STEM curricula.
Increasing Diversity in STEM
The twenty-first century has already seen several initiatives to enhance STEM education
in the US that include strategies to increase diversity in STEM. Researchers have found that
Caucasian and Asian students on average earn more STEM degrees than African American or
Hispanic students based on an analysis of college transcripts (Adelman, 2004; Maltese & Tai,
2011). Maltese and Tai (2011) found that Caucasians earn 80.6%, Asians earn 8.5%, African
Americans earn 6.4%, and Hispanics earn 4.6% of all STEM degrees. However, Tyson, Lee,
Borman, and Hanson (2007) point out that African American and Hispanic students that do take
advanced math and science courses in high school are as likely to persist in earning a degree in
STEM as Caucasians taking the same coursework. Increasing the number of African American
and Hispanic students enrolling in advanced science courses has therefore become a focus of
attention to increase future participation in STEM.
The U.S. government also recognizes the importance of increasing STEM diversity.
Under the Obama administration, The White House (2009) issued a statement on the Educate to
Innovate Campaign (EIC) which explicitly states the intention to increase the numbers of
underrepresented individuals in STEM. The EIC plans to achieve this goal by increasing STEM
literacy, improving STEM teacher quality, and increasing opportunities for underrepresented
individuals such as minorities and women (National Science and Technology Council, 2013).
Although The White House intends to tackle the problem by improving teacher quality, research
like Maltese and Tai’s (2010) and Piburn and Baker’s (1993) studies would indicate that to raise
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the numbers of students interested in STEM, it is also important to work toward making
advanced science courses more appealing to underrepresented individuals.
Next Generation Science Standards
According to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) front matter document
(Achieve Inc., 2013) the NGSS were initiated in response to the rapid decline and interest in
STEM and technology on the part of America’s youth. Achieve Inc. (2013) asserts that the
NGSS has the potential to improve STEM interest by building a stable foundation for the correct
goals and expectations that K-12 students need to achieve to be productive in the 21st century.
The standards alone do not dictate curriculum or style of delivery for each course, but they do
demand that topics in science connect back to other science topics, math, and English, that
students engage in science and engineering practices in addition to learning facts, and that
students come away with an understanding of the essential big ideas that drive science
knowledge and innovation (Achieve Inc., 2013). NGSS supports the drive to improve science
education by providing a rich framework of science knowledge and practices while
simultaneously outlining how these synthesize across all educational domains. It is the hope that
teachers using NGSS will have the structure necessary to provide engaging coursework that
connects to real world applications such that more students have access to authentic science
experiences, gain a genuine desire to learn more science, and ultimately decide to pursue a career
in STEM (Achieve Inc., 2013).
Promising Practices in High School STEM Education
The United States has a need to engage more students in their STEM courses (Casey,
2012). However, a transition to new standards alone will not suffice. The NGSS specifically
states that it does not advocate or provide a specific curriculum nor a methodology of delivery
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for each science topic (Achieve Inc., 2013). Instead, it is up to the individual states, districts,
school administration, and teachers to come up with new ways to engage their students while
using a strong framework of relevant standards. The following discussion will focus on
strategies that can be used in the classroom that have shown promise in their ability to keep
students engaged in their science coursework, successful in demonstrating high achievement in
science, and persistent in taking subsequent advanced science courses. Altering science course
delivery to incorporate student-centered learning, inquiry-based science, and project-based
learning has resulted in measureable success with students.
Student-Centered Learning
Student-Centered Learning models of teaching break away from traditional teacher-
centered methods that focus on using class time for lecturing rather than engaging students in
learning activities. According to Spooner (2015), student-centered learning contrasts with direct-
instruction lecture-style teaching because it requires student activity, cooperation with others in
teams, and to think inductively, or to produce possible answers from evidence rather than having
a teacher dictate the information in a deductive manner. Spooner (2015) explains that student-
centered learning does not eliminate lectures, but the lectures are constrained to reviewing with
students what they should have learned from the activities or clarifying any demonstrations or
models shown during class time.
Empirical evidence indicates that in scientific contexts, learner centered approaches that
emphasize interactive engagement throughout the lesson increases academic achievement.
Tlhoaele, Hofman, Winnips, and Beetsma (2014) report that interactive engagement, a major
component to student-centered learning, improves academic performance in science. The
researchers connect student interactivity with the course material and self-assessments of student
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learning require that students cognitively focus upon the material, which in turn causes them to
perform better on achievement tests. The researchers conclude that teachers are charged with the
task to develop classroom activities that culture curiosity, inspire confidence in understanding
the material, and provide the chance to collaborate in discussions with peers. Hake (1998)
discovered that interactive-engagement works especially well in physics classes to improve
academic performance. In agreement with Hake’s (1998) discovery, Kontra, Lyons, Fischer, and
Beilock (2015) did a study that shows physical experience in science phenomena activates
sensorimotor regions in the brain that relate back to performing earlier similar actions. The
researchers tested the subjects and found that students scored better on conceptual physics exams
when they had prior sensorimotor stimulation in the subjects tested. Since Spooner (2015) found
that students enjoy interactive-engagement more than traditional lectures, there is a correlation
between student enjoyment and achievement in science. Student-centered practices therefore
hold the potential to close the gap in STEM engagement for underrepresented individuals.
A study by Friedlaender et al. (2014) of four California schools that have adopted
student-centered methodologies shows evidence of a significant decrease in the achievement gap
for underrepresented students. The research was conducted in schools that serve more low-
income students than the national average that incorporated learner-centered programs. The
researchers found that all these schools performed better on state examinations, and had better
rates of college readiness, graduation, and persistence in college than schools with similar
demographics that do not use learner-centered approaches. In science subjects, the results of
implementing learner-centered teaching may be enhanced by supplementation of Inquiry-Based
Science.
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Inquiry-Based Science
Inquiry-Based Science aligns with student-centered learning techniques in that it gets
students actively involved with setting up scientific experiments, which has shown positive
correlation to student achievement. According to Minner, Levy, and Century (2010), inquiry-
based science addresses the activities that scientists do, such as conducting investigations, the
way that students learn through critically thinking about a scientific problems and recreating
experiments, and the way teachers design and deliver the content through layered investigations
over extended periods of time. A study by Geier et al. (2008) shows how effective inquiry-based
science can be in raising student achievement. The researchers compared urban Midwestern
classroom performance results on a standardized state exam between classes using inquiry-based
science and classes without using inquiry-based sciences. The classes using inquiry
outperformed their peers on the state exam by 14% on average. Moreover, students who had
taken more years of inquiry-based science scored higher than students with fewer years,
implying that the effects of engaging in inquiry with science is cumulative.
Inquiry based instruction in science has also shown to close the achievement gap for
underrepresented individuals in STEM. Geier et al. (2008) found that urban African American
girls had a 17% higher passing level from the African American boys on state exams in standard
classrooms, whereas the gap was eliminated in the boys that took inquiry-based science courses.
Lynch, Kuipers, Pyke, and Szesze (2005) investigated the efficacy of an inquiry-based chemistry
course for 2,200 students. Of the 1200 students that received the inquiry science, all inquiry
students outperformed peers from standard course delivery methods on a final assessment.
When broken down into ethnicity, social economic status, and gender, students receiving inquiry
instruction scored much higher than their counterpart peers. The researchers conclude that
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inquiry-based science assisted in engaging and motivating all students, but especially those that
are historically underrepresented in STEM subjects.
Although inquiry-based science has been the focus of many science curriculum reforms,
there is a debate among researchers who claim that inquiry-based science is pedagogically
flawed as the sole means of instruction and those who feel that inquiry-based science must be
followed in the absence of any direct instruction. Zhang (2016) notes that many researchers take
extreme views of how to teach science, advocating either direct instruction or inquiry-based
designs exclusively. Researchers that advocate direct instruction cite that research on the
positive effects of inquiry-based science on student achievement is inconclusive (Zhang, 2016).
Minner et al. (2010) show that only about half of their collected data indicates a positive
correlation between student conceptual understanding of science and learning through inquiry.
However, it is important to note that when inquiry connects to hands on learning and actively
engaging in the investigative cycle, it is likely that higher conceptual understanding results
(Minner et al., 2010), but not all teachers may apply the same techniques to what they call
inquiry-based learning in their classrooms. Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, and Chinn (2007) argue that
successful inquiry must be scaffolded correctly to get positive results. If teachers allow students
to investigate in inquiry with minimal guidance, students may disengage, or reaffirm incorrect
information. Therefore, the proper balance of teacher intervention with student discovery may
lead to more consistent results with inquiry-based teaching.
One research study suggests that integrating direct instruction with inquiry-based science
increases critical thinking skills. In a comparative study, Ku, Ho, Hau, and Lai (2013) compared
critical thinking results in groups of twelfth grade students that either received pure direct
instruction, a mix of direct instruction followed by inquiry-based instruction, or pure inquiry
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instruction. The researchers found that students in the mixed group scored higher overall on
critical thinking test results than those in other groups, which implies that all classrooms would
benefit from mixed instruction to improve critical thinking, and that focusing exclusively on one
style is not recommended. Therefore, it seems beneficial to consider using multiple pedagogical
methods in a way to mix direct instruction with inquiry-based and hands-on learning, which may
offer a way to maximize the benefits of all experiences.
Project-Based Learning
Project-based learning in science aligns to the current national standards and pulls
together many of the strengths of student-centered learning and inquiry-based science. The Next
Generation Science Standards (NGSS) focus on wanting students to make sense of scientific
phenomena and to design solutions to real-world problems (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Creating
solutions to pressing problems requires critical thinking, engagement and inquiry. In addition,
the NGSS Lead States (2013) make it clear that to meet current standards, students must engage
in the eight science and engineering practices of asking questions, using and producing models,
investigating based upon a logical plan, analyzing data, using math and computation to
manipulate data, explaining phenomena, arguing based on evidence, and communicating and
qualifying information. Project Based Learning (PBL) is aligned with NGSS goals in that it also
requires students to seek solutions for real-world, or authentic, problems, to collaborate, and to
create artifacts or products that can be used to assess students’ understanding of how to solve the
problem (Krajcik, 2015). Krajcik (2015) explains that PBL connects content to the relevance of
solving the problem, making the content immediately necessary for the students to apply,
increasing opportunity for transfer of knowledge into long term memory. PBL not only aligns
with the NGSS, but also makes learning science more fun.
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There is significant evidence to support that PBL also encourages a positive classroom
climate. Hugerat (2016) studied 458 Israeli freshman students where half received PBL in
science courses and the other half received direct instruction. The researcher found that students
in the PBL science courses reported feeling more satisfied, found the material more enjoyable,
felt the teacher was more supportive, and felt stronger relationships with their teachers than
students in traditional classrooms. Since Maltese and Tai’s (2010) and Piburn and Baker’s
(1993) studies both indicate that students that claim to enjoy their science courses tend to persist
in STEM fields and take more advanced science courses, PBL is a promising practice in that it
both improves student achievement and makes science content more enjoyable to learn.
Since NGSS Lead States (2013) are now incorporating NGSS in all public high schools,
it is important to note that PBL outperforms traditional methods in student outcomes as assessed
by the NGSS standards. Harris et al. (2015) studied the difference between 55 PBL-trained
teachers implementing PBL in their 6th grade science classrooms and 37 non-trained traditional
teachers of the same course. The PBL teachers taught two units of instruction using PBL with
85% fidelity to the PBL standards. Harris et al. (2015) found that the students receiving PBL
outperformed the traditionally instructed students on assessments covering the 8 NGSS science
practices and 6th grade big ideas in science. The researchers also found that PBL equally
boosted the outcome of all students in classrooms with both larger and smaller concentrations of
lower-achieving students. PBL therefore shows promise in drawing a higher percentage of
students into increased engagement with STEM subjects. However, in order to get high-quality
results, it is important that projects are designed and delivered well.
Gold Standard PBL. The Buck Institute for Education (BIE) has formulated what they
call Gold Standard PBL, which details how to handle student learning goals, what elements
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should be included in all project designs, and the essential practices that teachers should utilize
while delivering projects (Larmer et al., 2015). Student learning goals cover both the success
skills that students should develop for real-world application and the key content knowledge they
should learn while engaging in the project as directed by the NGSS. The focus of any project
should be on the student learning goals as student success in school and life is the ultimate goal
of teaching with PBL. However, good projects must also have a logical progression that make
them successful by design.
Essential project design elements. Larmer et al. (2015) have listed seven essential
project elements needed to build an effective project: a challenging problem or question,
sustained inquiry, authenticity, student voice and choice, reflection, critique and revision, and a
public product. First, the project needs to pose a challenging problem or question that is open-
ended and will thematically focus the students on the task of moving through the beginning to
the end of the project with a clear purpose. Next, the project must be designed such that it will
sustain inquiry. The inquiry process takes time to engage within because it is designed not just
to look up a concrete answer, but to pull information from multiple and varied sources to solve
complex real-world problems. Inquiry, therefore, is sustained because it takes many days to do
the research required to solve the problem or answer the question. Projects also call for
authenticity, which means that students will tackle issues that people struggle with outside of
school, use professional processes and tools, have a deep personal relevance, or create an impact
on a large audience of people. In order to connect deeply with each student, projects also need to
offer student voice and choice, so that students feel responsible for their work and subsequently
work harder to achieve through the project. To increase the depth of learning and how it may
apply to other aspects of life, reflection is a part of the gold standard for project-based learning.
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Reflection leads to having the ability to critique and revise projects. Since projects are meant to
engage students in real world problem solving, the projects must undergo significant critique and
revision to make them as high of a quality as possible. Finally, once students have gone through
several revisions and feel like they have a final product worthy to present, they must present their
product to a public audience. Having to extend beyond the comfort of the classroom to present
and get critique from professionals and people in the community is a great way for students to
learn how to understand what appeals to the public and to integrate within the community. All
together, these seven elements must be present in every project design for the students to
effectively learn through PBL. Of course, once the project has been designed with all the
appropriate elements, it also must be delivered in a way that maximizes learning, hence the need
for best teaching practices for PBL.
Project-based teaching practices. Larmer et al. (2015) have also considered the seven
major practices that teachers need to enact to fulfill the gold standard in PBL. Teachers must
design and plan, align to standards, build the culture, manage activities, scaffold student learning,
and engage and coach. One of the most crucial steps that a teacher must do initially is to create a
project plan that maps out the project progress from start to finish while allowing enough room
for student voice and choice before launching the project with the students. Teachers without a
plan can lose their sense of time and purpose for the project, and most likely will not be able to
manage the project appropriately to maintain student engagement and learning. While designing
the project, teachers also must align activities to the standards such that activities will instruct
students on the big ideas that students need to learn in science. A key area for teachers to
concentrate on is building a culture of working in teams, student resourcefulness, grit to tackle
difficult open-ended issues, and the desire to revise for high-quality. Not only will building the
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culture of PBL practice assist students to achieve to high standards, it prepares students for real-
world expectations of working in teams for gainful employment. Teachers must also take great
care to manage student activity such that students use their time effectively and meet major
checkpoints in a timely fashion. Teachers also must manage community engagement to connect
students with a public audience for final presentation. When students reach an impasse in their
learning, the teachers also need to be ready to scaffold their learning. This requires teachers to
utilize all the instructional strategies that they already have in their toolbox to help students reach
their goals. Teachers must also build in assessments throughout the project, which include both
formative and summative assessments of knowledge and skills by the teachers in addition to self
and peer evaluation of student work as individuals and as team members. Finally, teachers must
engage with students as they work on their projects, learn by their students’ sides, and coach
them toward a new direction when they get stuck, and encourage them and cheer for them as
they reach their milestones. Teachers that engage in these gold standard project-based practices
can build a positive classroom climate where students and teachers feel comfortable to fail and
get up again to keep working toward their goals.
Making Effective STEM Teachers
This literature review has discussed the importance of improving STEM in K-12 schools,
national efforts toward making changes in science standards, and some promising practices that
can be utilized to reach this goal. However, it is also important to consider how we train people
to become effective STEM teachers such that K-12 schools can deliver the new standards and
promising practices in their science courses with positive results. The following section will
concentrate on teacher preparation and teacher supports in schools.
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Teacher Preparation
In order to become a high school science teacher with a preliminary credential in the state
of California, prospective teachers must satisfy a list of requirements. The California
Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) (2016a) issues single subject science credentials
in biological studies, chemistry, geosciences, and physics. To be eligible for a teaching
credential, teachers must first have a bachelor’s degree or higher from an accredited college or
university. In addition, teachers must prove they understand content knowledge by passing a
basic skills exam in math reading and English followed by a science subject matter competence
exam in their chosen science topic. The teacher credentialing program must provide prospective
teachers in a reading instruction course, and a foundational computer technology course that
includes integrating technology into their pedagogy. Student teachers must take and pass a
college level course on the Constitution, or pass an exam given by a regionally accredited college
or university. To permanently certify the credential, called a clear credential, new teachers must
participate in an induction program for their first two years of teaching. Once the teacher
receives a Clear Credential, the certification is good for life as long as teachers renew it every
five years by paying a small fee. Although there are several other pathways to teacher
certification if coming from out of state, the most common pathway teachers take in California is
outlined above. However, since the recent push for STEM education has become a pressing
issue, some preparation programs have adapted their preparation programs to alter STEM teacher
education such that teachers are prepared to teach using promising practices in STEM.
One of the most notable STEM teacher preparation programs initiated in the past two
decades has been the UTeach program. The UTeach program was initiated by the University of
Texas at Austin in 1997 to prepare STEM educators for the 21st century of graduates (Marder,
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2001). Marder (2001) explains that the UTeach program aims to graduate students from its four-
year program with a math or a science degree in addition to a credential in teaching STEM
courses. The program emphasizes inquiry-based teaching and project-based learning practices in
its coursework to prepare teachers. Since its initiation, UTeach has expanded to implement its
program at 46 universities in 22 different states (UTeach, n.d.). Recent research into the
effectiveness of teachers graduating from this program indicate that students with UTeach
graduates as their STEM teachers tend to perform 5% to 12% of a standard deviation better than
their peers perform on end of the year examinations (Backes, Goldhaber, Cade, Sullivan, &
Dodson, 2016). The researchers’ recent insight into greater teacher effectiveness from a STEM
dedicated teaching program like UTeach is an interesting launching point for further research
into what specific preparation practices make more effective STEM teachers. Successful
programs may offer promising practices to other institutions for addressing teaching content
knowledge to prospective teachers.
Teacher Content Knowledge
The method of verifying teacher content knowledge in the state of California is either
through the completion of a content specific coursework through the credentialing program or
through passing a series of standardized tests. The CCTC (2015) mandates that teachers must
pass the California Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSET) in their subject of choice. For
science, these include taking the two foundational level science exams, which consist of 58
multiple choice items and two constructed response items covering science topics in Physics,
Biology, Geology, and Chemistry. To qualify to teach specific science subjects in high school,
teachers must also take a focused exam in the subject area of their teaching assignment. These
include concentration tests in physics, biology, geoscience, and chemistry. Teachers that teach
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more than one type of science must add authorization to their existing credential to teach other
types by taking the appropriate CSET examination. The CCTC has recently begun the process of
altering questions on the science CSETs to align with NGSS standards, which will culminate in
new examinations to be delivered for new prospective teachers to take beginning in the fall of
2017 (CCTC, 2016b). The CCTC intends to use these newly NGSS aligned questions on the
content examinations to ensure that incumbent teachers are knowledgeable in all required content
domains. However, prior research in teacher effectiveness indicates that having a non-teaching
degree in the STEM field they teach impacts student achievement more than passing content
knowledge exams.
Having degrees in STEM. Studies show that that teachers who hold a non-teaching
degree in a STEM field before entering the teaching profession elicit higher student achievement
than STEM teachers without science degrees. A national longitudinal analysis of teacher
performance implies that unlike teachers of English and social studies, teachers of math and
science with bachelors and advanced degrees in the subject they teach correlates to higher
student achievement (Goldhaber & Brewer, 1997). Since all California science teachers must
take the CSET examinations to teach a particular science subject in high school, passing the
exam may not translate to effective teaching as well as holding a relevant degree in the field.
However, exposure to professionals in the field of science may assist non-degree holding science
teachers to enhance their teaching by developing a strong community bond and mentorship
opportunities.
Professional Learning Communities
Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are a new movement toward establishing
collaborative learning spaces within organizations that have had positive results when
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established within groups of STEM teachers. Fulton, Doerr, and Britton (2011) tout the positive
impacts of STEM teachers’ participation in PLCs in that the active discussion about pedagogy
and content knowledge helps prepare teachers to deliver classroom content and improves the
confidence to do so. When STEM teachers participate in PLCs, the teachers tend to talk and
reflect more about how their students think about math and science, which can improve
subsequent delivery of the material (Fulton et al., 2011). The researchers also noticed that
teachers active in a PLC pay more attention to how students think and communicate about their
understanding of the material and engage more in active problem solving with their students.
Since the NGSS focuses on practice that involve problem solving, critical thinking, and
communication of science concepts, PLCs are likely to assist teachers in delivering effective
STEM teaching aligned to the standards.
New professional communities are currently being established to service new and veteran
STEM teachers in constructing viable teaching strategies in their classrooms. An innovative
community called STEM studio was established when the founders noticed a trend that new
STEM teachers ignored the use of promising teaching practices they were exposed to in their
university methodology courses (Plonczak, Brooks, Wilson, Elijah, & Caliendo, 2014).
Plonczak et al. (2014) note that STEM studio preservice and in-service teacher participants learn
instructional strategies rooted in research in group professional development sessions. Strategies
covered include assigning authentic tasks for assessment, problem-based learning, and formative
assessment practices. The researchers conclude that collaboration between preservice and in-
service teachers promotes deep reflection, including analyzing assumptions, recognizing errors,
and changing viewpoints. Forming a professional learning group for STEM teachers seems a
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viable option for promoting professional development that transfers into practical teaching
practice.
Reflection of Practice
Reflection is a practice that teachers can develop to assess the quality of student learning
resulting from teaching such that teachers can modify their instruction to maximize student
outcomes. Rodgers (2002) defines the reflective practice as a four-stage cycle that involves
learning how to observe without assigning meaning, describing what was observed, analyzing
what was experienced through the observation through multiple viewpoints, and modifying
actions according to the results of the analysis. Rodgers (2002) has found that the result of
enacting a habitual reflective cycle is a continuous data-driven assessment of a teacher’s own
practice, which if continuously observed, will result in refined pedagogical delivery. Since
students that engage more in the STEM course material persist in STEM fields, teachers could
utilize a reflective practice to identify what actions result in more student engagement such that
they can enhance future engagement. However, teacher reflection needs to be taught and
nurtured into consistent productive practice.
Reflection can be developed in new teachers through positive instructional coaching
mentor conversations after periods of observation and by reviewing and reflecting upon
exemplary videos. Kim and Silver (2016) analyzed interactions between mentors and student
teachers as the mentor-student teacher duo analyzed student-teacher lesson video clips. The
researchers noted that mentor presence with the student teachers would spark teacher reflection
either spontaneously as teachers spoke about what they noticed in their own videos or by
mentors pointing out a factual occurrence in the video and pondering on why it occurred. Since
most credentialing programs require a student teacher-mentor relationship, using videos of
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student-teacher lesson delivery can be an opportunity for the instructional coaching mentor to
assist in developing a reflective practice in the prospective teacher. Radloff and Guzey (2017)
researched the use of exemplary videos in developing a reflective practice in preservice STEM
teachers. The researchers concluded that after watching exemplary videos, the preservice
teachers were able to reflect upon how they could incorporate aspects of each video into their
own practices that far exceeded their ability to imagine incorporating the same theoretical
concepts prior to seeing them in action. Preservice teachers need to be able to observe classroom
interactions to better conceptualize the application of new teaching techniques. This synthesizes
with Rodgers’ (2002) idea that in order to reflect, you must first be able to observe objectively.
Allowing preservice teachers the chance to observe themselves and professionals engaging in
STEM pedagogy can assist teachers in learning how to improve their delivery in the classroom.
The Clark and Estes (2008) Gap Analytic Conceptual Framework
In an effort to increase the probability of success for organizations in the midst of
substantial change for improvement, Clark and Estes (2008) have developed a systematic process
for goal analysis and achievement. Their framework hinges on the effective use of research
evidence to evaluate organizational performance and take action to narrow any gaps. They
emphasize beginning with setting realistic performance goals. Following this step, they
recommend conducting a thorough gap analysis, which will evaluate the current status of the
organization in comparison to the set organizational goals. Clark and Estes (2008) have
narrowed the causes of any gaps in performance to issues with stakeholder knowledge,
motivation, and organizational environment. Different types of knowledge, including
Krathwohl’s (2002) factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive types, can impact
performance if stakeholders are missing key aspects of the knowledge they need to perform their
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duties. Clark and Estes (2008) also draw on recent research in the field of motivation to inform
how incentives, confidence, trust and other motivational influences can affect stakeholder
performance. Clark and Estes (2008) conclude that even stakeholders with high levels of
knowledge and motivation will not work effectively if the organizational needs are not met. An
organization needs to have adequate resources, procedures, and a coherent culture to function
properly.
This review will expand upon all aspects of Clark and Estes’ (2008) conceptual
framework by detailing the knowledge, motivational, and organizational influences necessary for
STEM teachers to reach their performance goal of modifying and teaching their curricular
content to satisfy the NGSS standards via project-based learning by September 2018. First, the
review will discuss what knowledge and skills influence a teacher’s ability to achieve the goal.
Then the motivational factors that affect a teacher’s decision to act upon the goal will be
thoroughly detailed. The last section of this chapter will discuss several assumed influences the
organization has on goal achievement. Chapter 3 will discuss the methods used to examine the
assumed knowledge, motivational, and organizational pressures on stakeholder performance in
detail.
Stakeholder Knowledge and Motivation Influences
Knowledge and Skills
According to Liakopoulou (2011), the complex mental arrangement of specific
knowledge that teachers acquire throughout their professional lives in order to effectively teach
can mark the difference between a highly effective teacher and an average one. Teachers with
the appropriate knowledge and skills to apply project-based learning curricula in their classrooms
have a better chance of achieving higher student outcomes on standardized tests and on in-class
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work when project-based learning is implemented (Harris et al., 2015; Larmer et al., 2015). In
order for teachers to apply learning tools in the classroom, they need the knowledge and skill to
do so.
Rueda (2011) notes that teachers need to master four dimensions of knowledge for
effective teaching to occur: factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive. If any of these
elements is missing, teachers will not know what to teach, how to teach it, why it is taught, or
when to apply certain techniques. Without the appropriate combination of these knowledge
factors, Rueda (2011) warns that teachers are likely to limit their instructional approach, or
randomly apply tools with the hope that they will work. This results in ineffective teaching and
lower student achievement. The purpose of this section is to review relevant literature with the
intent to analyze the specific knowledge types that science teachers at Little Hills High School
need to effectively plan and implement a unit of study using project-based learning (PBL) that
adheres to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
Knowledge influences. Krathwohl (2002) explains that factual knowledge consists of
fundamental definitions or details of items, conceptual knowledge consists of how factual
knowledge can be classified or interact together, procedural knowledge consists of steps taken to
execute a plan of action, and metacognitive knowledge consists of a person’s awareness of their
own extent of knowledge or the strategic use of it. Rueda (2011) suggests that anyone intent on
improving student performance should combine all knowledge dimensions strategically to solve
problems focused on how students learn. Therefore, the following paragraphs will examine
literature that defines specific knowledge influences that teachers need to design and implement
high-quality project-based learning units aligned to NGSS while classifying each influence in
terms of conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge.
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Conceptual knowledge arms a teacher with the idea of how the fundamental facts in their
course relate to the standards and how they fit in with a method of instructional design.
Procedural knowledge provides the teacher with a clear outline for executing a plan of action
within the classroom, and an overall framework for how the course should progress through
time. Metacognitive knowledge allows the teacher to use concepts and procedures strategically
based on various dynamics and situations expressed within the classroom. Using metacognition,
a teacher has the power to reflect on daily efficacy and work out alternate plans that can
differentiate for various classroom dynamics in order to maximize effective instructional
delivery.
Unpacking the NGSS standards. Teachers need to know what the NGSS vision is for
teachers to approach science instruction in contrast to traditional teaching methods under
previous standards. The NGSS Lead States (2013) alters expectations of teachers’ instruction to
implement NGSS in three major ways. These include changing instruction targeted to
memorizing facts to instruction that uses facts to encourage students to explain scientific
phenomena, changing laboratory procedures focused on following a set procedure for a specific
outcome to engaging in the eight science and engineering practices to solve a scientific problem,
and changing the role of using science experiments as a way to illustrate information already
given to students to a role of using experimentation to build explanations for observed
phenomena. In order to make these adjustments in their classrooms, teachers would need to
know how the eight science and engineering practices fit within the framework of their specific
content and how they relate to each other.
Since the unpacking of the NGSS standards requires considerable reorganization of basic
ideas that teachers use to build their learning plans and curriculum, this knowledge falls under
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the conceptual dimension. Little Hills High School is committed to implementing NGSS.
Therefore, teachers need to conceptually understand the nuances of teaching under the NGSS
vision, so they can adjust their current schema to align with NGSS expectations. Adoniou
(2015) found that teachers with large gaps in content knowledge and applied knowledge in their
content area struggled to teach with deep meaning. The NGSS imbeds content knowledge
standards with a vision for its execution, so teachers without deep conceptual understanding for
the standards may struggle to implement them in a meaningful way within their classroom,
which will lead to suboptimal student achievement.
Quality project-based learning design. Teachers need to know how to design and
implement an effective project-based science unit. John Larmer, the editor in chief of the Buck
Institute for Education (BIE), has worked for the past decade on developing PBL curriculum for
institutions such as the National Academy Foundation, Oracle, and Pearson (Larmer et al., 2015).
Larmer et al. (2015) indicate that one of the most common flaws in novice implementation of
PBL is assigning projects that act as a minor addition to the main instructional methodology of
the classroom (Larmer et al., 2015). Minor project products cause the project itself to be viewed
by the students as more of an activity to get through than as a process to build knowledge.
According to Larmer et al. (2015), an effective project must be thoroughly planned according to
a set of three major design steps that include understanding the context of the project, creating
the project idea, and constructing the project framework. In addition, Larmer et al. (2015)
suggest a pathway for managing a project once it is in full swing, which includes five phases that
the project should flow through. These phases include the introduction of a driving question to
solve, student research to answer the question, student-driven tests to inform on the relevancy of
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the research, student reflection on the use of new information as a solution, and application of
acquired information to answer the driving question.
Although the BIE is a nonprofit organization that has specialized in developing PBL
curriculum and materials for educators since 1998 (Larmer et al., 2015), there are many
independent studies that corroborate the evidence for effective PBL implementation and its
positive results in the classroom. Ding et al. (2014) found that PBL was more effective at
improving the skills, attitudes and knowledge in preventative medicine majors than lecture-based
learning. Ralph (2015) found a positive correlation between learning science content and
collaborating in a PBL learning environment. In addition, Hugerat (2016) studied 458 students
in schools with half the students in a PBL environment and found that PBL improved the
classroom environment, strengthened student-teacher relationships, and resulted in high content
achievement than more traditional teaching styles. These studies suggest that well-implemented
PBL has positive impact on student achievement and satisfaction in education.
Since project-based learning is a process to be implemented within a school context with
explicit design and management steps and sub-steps, this knowledge falls under the procedural
dimension. Krathwohl (2002) suggests that procedural knowledge covers a teacher’s
understanding of following an algorithm, applying methods, and having the ability to distinguish
which step in the process to apply at the right time. Teachers will have to apply procedural
knowledge in knowing the steps involved in designing and implementing a project, the methods
to deliver content within a project, and the know when to deliver certain material so that the
project flows smoothly from starting to finished product while covering all necessary content in
the process.
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Reflection on instructional delivery. Teachers need to know how to reflect on their own
practices and alter instruction based on these reflections. As the NGSS Lead States (2013)
indicate, implementation of the NGSS will be a tremendous, transformative undertaking for
teachers in terms of instructional adjustment. In order to shift instructional strategies from an
established schema to a new one, teachers will have to be aware of their own instructional
delivery and student responses to it. Rodgers (2002) suggests that her four-step reflective cycle
will assist teachers in having the ability to objectively observe student responses in the classroom
to inform them on the quality of their teaching. Furthermore, Rodgers (2002) suggests that
teachers take this knowledge and transform it into an action to adjust their future teaching to
improve student outcomes.
Since teachers need to constantly evaluate the quality of their instruction and strategically
use feedback from student performance with respect to learning goals, this type of knowledge
falls under the metacognitive dimension. Krathwohl (2002) emphasizes the importance of
learners to have awareness of their own thoughts and to use this awareness proactively to fine
tune their thinking and behavior for optimal performance results. Self-awareness can be applied
to teachers as they learn how to implement new standards with new teaching styles. Rodgers
(2002) claims that as teachers gain metacognitive skills, they are more capable to think on their
feet in the classroom and spontaneously resolve student issues that may hang up effective student
learning. More practice making classroom reflections should therefore result in improved
performance in implementing new strategies.

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Table 2
Stakeholder Goal and Knowledge Influence, Type and Assessment for Knowledge Gap Analysis
Organizational Mission
The Little Hills High School’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)
Program seeks to excite, engage, and educate students in a project-based environment. A
rigorous, technology-based curriculum will prepare graduates for higher education and
future STEM-related careers. As a program of Little Hills High School, STEM supports the
goals of Little Hills High School. These goals include supporting students so they are
effective communicators, critical thinkers, self-directed life-long learners, culturally
involved, and socially responsible individuals.
Organizational Global Goal
By the end of the 2017–2018 school year, LHHS will have sent all teachers to professional
development in Project Based Learning delivered by the Buck Institute for Education.
Stakeholder Goal
By June 2018, 100% of the science teachers will implement at least 2 units of instruction
using project-based learning with 100% alignment to NGSS.
Knowledge Influence Knowledge Type Knowledge Influence Assessment
Teachers need to know what the
NGSS vision is for teachers to
approach science instruction in
contrast to traditional teaching
methods under previous
standards.
Conceptual Teachers will link NGSS standards to
student objectives within the
curriculum map of unit of instruction
that explains how the standard will be
demonstrated by the students.
Teachers need to know how to
design and implement an
effective project-based science
unit.
Procedural Teachers will provide documentation
of overall project design, lesson plans
and student materials.
Teachers need to know how to
reflect on own practices and
alter instruction based on these
reflections.
Metacognitive Teachers will engage in writing a
reflective journal on a weekly basis at
minimum documenting project-based
lesson implementation, including
what went well, what did not go well,
and ideas for improvement.

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Table 2 articulates the three knowledge influences and their respective types as they
relate to the organizational mission, the organizational global goal, and the intermediate
stakeholder goal. Since the organizational global goal is to provide educational opportunities for
teachers to provide high-quality instruction in project-based learning, knowledge influences were
picked that address best teaching practices for increasing student performance. These knowledge
influences also align to the intermediate stakeholder goal in that they immediately address the
knowledge needs for teachers to execute their goal effectively.
Motivation
According to Mayer (2011), motivation is a conglomerate of a person’s beliefs, interests,
attributions of cause, goals, and social connections. Mayer (2011) claims that people believe that
they can improve as a result of hard work, then they will work hard, which leads to his next
assertion that if people have deep interest in a subject, they are more likely to work hard to learn
the subject. Mayer (2011) further claims that when people assign the cause of their wins or
losses to their own doing, then they tend to work harder to learn even if they struggle, which
makes them work hard when they seek to master the material. Mayer (2011) also emphasizes the
collaboration between student and teacher as students strive more when they feel their instructor
is their partner in solving problems.
Rueda (2011) notes that in order to perceive evidence of motivation in any individual,
motivated people will choose to participate in the activity, try hard to do well in the activity, and
keep engaging in the activity even if they suffer setbacks. Rueda (2011) also highlights the fact
that motivation is rarely considered the source of underperformance in school or at work. The
blame often falls on knowledge. Rueda (2011) emphasizes that motivational causes of
performance problems cannot be solved by increasing knowledge. It is important, therefore, to
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fully understand motivational influences, how to assess them, and strategies to increase
motivation in targeted motivational types.
The following sections will review relevant literature on motivational influences that
affect teachers’ desire to implement new instructional strategies to achieve organizational goals
in their classrooms. The two main theories addressed will be the expectancy value theory with
reference to Eccles (2006) and the self-efficacy theory with references to Pajares (2006) and
Bandura (2000). Expectancy value theory covers the motivation influence behind what people
expect to occur as a result of their applied effort in concert with how much they feel the outcome
is worth (Eccles, 2006). Self-efficacy theory covers the beliefs people hold about their inherent
capability to accomplish or learn to accomplish various tasks (Bandura, 2000; Pajares, 2006).
These two motivational theories provide a significant framework for understanding teacher
motivation and how it can impact their instructional delivery. Research from Daniels and
Pirayoff (2015) suggests that teachers’ motivation levels are contagious, spreading to students
that take motivated teachers’ classes. It is important to evaluate the level of motivation that
teachers possess when attempting to improve student achievement because teachers’
motivational levels contribute more to student learning than does teacher competence in
pedagogy or content (Gokce, 2010).
Expectancy Value Theory. Expectancy value theory links the choices people make to
achieve goals to both an individual’s expectation to succeed and to the extent that a person
values the task (Eccles, 2006). Eccles (2006) explains that individuals must want to do a task in
order to engage in it completely, and that optimal engagement also includes knowing that they
can perform the task at hand as this will enhance the continued effort that individuals will apply
over the long term to achieve the goal. According to Eccles (2006), an individual’s desire to
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perform a task will depend on four main types of values. First Eccles describes attainment value,
or the value a person places on quality work. Utility value encompasses how useful the
achievement will be for the future. Intrinsic value covers how much enjoyment an individual
feels engaging in the activity, and cost value highlights the loss of other opportunities in order to
engage in the activity (Eccles, 2006). Since the main drive behind willingness to engage in a
task hinges on having a high value for the task, values will be the focus for motivational issues
relating to teacher implementation of PBL linked to the NGSS standards.
Teacher expectations and values. Based on ideas from expectancy value theory,
teachers need to believe that project-based learning can produce high student achievement and
that it works in concert with the vision of the NGSS. First of all, teachers need to have a high
attainment value attributed to the style of PBL implementation. According to Duzor (2010),
teachers are more receptive to implementing new practices that align to their previously held
ideologies. According to Eccles (2006), attainment values include those that stem from the
cultural foundations that influence how people see themselves as optimally behaving and
formulating ideals for how certain systems should operate. A teacher may have strong
attainment values for how classrooms should be structured and how content should be delivered.
If the practices of PBL significantly diverge from a teacher’s previously held values for how
instruction should be carried out, then according to Duzor (2010), teachers may perform poorly
or resist implementing it altogether. PBL can only be effectively assessed as a successful
teaching strategy if the teachers do their best to implement it to the best of their ability, which
requires a high degree of teacher motivation to be present (Lam, Cheng, & Choy, 2010).
In addition, teachers must have a high utility value in place for PBL. According to Duzor
(2010), transfer of new methods will not occur when teachers think it is not necessary for use
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within their teaching environments (Duzor, 2010). Since California has adopted NGSS
standards, teachers will need to adjust how they teach to satisfy the shift from teaching facts to
teaching applications of knowledge to students (Reiser, 2013). Larmer at al. (2015) explains that
a well-designed science unit of instruction delivered with PBL can easily satisfy the
requirements of the NGSS. If teachers are aware that PBL works well with NGSS and
understand that NGSS standards are now required by the state, then they should have a high
utility value for implementing PBL in place.
Self-Efficacy Theory. Albert Bandura originated the idea of connecting motivation to
the beliefs that people hold about themselves (Pajares, 2006). As a result, Bandura (1997) wrote
extensively on self-efficacy and defined it as the level to which individuals assess their own
abilities to either learn material or accomplish goals. Pajares (2006) indicates that self-efficacy
will improve when people experience a success and will drop when people experience a loss.
These successions of failures and losses shape the belief that an individual can succeed in a given
task, and as such, self-efficacy connects intimately to motivation. Ultimately, people who
possess a high level of self-efficacy exhibit perseverance in the face of adversity (Pajares, 2006).
According to Pajares (2006), self-efficacy has a profound effect on emotions, thoughts, and
behavior. Self-efficacy, therefore, is an important factor that contributes to the work that
teachers will need to accomplish to successfully implement a unit of PBL in a high school
science classroom.
Teacher self-efficacy. Teachers need to feel a sufficient confidence level in their ability
to implement a successful project-based learning unit of study in a science classroom. Teacher
self-efficacy refers to teachers’ convictions that they have the ability and skill required to
improve student outcomes (Gibson & Dembo, 1984). Ahmad (2011) has further broken-down
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teacher efficacy into two categories: teaching efficacy, which relates to teaching competence,
and personal efficacy, which relates to teacher confidence. Ahmad (2011) found that teachers
with higher levels of both teaching and personal efficacy showed optimal motivation in their
instruction because they believed that their individual efforts were the cause of their successes or
failures.
Teacher motivation arising from higher levels of teacher efficacy correlate strongly to
better student achievement as well. For example, Lam et al. (2010) found that teachers with
higher confidence showed higher motivation in implementing PBL, resulting in overall higher
student achievement. The positive correlation between motivation and student achievement
aligns well with Gibson and Dembo’s (1984) earlier finding that confident teachers with accurate
perceptions of self-efficacy persist on a given task for longer and are willing to use complicated
methods of instruction. Since PBL is a more complicated structure for delivering classroom
instruction (Larmer et al., 2015), teachers will need high self-efficacy to persist in their efforts.
However, it is important to note that overconfident teachers may tend to continue implementing
ineffective instructional techniques because they have an inflated view of their own content
delivery (Rodríguez et al., 2014). In this way, teachers not only need to feel confident, but they
must accurately assess their current capacity for instructional delivery to effectively improve
when necessary.
Collective Efficacy Theory. Bandura (2000) expanded his theory on self-efficacy to
include his belief that as a team people can achieve more than they can as individuals. Under
this theory, Bandura (2000) suggests that group accomplishments are not a simple summation of
individual members’ self-efficacy. Instead, a group operates well when all members share the
same belief and act upon that belief. Therefore, if a group of staff members share the same ideas
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and develop a sense of collective efficacy, it is more likely that they will create positive impacts
toward their goals despite setbacks from other influences.
Teacher collective efficacy. There is an indication that Bandura’s (2000) concept of
collective efficacy also influences teacher motivation to implement effective PBL units.
Teachers need to share the same beliefs in program goals and act upon them collectively. Lam
et al. (2010) found that teachers with strong relationships with colleagues and support from
administration felt higher degrees of self-determination to continue implementing PBL and
obtained positive results from their efforts. Furthermore, research by Donohoo (2017) has
assisted in pinpointing six different conditions that enable strong teacher collective efficacy. The
enabling conditions include teachers having a high degree of influence and participation in
making school-wide decisions, teachers intimately knowing each other’s work, having a
cohesive department with a high level of agreement on educational values, having a goal
consensus within the department, having a responsive leadership in the administration, and
having effective student intervention systems in use. With a clear list of guidelines as to what
conditions are needed to foster collective efficacy, it makes it easier to identify what factors may
be missing such that the organization can take steps to improve these conditions. Therefore,
there is a need and to assess for collective efficacy as factors influencing it can be identified
easily, and because collective efficacy affects teachers’ self-efficacy for implementing PBL in
their classrooms. Table 3 shows what assessments can be implemented to analyze the state of
motivational influences of the teachers in the science department.

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Table 3
Stakeholder Goal and Motivational Influence, Type and Assessment for Motivation Gap Analysis
Organizational Mission
The Little Hills High School’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Program seeks
to excite, engage, and educate students in a project-based environment. A rigorous, technology-
based curriculum will prepare graduates for higher education and future STEM-related careers. As a
program of Little Hills High School, STEM supports the goals of Little Hills High School. These
goals include supporting students so they are effective communicators, critical thinkers, self-directed
life-long learners, culturally involved, and socially responsible individuals.
Organizational Global Goal
By the end of the 2017-2018 school year, LHHS will have sent all teachers to professional
development in Project Based Learning delivered by the Buck Institute for Education.
Stakeholder Goal
By June 2018, 100% of the science teachers will implement at least 2 units of instruction using
project-based learning with 100% alignment to NGSS.
Assumed Motivation Influences Motivational Influence Assessment
Expectancy Value: Teachers need to
believe that project-based learning can
produce high student achievement and
that it works in concert with the vision of
the NGSS.
Interview questions: “In your opinion, can a well-
fashioned project-based learning unit provide students
with the knowledge they will need to succeed? Why or
why not?”
Self-Efficacy: Teachers need to feel a
high confidence level in their ability to
implement a successful project-based
learning unit of study in a science
classroom.
Open-ended interview questions: “What tools or
curriculum do you need to be successful in
implementing a project-based learning unit?” “What
would it take for you to feel confident in implementing
project-based learning in your classroom?” “What, if
anything, makes you nervous about implementing
project-based learning?” “What challenges do you see
about implementing project-based learning?” “What
abilities for your personal growth might there be while
implementing project-based learning?”
Collective efficacy: Teachers need to
share the same beliefs in program goals
and act upon them collectively.
Survey and interview questions that ask individuals to
self-assess their ability to perform the tasks the group
has assigned for them. Survey and interview questions
that ask members to assess the group’s ability to work
together.

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Organizational Influences
This section of the review will investigate potential organizational influences on a
teacher’s ability to implement high-quality Project Based Learning units within their curriculum.
First, it will explain relevant theory behind cultural models, followed by how these models may
potentially influence teacher adherence to organizational change initiatives. Then the review
will discuss the theory behind cultural settings and the potential influences that the settings
within the organization may further affect teacher performance and reactions to organizational
motions to change.
Cultural models. Cultural models penetrate deeply into the psychological functioning of
an organization’s personnel. Schneider, Brief, and Guzzo (1996) argue that cultural models are
subconscious beliefs and values that cannot be observed directly. Since a cultural model has few
tangible aspects, it is also difficult to change organizational behavior by focusing on modifying
the existing cultural model directly (Schneider et al., 1996). However, the cultural models that
form the foundation of the organization also dictate the type of leadership necessary to keep the
organization running well and to guide it through any necessary cultural change (Schein, 2010).
Schein (2010) divides organizational culture into three structural levels: artifacts,
espoused beliefs and values, and basic underlying assumptions. Of these levels, espoused beliefs
and values and basic underlying assumptions fall under the cultural model classification because
they do not have tangible qualities. Espoused beliefs and values include the ideals, goals, and
values of key department leaders that spread to the rest of the team, ideologies, and
rationalizations. Schein (2010) warns that if the values that the organization holds that drives the
company vision does not align with the values that constitute high levels of performance, then an
obvious discordance between the vision statement and organizational behavior will become
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apparent. For example, an organization with a vision statement that emphasizes the value of
working well in a team will experience a contradiction in worker behavior if individual
competition is rewarded while high-quality teamwork goes unrecognized within the group.
Schein (2010) continues to explain that the basic assumptions of an organization are the
organizational theories that the organization uses as a basis for decision making, even if acting
on the assumptions begins to fail. Basic assumptions are so deeply connected to personal
stability that any attempt to change the assumptions at a foundational level will raise the anxiety
of individuals in the organization. To minimize the emotional discomfort, many people will
justify or project a skewed vision of the actions surrounding them so their perceived reality will
conform to the mold of their prior basic assumptions (Schein, 2010). Therefore, changing
organizations by targeting cultural models will often see a high failure rate.
Stakeholder-specific influences.
Teachers have a general resistance to change in instructional techniques. Agócs (1997)
indicates that resistance to change can become an institutionalized fixture in many organizations.
Therefore, resistance to change can become so common-place within an organization, that it has
become either an espoused belief for how to react to an initiative for change or has become a
basic assumption for how to deal with any proposed change. Resistance to change can take the
form of denying the change is needed, refusing to acknowledge the issue, refusing to act upon
the desired change, or deliberately sabotaging the effort to implement the change (Agócs, 1997).
Agócs (1997) also mentions that to effectively resist change, the resisting group must hold a
significant level of power within the organization. For example, public school teachers have the
power to resist any change initiated by administration in specific pedagogy, especially teachers
with tenure. Tenured teachers may feel safe to challenge pedagogical change initiatives by
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administration because administration cannot easily let them go. Teachers may also deliberately
sabotage the change initiative by implementing the changed pedagogical style so poorly that it
will inevitably fail.
Teachers need to have trust in administrators and their decisions. Problems with trust
tend to arise from a series of negative interactions between administrators and employees
(Korsgaard, Brodt, & Whitener, 2002). In Korsgaard et al.’s (2002) study, it was found that
negative encounters between managers and employees did not connect to a lack of trust if the
employees perceived the managers to exhibit a high level of concern and continued
communication and vice versa. Teachers may not trust the administration in a public school if a
series of negative altercations builds up with a lack of open communication and concern flowing
from the administrator to the teacher. It is important to build high levels of trust between
managers and general employees such that employees feel safe with speaking to managers
honestly without fear of retribution (Korsgaard et al., 2002). Having high levels of trust may
therefore assist managers in obtaining essential information from employees to implement
effective change or to solve other organizational problems. Moreover, Schneider et al. (1996)
indicate that having a high degree of trust between management and employee will significantly
increase the likelihood for any management-initiated change to occur.
Cultural settings. Schneider et al. (1996) define four different dimensions to cultural
settings including the type of interpersonal relationships within the organization, the way the
organizational hierarchy behaves, what the work is like in the organization, and the supports and
awards in place to assist work performance. Schein (2010) differentiates cultural settings from
cultural models in that they are observable in employee behavior. Schein’s (2010) concept of
artifacts as a major division of organizational culture satisfies a cultural setting category as
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artifacts represent the aspects of the organization that can be seen, felt, or heard when interacting
with the staff. These artifacts can also include what people wear to work, what phrases they
employ to address each other, how employee work space is organized, published memos or
materials on work values or conduct norms, as well as any visible rituals or routines that people
follow.
Schneider et al. (1996) argue that initiating cultural change must occur on the level of
cultural settings because cultural settings are observable phenomena that can be manipulated.
Furthermore, cultural settings incorporate tangible artifacts that shape the underlying cultural
model. Modifying those artifacts is likely to modify the beliefs and values that subconsciously
permeate the organization. In this sense, a change in a mission statement or a vision statement
alone cannot sustain significant change. In addition to altered visions and missions, the
organization must implement new policies, routines, and procedures, and hold employees
accountable for the implementation of them (Schneider et al., 1996).
Stakeholder-specific influences.
The school needs to have clear standards around teaching methods or written
expectations to guide teachers to incorporate new types of instruction or lessons. Schneider et
al. (1996) explain that failures in Total Quality Management efforts to make Total
Organizational Changes have failed in part because management did not make its objectives
completely clear to the staff. When this occurs, employees have no focus for their change
efforts, resulting in staff ignoring the changes or sporadically implementing them. To improve
the likelihood of implementation, management would have to make it clear what they expect as
an outcome of employee work. If teachers in a public school are told during meetings that they
should implement a new type of pedagogy without having a written documentation of new
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standards or expectations, the teachers will not be able to map the delivery of their course
material to the new expectations as they will have no timeline or specific goals to achieve by the
end of the year. Thus, these teachers may hover in a state of limbo, waiting for the clear
documentation to arrive before they start to implement the expected change.
Teachers have no recognition or accountability systems in place for performing the
required changes or applying concepts from professional development received. Leaders must
hold their employees accountable for upholding the standards of change initiatives by setting up
systems of support, or accountability systems, and rewards or recognition systems that highlight
exemplary service (Schneider et al., 1996). In addition to this, an appropriate amount of
recognition has been linked to increasing intrinsic motivation, which in turn, enhances dedication
to contribute to the initiative of change (Hansen, Smith, & Hansen, 2002). If teachers have no
systems or procedures in place to hold them accountable to new standards of teaching, then they
will likely ignore their duties or not be aware of how well they are doing in upholding those
standards. In addition, teachers will have low intrinsic motivation to persist in any initiative for
major change if they never get recognized for their efforts. Hansen et al. (2002) recommend that
not only should new programs clearly identify how employees need to modify their work
procedures, but also that the recognition system needs to clearly communicate how the
employees must satisfy the needed changes. If teachers in the organization do not have this clear
communication or evaluation of expectations, then the likelihood that the change will occur is
small.

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Table 4
Stakeholder Goal and Organizational Influence and Assessment for Motivation Gap Analysis
Organizational Mission
The Little Hills High School’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Program seeks
to excite, engage, and educate students in a project-based environment. A rigorous, technology-
based curriculum will prepare graduates for higher education and future STEM-related careers. As a
program of Little Hills High School, STEM supports the goals of Little Hills High School. These
goals include supporting students so they are effective communicators, critical thinkers, self-directed
life-long learners, culturally involved, and socially responsible individuals.
Organizational Global Goal
By the end of the 2017-2018 school year, LHHS will have sent all teachers to professional
development in Project Based Learning delivered by the Buck Institute for Education.
Stakeholder Goal (If Applicable)
By June 2018, 100% of the science teachers will implement at least 2 units of instruction using
project-based learning with 100% alignment to NGSS.
Assumed Organizational Influences Organization Influence Assessment
Cultural Model Influence 1: Teachers have a
general resistance to change in instructional
techniques.
Surveys and interviews. Ask questions that ask
about history of instructional implementation, the
role of reflection and adjustment to curriculum, ask
to see samples of projects or activities done in class
and exams given.
Cultural Model Influence 2: Teachers need to
have trust in administrators and their
decisions.
Do surveys and interviews that ask teachers about
their confidence level in the current administration,
whether they feel supported by administration, and
why. If they find fault in administrative procedures,
get explanations for why.
Cultural Setting Influence 1: The school needs
to have clear standards around teaching
methods and expectations to guide teachers to
incorporate new types of instruction or
lessons.
Survey questions and interviews focused on teacher
knowledge of school goals, goals in teaching
practice, and whether they incorporate any
reflection in their practice, and if so, to elaborate.
Cultural Setting Influence 2: Teachers need to
be held accountable for performance or
delivery of professional development
received.
Survey or interviews that focus on opinions of
professional development, or what would make
professional development more relevant. Ask what
would be needed to incorporate PD into every day
teaching strategy.

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Conclusion
This chapter reviewed literature relevant to identifying possible sources of influence
behind lower student achievement in STEM, the factors that make effective teachers, and to
investigate the promising practice of project-based learning in science education. In the current
global economic climate, the United States government continues to recognize the importance
behind delivering high-quality education in STEM to service the growing need for STEM related
jobs. The literature indicates that effective teaching practices in complicated fields such as
STEM requires a strategic balance between offering students real-world experience and using
appropriate learning strategies to deliver complex content in a way that students can maximally
retain the information. In this sense, the best practices include learning experiences that connect
back to individual student’s prior knowledge, and projects that are flexible enough to teach
appropriate content while embracing student interest. The literature also reveals that the
existence of innovative learning techniques will not satisfy the needs of students without teachers
that have high levels of content knowledge in their respective fields, continuously participate in
relevant professional development, and act toward continuous improvement of their craft.
Learning and motivation theories inform what possible gaps may exist within the organization
that need to be filled to reach the ideal learning environment. Teachers need to have conceptual
knowledge of the NGSS standards, procedural knowledge for implementing project-based
learning curricular units, and metacognitive awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses.
In addition, teachers need the motivation to implement this knowledge effectively by having a
high expectancy value for project-based learning, self-efficacy for their ability to implement it,
can collective efficacy to work together as an effective team. Organizational theory informs the
gaps and needs teachers have within the cultural models and settings of the high school,
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including an overall resistance to change, lack of trust, clear teaching expectations, and
accountability. The next chapter will discuss in detail the assumed influences in relation to the
appropriate research methodology to investigate these needs in depth.
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CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
Purpose of the Project
The purpose of this project was to evaluate the degree to which Little Hills High School
has been moving toward its goal for science teachers to implement at least two units of
instruction using project-based learning with 100% alignment to Common Core and NGSS
standards. This goal was introduced on campus in the beginning of the 2016–2017 school year
during the two teacher in-service days held prior to the beginning of the school year. The
organization expected science teachers to implement at least one project-based unit in the
inaugural year and expects them to increase the number of projects to at least two in the
following year.
The stakeholders of interest in this analysis were the science teachers. About three of the
science teachers at LHHS already have three years of experience implementing project-based
learning practices and may act as leaders for the other teachers to follow in the transition toward
full faculty implementation. Since LHHS is a STEM magnet school, the success of the science
programs is integral to the success of the entire school. Therefore, this study has purposely
sampled all members of the science department faculty using the quantitative method of
surveying for basic demographic information, and the qualitative methods of interviews,
classroom observations, and document collection.
It was also essential to determine the extent to which underlying influences assist or deter
the attainment of implementing PBL units that adhere to the Next Generation Science Standards.
Understanding the supports and the barriers will allow the organization to adjust affected
influences to optimize results.
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Research Questions
To analyze these influences, the questions that guided this study were the following:
1. To what extent is the organization meeting its goal of implementing high-quality Next
Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned Project Based Learning (PBL) units in
every science classroom during the 2017–2018 school year?
2. What are the knowledge, motivation and organizational influences related to
achieving the goal of implementing two high-quality NGSS-aligned PBL units in
every science classroom by the end of the 2017–2018 school year?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
Research Design
The researcher utilized a mixed methods research design using an embedded mixed
methods design. According to Creswell (2014), an embedded mixed methods design will
incorporate a different form of data into a larger overall study. In this study, a small quantitative
survey was embedded into a larger qualitative study. The quantitative survey was essential for
gathering demographic data and basic attitudes toward project-based learning for each teacher
such that the data could be cross-linked to themes arising from the qualitative data analysis.
Merriam and Tisdell (2016) describe qualitative research as a study within the context of a small,
intimate setting with the intention to understand why things occur as they do in that specific
context. Qualitative research can be divided into four main characteristics: a focus on how
events proceed, the meaning behind them, and understanding them; the main instrument of data
collection and analysis is the researcher; the study uses an inductive process; and the results are
full of rich detail (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The larger design of this study qualified as
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qualitative under all four characteristics. The research sought to understand the influences and
meaning behind how teachers implement PBL within the context of a small suburban high
school. The researcher personally collected all the data and performed all related transcriptions
and analyses. The researcher inductively drew from the data analysis recommendations and
observations that assisted in answering the research questions. Finally, the results include a
detailed description of the conclusions as found in Chapter 4.
Conceptual Framework: The Interaction of Stakeholders’ Knowledge and Motivation
and the Organizational Context
This section explains the conceptual framework that links the variables affecting science
teacher implementation of high-quality Project Based Learning (PBL) units. Maxwell (2013)
states that a conceptual framework is used to provide a roadmap for a research study as it
provides the necessary information that can infer appropriate research questions, methods, and
goals. A conceptual framework, therefore, draws together independent observations into a
greater, interactive whole. While Chapter 2 went into individual detail about likely influences of
knowledge, motivation, and organizational factors on teachers’ ability to implement high-quality
PBL units, this section will show how these factors may interact with each other to create a
multidimensional perspective able to focus on proper recommendations for organizational
practice that would lead the organization toward its goal for all science teachers to successfully
implement multiple units using PBL in their classrooms by June 2018. Figure 2 illustrates the
interaction of the teachers as the stakeholder of interest in respect to their placement within the
organization at large and the levels at which knowledge, motivation, and organizational factors
influence the teachers’ PBL implementation.

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Figure 2. KMO influence hierarchy

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The stakeholder of interest is a subset of the entire organization, and therefore, is
influenced by the cultural settings and models that the organization embodies. The organization
strives to provide accountability systems via a data-driven interface, foster a culture of learning,
and provide room for teacher autonomy. To ensure a smooth transition during times of
organizational change, it is important to maintain a strong foundation of communication among
the organizational hierarchy. Administration can use staff meeting and collaboration time to
follow up on efforts to analyze test scores that teachers collected at the specific request of the
administrators to increase the overall importance of teachers exerting effort toward using data to
inform instruction. More direct interaction with administration will set the tone with teachers
that there is a high probability that a request from administration will likely be followed up in
subsequent meetings, emphasizing the need to analyze student data as a method to improve the
quality of instruction and instructional outcomes. Administration also assists teachers with
change initiatives by providing ample and timely access to professional development targeted to
teachers’ immediate needs. Instructional coaches can use collaboration time, or classroom
observation time to check in with teachers and offer specialized help when needed. Assistance
from instructional coaches who also act as mentors in the classroom setting can improve the
quality of any instructional changes, especially if teachers request assistance or have difficulty
understanding how to apply new techniques to their curriculum.
Motivational influences on teachers further complicate the issue. Teachers with low
motivation may derail easily when confronted with even small obstacles. Individuals with high
expectancy value both expect to succeed when pursuing a task, and desire to perform the task
(Eccles, 2006). Therefore, teachers with a high expectancy value for changes in instructional
techniques will more likely apply them with high fidelity. Teachers with high self-efficacy in
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addition will have confidence in their ability to alter their instructional delivery (Gibson &
Dembo, 1984). In addition, a high level of collective efficacy among teachers will assist them to
form a supportive team structure that can sustain forward momentum despite minor
environmental hiccups (Lam et al., 2010). High motivation has the potential to bypass minor
cultural issues within the organization in the same way that consistent cultural settings and
established routines can provide the external motivational factors necessary to keep teachers
moving forward even if they might lack internal motivation. In this way, organizational and
motivational influences depend upon a certain synergy to keep the teachers and the entire
organization moving in the desired direction.
Another important influence includes teacher knowledge. Even if teachers have all
motivational and organizational factors aligned, a lack of the proper conceptual knowledge of the
standards they must meet or the content knowledge necessary to meet them, they may not
execute their task effectively. Teachers that do not know the appropriate procedure for
implementing project-based learning units may enthusiastically deliver a lesson they think aligns
with the philosophy and cannot recognize when their teaching does not reach the standards
(Larmer et al., 2015). Without sufficient procedural knowledge, teachers will not have the
metacognitive awareness to recognize areas of weakness in their own teaching. Even if the
overarching organizational and motivational influences are completely aligned, a minor
misalignment in knowledge will likely disrupt teachers from reaching their targets.
Administration can facilitate the proper professional development to provide the knowledge that
teachers will need to produce high-quality PBL units.
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Participating Stakeholders
Since the beginning of the 2016–2017 school year there has been an initiative to increase
the amount of student engagement in academics by shifting the type of instructional delivery
away from direct instruction and toward student-driven investigation into solving real-world
problems. The curriculum model that the organization has chosen is called Project Based
Learning (PBL), which is a teaching strategy that initiates student interest through a driving
question that students must answer through a series of investigations into the problem under the
guidance of the teacher (Thomas, 2000). In this model, the teacher takes on the role of a mentor
rather than the distribution center for facts. The guiding questions are carefully constructed such
that students must master the state-mandated standards in their quest to answer the driving
question. High-quality project-based learning would result in a high level of student engagement
in the material coupled with a high level of student achievement (Bell, 2010).
Although teachers of all subjects are asked to use PBL in their classrooms, science
courses are especially targeted for a pedagogical change because of the number of students that
fail introductory science courses at the school and because the school is defined as a STEM
magnet school. The goal is to decrease the number of D’s and F’s in science by getting the
students more active in scientific discovery. It is believed that high-quality teacher
implementation of PBL will increase student achievement and interest in science, which should
make it more likely for students to seek out future careers in science fields. Therefore, the
stakeholders of interest included the teachers at Little Hills High School that teach in the science
department.
Since the research was done in a small organization during the 2017–2018 school year,
the stakeholder body of interest consisted of the entire science department of nine teachers.
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Since the number of stakeholders is small, the researcher solicited assistance and information
from the total population of LHHS science teachers. Three of these science teachers have over
three-years’ experience implementing project-based learning units of instruction in their
classrooms. The rest of the science teaching staff have less than two full years of experience
implementing PBL in the context of their curricula. To qualify for study participation, the
stakeholders must have been teaching science courses, have implemented at least one unit of
instruction using the PBL structure, and they must have been teaching science at Little Hills
High School.
Survey Sampling Criteria and Rationale
Criterion 1. All participants needed to be teachers at Little Hills High School. Since the
organization of interest was a single high school rather than the entire district, the participants
should be limited to the organization of interest.
Criterion 2. All participants must have been credentialed in and teaching science in the
2017–2018 school year. Since the focus of the study was to evaluate the quality of PBL
instruction in science courses, the teachers under study should have been teaching science
courses.
Criterion 3. All participants must have implemented or have begun implementing at
least one PBL unit of instruction by the beginning of the 2017–2018 school year. In order to
evaluate teacher opinions on PBL through the survey, teachers must have previously completed a
unit of PBL instruction such that the attitudes of these teachers could be relevantly assessed.
Survey Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale
As the number of participants was only 9, the intention of performing a survey was for
the purpose of gathering general demographical information and attitudes toward project-based
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learning. Although Fink (2013) suggests delivering a survey in multiple formats to get a higher
response rate, the 25-question survey as seen in Appendix A was delivered only online through
Qualtrics. All the teachers were familiar with online surveys and had previously through
informal discussion mentioned that they would prefer to answer a short online survey than fill
out information on a piece of paper. This survey method was a form of convenience sampling,
which is appropriate for a study that sought to understand the specific context of a particular
organization without broadly generalizing the results across multiple organizations. In this
context, the survey was implemented before any other information gathering so it could be used
to inform more specific qualitative questions that were asked in interviews with individual
teachers. The survey achieved a 100% return, which provided a broad spectrum of opinions and
viewpoints (Fink, 2013).
Interview Sampling Criteria and Rationale
Criterion 1. All participants must have been employed as teachers at Little Hills High
School in the 2017–2018 school year, since this was the organization under evaluation for
organizational change. Substitute teachers were not included as they were not part of the staff
and they held no accountability for implementing specific curriculum within their substitute
duties.
Criterion 2. All participants must have been credentialed science teachers that taught
science courses to students in the 2017–2018 school year. Since the stakeholders of study were
the science teachers, other subject teachers’ input may not have applied within a similar context.
Criterion 3. All participants must have already implemented at least one unit of PBL
instruction or have been in the process of implementing a unit of PBL instruction in the 2017–
2018 school year. The only way the researcher could receive informative feedback from
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interview questions on PBL was to gather it from teachers who had experience delivering
instruction using PBL.
Interview Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale
This study sought individual interviews as the researcher wanted to avoid peer pressure to
respond in a certain way during a focus group, especially because the teachers might have had
significantly differing opinions on how to implement PBL or on the efficacy of PBL in the
classroom. Personal interviews removed the possibility of stifling a minority opinion during a
focus group. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) indicate that focus groups are not appropriate for
highly personal topics. Since teaching strategies can be highly personal, the researcher avoided
focus groups. Instead, the researcher individually interviewed all nine science teachers, as they
were all willing to be interviewed. The interviews from the entire science department were a
purposeful convenience sample, as all teachers worked in the same organization where the
organizational change of implementing PBL as an instructional strategy was being implemented.
Maxwell (2013) suggests that certain individuals may be purposefully selected because they are
crucial entities to contact in order to test the theories in question, in this case, teacher delivery of
PBL. The researcher wanted to reach as many individual voices as possible and therefore sought
to interview every teacher in the science department over the period of three weeks. Each
interview took between thirty-five minutes and an hour and fifteen minutes to complete.
Interviews were done after any classroom observations. Merriam and Tisdell (2016)
indicate that observations and interviews do not necessarily have to be done sequentially, as the
teacher responses to interview questions most likely will not depend upon the timing of
observations. However, if observations are done prior to interviews, some specific clarifying
questions may be tailored to certain teachers to illuminate intentions behind actions observed in
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class. In this case, the researcher chose to conduct observations prior to interviews in order to
ask specific questions to teachers while referring back to shared moments in the classroom.
Otherwise, all other interview questions were formulated to discover the philosophical approach
that teachers have to PBL, their willingness to implement it, and any organizational,
motivational, or knowledge issues that assist or detract from their implementation, as seen in
Appendix B.
Since the researcher was a science teacher at Little Hills High School from January 2014
to June 2017, the researcher had developed friendly relationships with the science teachers at
LHHS. Therefore, the researcher had the opportunity to ask the science teachers to borrow an
hour of their time for an interview. No incentives were needed to gain agreement to speak with
each teacher. In addition, the science teachers had responded positively to other researchers
seeking interviews in the past, so there were no issues with gaining access to interview time.
Observation Sampling Criteria and Rationale
Criterion 1. All participants must have been employed as teachers at Little Hills High
School in the 2017–2018 school year, since this was the organization under evaluation for
organizational change. Substitutes were not included as they were not part of the staff and they
held no accountability for implementing specific curriculum within their substitute duties.
Criterion 2. All participants must have been credentialed science teachers that taught
science courses to students in the 2017–2018 school year. Since the stakeholders of study were
the science teachers, other subject teachers’ input may not have applied within a similar context.
Criterion 3. All participants must have been in the middle of implementing a PBL
lesson. This was essential as the researcher sought to investigate the implementation of the PBL
technique and how well it adhered to the recommendations for best practices.
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Observation Sampling (Access) Strategy and Rationale
Although the researcher attempted to observe all teachers as they implemented PBL
units, this was not feasible in the study time frame, given that science teachers were not all
implementing a PBL unit while the researcher was in the process of data collection. As a result,
the researcher was able to observe seven of the nine teachers as they implemented PBL in its
various stages. In the two cases where direct observation of a PBL unit of study could not be
done, the researcher requested to look at documentation of the teachers’ previous PBL
implementations and lesson plans.
Although the researcher observed seven teachers in the middle of PBL implementation,
the researcher was only able to observe each teacher once during a block-schedule day, which
made each observation a 95-minute time period. Since PBL units are often lengthy in scope, the
researcher was observing only one long class period to get a sense of how the teacher builds the
culture of the classroom, student grouping, teacher management, classroom climate, scaffolding
of student work, formative assessments, and teacher engagement and coaching with the students.
Merriam and Tisdell (2016) suggest that observations can be used concurrently with interviews
and document collection to corroborate evidence. In order to understand how well a teacher’s
ideas about their own PBL instruction align to their implementation of it, observations of
instructional time are essential. A teacher may have the concept that they understand how to
execute the PBL procedure, but may not adhere to the steps, for example. Therefore, all teachers
observed were asked for documentation of the PBL unit plan, and the observation was followed
by an interview.
The researcher’s previous experience as a science teacher at Little Hills High School
assisted in gaining access to observation time in the classroom. The researcher asked former
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colleagues if they minded being observed their classrooms with the intention of noting their
approach to PBL with the intention to develop means to assist teachers in implementing more
PBL in the future. LHHS teachers were accustomed to being observed by their peers, and as
such, all teachers fitting the criteria agreed to have the researcher observe in their classrooms.
Document Collection Sampling Criteria and Rationale
Criterion 1. All participants must have been employed as teachers at Little Hills High
School in the 2017–2018 school year, since this was the organization under evaluation for
organizational change. Substitutes were not included as they were not part of the staff and they
held no accountability for implementing specific curriculum within their substitute duties.
Criterion 2. All participants must have been credentialed science teachers that taught
science courses to students in the 2017–2018 school year. Since the stakeholders of study were
the science teachers, other subject teachers’ input may not have applied within a similar context.
Criterion 3. All participants must have created or intend to use an existing PBL unit
plan. Unit plans needed to correlate to the units that the researcher was able to observe in
process of implementation, but in cases where no observation was made, unit plans were
collected for previous PBL units that the teachers had implemented previously and intend to
implement again. This was essential as the researcher sought to investigate the how well the
plan adhered to the recommendations for PBL planning suggested by the Buck Institute for
Education.
Document Sampling (Access) Strategy and Rationale
Although the researcher attempted to obtain documentation from all teachers, one teacher
did not have documentation available for collection. As a result, the researcher was able to
collect eight of the nine teachers’ PBL unit plans. In the two cases where direct observation of a
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PBL unit of study could not be done, the researcher requested to look at documentation of the
teachers’ previous PBL implementations and lesson plans.
The researcher was able to ask the teachers to look at the documentation for each PBL
unit plan directly prior to scheduling observations. Teachers emailed or directly handed
documentation to the researcher. The researcher reviewed the plans in order to understand the
context of the classroom observation and to assess project planning against the BIE rubric for
project planning. The BIE professional development workshop, PBL 101, that all teachers have
attended spent three days emphasizing project planning. Larmer et al. (2015) note the
importance of quality planning with emphasis on not over planning so as to remove student voice
and choice and not under planning which results in inefficient progress or even not hitting the
intended learning objectives. Therefore, documents were analyzed in depth for their adherence
to the PBL rubrics and their alignment to the NGSS standards.
Data Collection and Instrumentation
Data collection included a variety of means including conducting a short online survey,
personal interviews, engaging in classroom observations, and collecting PBL unit lesson plans.
All teachers completed the survey before any observations or interviews were done.
Observations preceded interviews such that results from qualitative coding analysis on the
observations coupled with quantitative survey analysis could be used to tailor the interview
questions to explore in depth the issues raised in the knowledge, motivation and organizational
culture-focused questions. Observations entailed watching teachers during PBL implementation
for one 95-minute class period. The purpose of the observation was to assess the comfort level
of the teacher delivering the PBL unit, to observe teacher practice in PBL implementation, to
assess how well the unit fits with PBL and NGSS standards, and to establish the extent to which
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the school is meeting its goal of implementing PBL in the school year. Although an attempt to
observe each teacher was the goal, observation only occurred in seven teachers’ classrooms
because two of the teachers were not implementing PBL during the data collection period.
Observations and answers to survey questions assisted the researcher to modify interview
questions to target information on individual practices when necessary.
The interview questions were the main method of gathering information on motivation,
knowledge, and organizational influences related to achieving the goal of implementing two
NGSS-aligned PBL units in the school year. Finally, documentation of lesson planning for
complete PBL units was collected from the teachers. The lesson plans were checked for
alignment with NGSS standards and assessed against a rubric that checks for the gold standard
elements of PBL. Analysis of these four data types helped inform the recommendations to the
organization that will help improve knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences that
may impede the teachers from reaching their PBL design and implementation goals.
Surveys
All teachers responded to the survey after an in-person follow-up on the emailed
invitation to take the survey. The teachers had received the initial survey response in their junk
email, and after one week, only two teachers had responded. After the researcher arrived on site
and asked all teachers to check their junk email for a survey request, they all responded to the
survey.
Interviews
The researcher was able to interview all the science teachers at the school, which
included nine staff members. Each person was interviewed only one time for approximately one
hour. Each interviewee was asked permission to record the interview with the intention to make
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accurate, anonymous transcriptions prior to immediate destruction of the recordings. The
transcriptions were subsequently triangulated with each interviewee for accuracy prior to coding.
The interviews were formal occurrences such that the teachers understood that they were being
interviewed, but the setting was relaxed. The interviews were held at the school in each
teacher’s classroom during their preparation period with refreshments such as coffee, tea, and a
gift box of chocolates. The comfortable atmosphere of their own private classrooms made the
encounter more like a pleasant conversation during a break time. Because each teacher at the
school had a unique perspective, the interviews were semi-structured so that the interviewer
could hit on the specific points of knowledge motivation and organization required, but also
could ask questions in an order or wording that fits the worldview of the interviewee (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016).
The questions focused on uncovering any organizational issues, motivational issues, and
knowledge issues associated with delivering PBL instruction. To get this information, the
questions were designed to be open ended to invite descriptive, detailed answers (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). Certain probes were outlined in the interview protocol that were listed to follow
up on an answer that did not yield the expected results or the necessary detail (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). Some of the possible probes are listed in the interview protocol (Appendix B) but
the probes were subject to change based on the nature of each response to the questions.
Observations
The researcher engaged in seven 95-minute classroom observations. These observations
were scheduled according to when teachers planned to implement their first PBL unit of the year.
At least one observation was done per teacher engaged in a PBL within the science department
during the period of data collection. The focus of each observation was to ensure that teachers
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are delivering high fidelity, gold standard PBL units aligned to NGSS, which would answer the
extent to which teachers were moving toward implementation of high-quality PBL, or research
question 1. In addition, the observations were used to inform the interview questions for each
specific teacher. The observations preceded interviews because the observations brought to light
various issues of knowledge, motivation, or organization that should be asked in the interview
for more depth of understanding. In this way, the observations set the stage for a more in depth
probing of research question 2. Since the teachers were very comfortable with other teachers
observing their classrooms, the researcher asked the teachers to observe how they implement
PBL in their specific classroom. Many teachers understood why observation was an important
way to spread good ideas and to get good feedback. Additionally, the researcher observed as a
participant since gathering information was more important than participation in the group, but
sitting in the room with the students and moving around to listen to various conversations or to
ask questions allowed the researcher to gather greater detail in the observation (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). There was no way to completely remove all influence as the observer from the
results, which made it necessary to account for the ways in which the researcher’s presence
affected the classroom climate (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The observation protocol can be
found in Appendix C.
Documents and Artifacts
During the data collection, the researcher collected PBL unit lesson plans as documents.
PBL unit lesson plans were collected from eight of the nine teachers because one teacher had no
documentation to provide. PBL unit lesson plans fall under what Merriam and Tisdell (2016)
refer to as personal documents. Although lesson plans can be shared between teachers, they can
be considered personal because they are often developed and used by the teacher to personally
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inform the order of class delivery. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) also claim that personal
documents are an excellent source of data mining for what people believe and their attitude
toward the world. Since the researcher attempted to authentically uncover knowledge and
motivational factors that may influence a teacher’s ability to implement PBL in the classroom,
the PBL unit lesson plans were a good place to find some of those answers. Studying PBL
lesson plans assisted in answering research question 2 as document analysis provided insight into
teacher knowledge about PBL and utilization of the NGSS standards. To analyze these
documents, the researcher compared the lesson plans to the Buck Institute for Education’s (BIE)
Gold Standard PBL: Essential Project Design Elements as shown in Appendix E (Larmer et al.,
2015). Since all science teachers have taken the introductory BIE PBL professional development
course, the unit plans were compared against the rubric for designing projects provided in the
training workbook. Omitted steps could indicate a lack of procedural knowledge, for example.
Too much guidance to lead the students through a step by step solution may indicate a lack of
belief that students can figure out complex problems without explicit instructions. Since
documents were also collected prior to interviews, they also helped to inform specific interview
questions to further illuminate knowledge, motivational or organizational gaps.
Data Analysis
Quantitative and qualitative data analysis was performed in several stages. Survey results
were collated and statistically analyzed for any emergent themes in teacher attitudes toward PBL.
These themes informed classroom observations in terms of what the research decided to
critically look at in each observation session. Classroom observations were analyzed
immediately after the observation, and the notes were used to grade each teacher’s performance
according to the Project Based Teaching Rubric (Appendix D) and thematically coded by the
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researcher with in vivo and a priori coding practices. Themes were extracted from this data that
directly answer the research question. Results of the observations were used in vivo to tailor
interview questions for each observed teacher such that all aspects of the research questions were
explored. Interviews were transcribed and thematically coded by the researcher with in vivo and
a priori coding practices. Emergent themes were triangulated with data from the observations
and surveys. Lesson plan documents were coded and emergent themes were also triangulated
with data from observations, interviews, and surveys. In addition, lesson plans were compared to
Larmer et al.’s (2015) concept of Gold Standard PBL. Lesson plans were assessed checked for
adherence to and deviation from the critical components of Gold Standard PBL by using the
Project Design Rubric and the Essential Project Design Elements Checklist (Appendix E).
Credibility and Trustworthiness
To enhance credibility and trustworthiness, the research methodology included prolonged
and persistent field work, a detailed analysis of the researcher’s bias or reflexivity, verbatim
transcription of interview data, and member checking. Maxwell (2013) indicates that
engagement in a long-term, intensive study where the researcher integrates into the environment
can allow for crosschecking and confirmation of conclusions, enrich the testing of alternative
hypotheses, and allow for an opportunity to collect more diverse data. Not only has the
researcher already spent more than two years working in the environment, the research was
conducted over a three-month period where the researcher integrated into the classrooms of the
stakeholders to interact with both the students and the teachers on a long-term basis. Merriam
and Tisdell (2016) explain that when a researcher enumerates any personal bias or assumptions
about the subject matter of the research that it increases research integrity because those
referencing the study can enlighten the reader into understanding how the researcher has arrived
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at certain conclusions. Maxwell (2013) emphasizes that in order to obtain data full of explicit
detail, interviews should be transcribed verbatim. To get the widest view of the circumstances
involved in the research, each interview was recorded and transcribed to ensure the depth and
richness of detail required. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) also suggest that member checking, or
asking for interviewees to provide feedback on the initial findings of the study from the data
collected so far, increases the internal validity of the study. Proper member checking can omit
the possibility of misinterpreting what a person says during an interview. Therefore, summaries
of the findings were provided to each interviewee to verify that the summaries reflect the
message that each interviewee intended to portray.
Ethics
A thorough investigation into the research questions required interviews and observations
of human subjects, namely the science teachers of Little Hills High School. Any time human
subjects are involved in research, explicit care must be taken to ensure that a high-level of ethics
is upheld. Krueger and Casey (2009) suggest for researchers at the start of the interview to
inform focus group participants of their risks, benefits, voluntary participation, confidentiality,
and ability to opt out at any time. The researcher informed the interviewees of their rights both
verbally and with a written document upon which the researcher obtained the participant’s
signature before proceeding (Krueger & Casey, 2009). Although the researcher did not engage
in focus groups, this same procedure was applied for each interview and observation performed
by providing a written affidavit to each participant prior to interviews or observations. The
written affidavit contained all the participants’ rights written in clear English at the eighth-grade
reading level to enhance fluency. In addition, the researcher asked each participant for
permission to record and obtained signatures before beginning. Each participant was informed
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that the recorded data will be destroyed immediately after transcription, and that no identifying
data will be attached to their records. Data was secured in an encrypted file on a password
protected computer.
Throughout the duration of this study, the researcher acted both as a former fellow
science teacher at Little Hills High School and as the interviewer and observer of the present
science teachers. As a former peer, the researcher held no authority over fellow teachers, which
made it easier to conduct the study without holding a power position over the stakeholder
participants. However, great care was taken to ensure that all interviewees were not
compromised by the actions of this study. Because the researcher is a former peer and has
previously observed other science teachers’ classrooms regularly to enhance teaching practices,
the researcher followed the advice of Rubin and Rubin (2012) by reminding the interviewees that
the observations are for the strict purpose of a research study. Reminding teachers that there will
be an audio recording minimized the chance that the teachers under observation said or did
things that they did not want recorded.
It is essential to address any potential bias that may influence the observations or
interview results as well. The researcher’s previous role in the organization fits well into
Glesne’s (2011) category of friend. Having worked with the science teachers for over two years,
the researcher had established personal as well as professional relationships with the other
science teachers. Therefore, the researcher followed Glesne’s (2011) advice, and thought
carefully about what aspects of divulged stories may be omitted from the data recording and
reporting, especially if they did not assist in deepening the knowledge of the research questions,
or if the information incriminated the participants in any way. The researcher was wary to
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protect the right of privacy of the stakeholders such that any potential or unforeseen risk to the
subjects under study were minimized.
Limitations and Delimitations
It is important to address any weakness in the study, or limitation, that the researcher
cannot control to minimize the effect they may have on the study’s results. The study used a
purposeful convenience sample because it intended to evaluate the knowledge, motivational, and
organizational factors that influence science teacher implementation of project-based learning in
their classrooms. As the study sought to evaluate a singular organization, the results cannot be
generalized across the population of all high schools, but only suggested to apply to schools with
similar demographics that are attempting to implement project-based learning into their current
curriculum. Time also limited the study as data had to be collected between early September and
December of the 2017–2018 school year. Because of the brief window for data collection, two
of the teachers did not implement a project-based learning unit in that time, which may not have
allowed the researcher to get a complete understanding of the knowledge, motivational, and
organizational factors that influence these teachers during lesson observations. The qualitative
nature of the study was limited also by the quality of the interview responses. Teachers may
have omitted information in their responses that they felt represented them in a negative light.
The researcher triangulated interview responses with classroom observations and with lesson
plans and surveys to minimize the impact of omitted data from interviews.
This study also contains delimitations, or choices made by the researcher that limit the
scope of the research. The main objective of the study was to evaluate how well the organization
has accomplished its goal to implement authentic project-based learning in its science classrooms
that align to the Next Generation Science Standards. It was the researcher’s goal to use the
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information of the study to assist the organization in reaching this goal if the data found that it
has not achieved the goal, or to uncover the successful actions driving the change if the goal has
been reached or exceeded. The researcher chose this objective to research because project-based
learning is a leading promising practice that if done well can lead to more student interest and
future engagement in STEM, a goal the researcher holds a deep passion for. Based on the nature
of the research objective, the researcher chose to research a singular organization based on
convenience and access to the student. Therefore, generalization of the results will be limited to
public high school science teachers in the process of learning how to implement project-based
learning in their classrooms. This study is also delimited by the researcher’s use of Clark and
Estes’ (2008) framework of knowledge, motivational, and organizational (KMO) factors that
influence organizational change initiatives. The researcher looked specifically for KMO factors
that affect teacher performance, which bounds the study to these three influencers.

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CHAPTER 4
RESULTS AND FINDINGS
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the degree to which Little Hills High School
was achieving its goal of implementing two high-quality Next Generation Science Standards
(NGSS)-aligned Project Based Learning (PBL) units in every science classroom by the end of
the 2017–2018 school year. The analysis focused on knowledge, motivation, and organizational
influences related to achieving this organizational goal. While a complete evaluation project
would focus on all stakeholders in the organization, for practical purposes the stakeholders in
this analysis were the science teachers.
As such, the questions that guide this study were the following:
1. To what extent is the organization meeting its goal of implementing high-quality Next
Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned Project Based Learning (PBL) units in
every science classroom during the 2017–2018 school year?
2. What are the knowledge, motivation and organizational influences related to
achieving the goal of implementing two high-quality NGSS-aligned PBL units in
every science classroom by the end of the 2017–2018 school year?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
In order to answer the research questions, the researcher used an embedded mixed
methods design where the researcher chose to deliver a survey to all nine stakeholders to gather
demographic data and a general understanding of teacher attitudes toward project-based learning
to inform the larger qualitative study through observations, interviews, and collection of PBL
unit plans. This chapter will sequentially answer the first two research questions by integrating
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quantitative survey results with qualitative observations, interviews, and document analyses
findings that address each research question respectively.
Participating Stakeholders
Participants of this study included all nine science teachers that comprised the entire
LHHS science department in the 2017–2018 school year. Each teacher completed a survey and
interview, eight teachers submitted PBL planning documentation, and seven teachers were
observed while implementing portions of a project. Documentation was not obtained from one
teacher because this teacher did not have a plan written for the project, and two of the teachers
were not observed because they were not implementing PBL units during the time the researcher
conducted observations. Summarized below is a list of participants in the study and relevant
background information for each. Participants are identified throughout this chapter by the
pseudonyms introduced in this section.
Isaac. Isaac has less than ten years of experience as a science teacher.
Charles. Charles has been a science teacher for more than ten years.
Marie. Marie has been a science teacher for more than ten years.
Dorothy. Dorothy has worked more than ten years as a science teacher.
Jane. Jane has been a science teacher for more than ten years.
Rachel. Rachel has been a science teacher for less than ten years.
Pascal. Pascal has been a science teacher for less than ten years.
Albert. Albert has been a science teacher for less than ten years.
Rosalind. Rosalind has been a science teacher for less than ten years.
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Results and Findings
This chapter will sequentially address the first two research questions. First it will
address the extent to which LHHS science teachers are implementing high-quality project-based
learning by thoroughly discussing the results of the researcher’s rubric assessments of the PBL
documentation with the Project Design Rubric, and teacher classroom observations with the
Project Based Teaching Rubric. Then the chapter will address the knowledge, motivation, and
organizational factors that influence the extent that the science teachers implement high-quality
PBL by integrating quantitative survey results and qualitative interview findings with the
previous rubric assessments of the document analysis and observations.
The Extent LHHS Implements High-Quality PBL Using NGSS
This section will discuss the results and findings that relate to the first research question:
To what extent is the organization meeting its goal of implementing high-quality Next
Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned Project Based Learning (PBL) units in every
science classroom during the 2017–2018 school year? In order to target the question, PBL unit
plans were collected and assessed according to the Buck Institute for Education’s (BIE) Project
Design Rubric (Appendix E). Additionally, observations were done in the seven classrooms that
implemented PBL and assessed against the BIE’s Project Based Teaching Rubric (Appendix D).
Results from these assessments were used to evaluate the quality of PBL implementation. In
order to assess PBL unit connection with the NGSS standards, PBL unit plans were inspected for
addressing NGSS standards across the four dimensions of Performance Expectations (PEs),
Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), Cross Cutting Concepts (CCCs), and Science and Engineering
Practices (SEPs). Any standards mentioned in unit plans were checked against project activities,
assessments, and learning objectives for proper alignment of chosen standards. In cases where
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no NGSS standards were mentioned in the documentation received, or in the one case where no
documentation was received, interviews were cross checked for evidence of alignment to
standards, observations were reviewed for evidence of standards written on the boards, and
NGSS standards were consulted and evaluated against objectives, activities, and assessments
mentioned in the unit plan or in interviews. The main findings were:
• Three of the nine teachers currently provided high-quality PBL unit planning per the
Project Design Rubric.
• One of the nine teachers currently performed high-quality PBL implementation.
Project Design Rubric
The Project Design Rubric (Appendix E) has fourteen points of assessment spread across
the categories of Key Knowledge Understanding and Success Skills, Challenging Problem or
Question, Sustained Inquiry, Authenticity, Student Voice and Choice, Reflection, Critique and
Revision, and Public Product. Each aspect of assessment is indicated by a bold, right-pointed
arrow on the rubric. Scores range from Lacks Features of Effective PBL (Low), Needs Further
Development (Middle), or Includes Features of Effective PBL (High). In order for the project
plan to be considered high-quality, unit plans should earn no more than one point in the Lacks
Features of Effective PBL column and should earn a majority of points in Includes Features of
Effective PBL column. Although a perfect project will score all points in the Includes Features
of Effective PBL, the science teachers are in the process of developing their craft in PBL design,
and it should be expected that there is still room for growth in this area. Figure 3 shows how
each teacher scored on their PBL unit plans in each category of assessment. The graph titles
indicate how many aspects of each category are found on the rubric.

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Figure 3. Results for project design rubric assessments for all teachers
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Key knowledge, understanding, and success skills. The Project Design Rubric
assesses two aspects of design: how well the project makes the learning goals clear and based on
standards, and how well success skills are targeted within the project. For the purposes of this
research, Key Knowledge, Understanding, and Success Skills (KKUSS) was assessed according
to the use of NGSS standards as it is the organizational goal for all science teachers to align
projects to NGSS standards. Of all the collected documents from teachers, two of the teachers
scored High for both aspects, one teacher scored High for one aspect and Middle for another, two
teachers scored High for one aspect and Low for the other, two teachers scored Middle for one
aspect and Low for the other, and two teachers scored Low for both aspects. This section will go
into specific detail for how the project was assessed for KKUSS, as this relates directly back to
the research question as to how well the projects integrate the NGSS.
High scoring. Dorothy and Isaac scored High for both aspects of KKUSS. Of the two,
Dorothy had the most detail for linking NGSS standards and success skills to performance
outcomes, activities, and stages of her project. Dorothy used a project template that included a
chart for standards alignment. It listed all four dimensions of the NGSS standards, which
specific standard fell into each dimension, and how these standards manifested in the project.
Additionally, Dorothy used a chart to list the success skills targeted including selecting relevant
sources, explanation of evidence, multimedia in oral presentation, and oral presentation.
Evidence for planning how to target success skills was included in the plan by connecting
success skills with checkpoints and daily activities. Dorothy’s well-documented PBL unit plan
made it very easy to assess her attempt to align to standards.
Isaac’s unit plan consisted of a daily calendar and the handout he gave his students for the
project overview. None of these documents contained an explicit connection to standards. After
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looking at the course description for his class on the University of California A-G Course
Management Portal, the researcher saw that he had connected his project to the NGSS standards,
explaining which science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, performance
expectations, and success skills he was focused on developing in his students. It is clear that his
initial plans connected back to the NGSS standards as they were articulated in his course
description. Although Isaac did not provide a complete lesson plan, it is possible that he had
memorized this information and no longer needed to refer to documentation beyond a daily
schedule to keep on track.
Middle-high scoring. Pascal scored High and Middle for KKUSS on his project. The
project was limited in connecting to more than one NGSS standard by including only one DCI.
However, the project contained a large scope of success skills targeted for students to
communicate and formulate a brand. The documentation provided by Pascal was a link to a
website that instructs his students, so the researcher did not obtain any formal documentation.
This aligns well with Pascal’s assertion during the interview that he does not like to use forms
because he feels, “bogged down,” by the paperwork, “because I kinda obsess over it.” Pascal
may have thought about a deeper connection to the standards than were apparent through his
instructional website, but the researcher only had this documentation to justify assessment.
Low-high scoring. Both Jane and Marie scored a Low and a High for KKUSS. Marie
used a project design template from the Buck Institute for Education. Here, she did not connect
any NGSS standards directly to the project, but instead seemed to align the older California
Science Standards to the activities. While specific learning content contained in the old
standards can easily be argued as important knowledge necessary for building toward meeting
NGSS standards, they are not directly connected to any of the PEs, DCIs, CCCs, or SEPs. For
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this reason, Marie scored Low for one aspect of KKUSS on her project. However, Marie did
specifically target individual success skills in the project plan, such as learning how to
collaborate as a team and learning how to present to an audience outside of the classroom, which
earned one High scoring aspect. It is possible that Marie has documentation that links the NGSS
standards to the project and that this documentation was not presented to the researcher.
Jane’s project linked clearly back to an NGSS standard, scoring one High aspect.
However, the project outline did not target any specific success skills. The unit plan appeared to
be a work in progress and many sections contained lists of ideas and a rough outline of four
learning tasks to complete with sparse notes. As Jane plans to implement this project in the
semester following data collection, it is possible that the project plan will be updated to include
success skills.
Low-middle scoring. Both Albert and Charles scored a Low and a Middle for KKUSS.
Albert provided a sequence of daily lesson plans for his project that listed NGSS standards,
however the standards chosen for the project appeared to misalign with the activities in the
project. At the time of the project delivery, Albert did mention that the lesson plans he handed to
the researcher for his project were not yet adapted to the BIE Gold Standards as the project was
designed before he attended the development session.
Charles had no documentation for his project to assist the researcher in evaluating his
project design. When asked about this, Charles indicated that he believed a project plan would
limit the creativity of his students, so he preferred to work without a plan. As such, there was no
evidence that the project plan explicitly targeted, assessed, or scaffolded the development of
success skills. During classroom observations, the researcher did find evidence of the project
hitting various standards for Advanced Placement. However, it is not certain that the project
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specifically targeted any NGSS standards. Despite not specifically targeting NGSS standards, it
is possible that some NGSS standards were met during the progression of this project.
Low scoring. Both Rosalind and Rachel scored Low on both aspects of KKUSS.
Rosalind’s project did not specifically state any success skills or NGSS standards, as the
documentation provided for the researcher included only a handout description of the project for
the students. Since none of the NGSS standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) directly related to the
project activities or subject matter, the researcher could not find any direct NGSS performance
expectations or Disciplinary Core Ideas that related to the project, although there may be SEPs,
or CCCs that could apply to this project.
Rachel’s project documentation was a handout from a previous year’s national
competition that did not appear to be changed from its original form. This project was intended
to be done as a homework piece, so students would not interact with the teacher at all on the
project. As such, this project acted more like a summative assessment than a project with
learning objectives and standards to be met, since the teacher was not expecting to guide the
students to complete the project. No standards were mentioned, and although the competition
was thematically covering specific classroom science topics, the main focus of the competition
assessment was not on the science knowledge presented within, but on the artistic aspects of the
project. However, this project has potential to become an effective Gold standard, in class PBL
with some adaptation and planning.
Extent of integrating NGSS into PBL unit plans. As a result of a thorough assessment
of PBL Unit planning, four of the nine science teachers have been able to integrate the NGSS
standards successfully into their PBL unit plans. Since the organization’s goal is to have all
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science teachers integrating NGSS into PBL units, the organization is not meeting this portion of
its goal. Chapter 5 will discuss recommendations for improving this outcome.
Challenging problem or question. The Project Design Rubric assesses two aspects of
posing a challenging problem or question: If the central issue is at the correct level of challenge
for the students, and that is has an understandable, open-ended driving question aligned to the
learning goals. Three teachers earned a Middle and High score, four teachers earned a Low and
High score, and two teachers received both Low scores.
Middle-high scoring. Isaac’s unit plan scored in the Middle-High range because some
students could be able to successfully create a working project without learning the intended
knowledge, understanding, and skills. Isaac’s students could successfully implement the project
entirely by trial and error, and not all students in the class would have to learn the objectives to
obtain a working final product. However, the central challenge was at an appropriate level for
the students.
Both Dorothy and Marie scored in a Middle-High range on their projects because of their
use of multiple driving questions that lack provocative language. Marie’s two driving questions
do not appear to inspire the students or appear to be truly open ended. According to Larmer et
al. (2015), inspiring questions provoke and intrigue students, and the language will not sound
like language students will find in a textbook. The questions are not open ended in that there are
concrete, predictable ways to answer the questions, which can be easily found on an internet
source. Larmer et al. (2015) insist that the driving question should not be answered easily
through an online search. Additionally, the question itself should connect back to the project
product. The question could be reformulated in a way that contains the language of the standards
but leaves it open-ended in how students can create the product using that knowledge.
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Low scoring. Low scores were collected from the rest of the teachers because they all
lacked a specific driving question. Larmer et al. (2015) indicate that driving questions are an
essential force behind moving students through a project because they can constantly refer back
to the question to guide them along to their next steps to answer the question. As such, teachers
should have the driving question posted in the classroom in order to refer students back to it
when they need redirection or need to contextualize any new knowledge they are learning.
Sustained inquiry. The Project Design Rubric assesses two aspects of sustained inquiry:
how rigorous the inquiry is, and whether that inquiry is guided and continued by student
questioning. Three teachers earned High ratings in both aspects, two teachers earned Middle
scores in both aspects, and four teachers earned one Low and one Middle score on the rubric.
High scoring. Isaac, Marie, and Pascal earned High scores for sustained inquiry because
they all had integrated inquiry-based labs or activities into the unit design to inspire students to
continue questioning, researching and iterating through design cycles to improve the final
product. For example, Pascal set the stage for student inquiry by building in sequential design
steps for the students to create a product that would represent all subsequent work in the class.
Each step requires students to evaluate what they know, to identify what they do not know, and
to research information that will fill the gaps they need to produce a high-quality project design.
Middle and low scoring. Teachers with Middle and Low scores had unit plans with final
activities that could be completed either through trial and error, or the research involved was to
gather information without asking deeper questions. For example. Rosalind’s project seemed
limited to the activity of sorting. Student inquiry was limited to looking at how others have done
such sorting and applying similar techniques to the task. While it is a valuable activity to teach
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students the process of classification, the process of inquiry required to do so was brief enough to
be complete in one period.
Authenticity. The Project Design Rubric assesses one aspect of authenticity: the extent
to which the project integrates with the real-world and impacts the world outside of school. Two
teachers earned High scores, four received Middle scores, and three received Low scores for
authenticity.
High scoring. Rachel earned a High score for authenticity because her project consists
of a group of students entering a competition. This is a real-world context, judged by
professionals, that has a cash prize and public recognition for the top three projects. All tasks
involved in the project require the use of professional software and legitimate professional
techniques. Pascal earned a High score for authenticity because his project requires that the
students create a product that they will subsequently use with all remaining work they do in the
class. Additionally, students make their products public by adding them to their resumes,
websites, and embedding them in their emails for any correspondence students make with
professionals.
Middle and low scoring. Projects earning a Middle score contained a few real-world
features, but they may have been limited in scope or not evolve naturally. For example, Isaac’s
product uses real construction tools and principles of construction and design to create.
However, the final product itself lacks authenticity because it has no function or purpose in
application to the real world. Altering the final project slightly could make this project stronger
in the authenticity domain in that it has a need beyond the scope of the classroom.
Projects earning a Low score resembled projects traditionally found in schools. These
mainly consisted of creating a poster, a presentation, or a digital presentation, with products that
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had no use in real world contexts. For example, one teacher’s students were asked to create a
project on poster paper. This project consisted of activities that built valuable classification
skills, but the final product did not connect well to real world value nor could the product be
used to make an impact outside of school.
Student voice and choice. The Project Design Rubric assesses two aspects of student
voice and choice: how many opportunities do students have to express themselves within their
project in major areas such as what product to create, how to organize tasks, or what resources to
consult, and the rubric also checks for the ability for students to work freely with just the right
amount of teacher assistance. Two teachers earned High ratings in both aspects, one teacher
scored a Middle and High rating, while the rest of the teachers scored Middle, Low, or a
combination of the two for both aspects.
High scoring. Projects earning High scores for student voice and choice gave students
both the opportunity to make important directional decisions on their projects and had
scaffolding ready for groups that need extra assistance, while allowing more independent groups
to move ahead at their own pace. For example, Pascal’s project allowed for students to pick their
own groups according to future professional interests. The students had the freedom to create a
project to represent themselves and that fit these joined interests.
Middle and low scoring. Projects that did not score highly on student voice and choice
gave few or no opportunities for students to choose their own pathways to complete the project
and either had too much or too little teacher guidance. For example, Albert’s project did not
build in enough scaffolding or support for students to make calculations or collect data, and as
such, the students were expected to work independently without enough teacher assistance.
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Reflection. The Project Design Rubric assesses one aspect of reflection: how often
students and teachers engage in deep, thorough reflection throughout the duration of the project.
One teacher earned a High rating, six teachers earned a Middle rating, and one teacher earned a
Low rating in reflection.
High scoring. Dorothy earned a High score in reflection for her project plan as each day
in the project calendar has a plan for interactive reflection, making reflection a regular activity
with the potential for steering it to reflect deeply. For example, the PBL unit plan uses exit
tickets asking reflective questions such as, “How well did I use my work time today?” and “How
could I improve my working habits for next class?” These exit tickets can be reviewed and
discussed at the beginning of the next class to reinforce student-driven goals.
Middle and low scoring. Middle scoring projects had built in reflection time that mostly
occurred at the end of a project while Low scoring projects did not mention reflection explicitly
in either the unit plan, during observations, or in interviews. For example, Rosalind’s project
earned a Middle score because the students reflect on the project by writing a reflective
paragraph about what they learned only at the end of the project. Rachel earned a Low score
because the Unit Plan does not mention reflection, and the project is done almost entirely without
teacher guidance.
Critique and revision. The Project Design Rubric assesses two aspects of critique and
revision: the number of chances students have to give and receive feedback from teachers, peers,
or professionals, and the extent to which students actually utilize this feedback to make revisions.
Three teachers earned High ratings in both aspects, one teacher earned a High and a Middle
score, one teacher earned a Middle score for both aspects, two teachers earned one Middle and
one Low score, and two teachers earned Low scores for both aspects on the rubric.
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High scoring. Isaac, Dorothy, and Pascal all earned High scores for this row in the
rubric because their unit plans consisted of regular chances to receive critique from other groups
as well as the teacher. Furthermore, activities were built in to revise initial designs by using the
feedback. For example, in Pascal’s unit plan, students have to present first drafts of the product
to other students and blend or refine them as they discuss the elements of design with their team
mates. This process is done after students create an informal drawing of the final product,
develop that into a formal design, translate this into a digital design, and refine into a final
product over several iterations. This regular process of critique followed by revision allows
students many opportunities to improve their work.
Middle and low scoring. Projects that scored in the Middle range may mention a
feedback process, but it may happen only once or as an informal activity. Additionally, Middle
scoring projects may not require students to revise work based on previous feedback. Low
scoring projects account for teacher feedback only, if any feedback is given at all, and normally
do not mention any process for revision based on feedback from others. For example, Jane’s
project scored in the Middle because the project calls for a critique of the experimental design
within the summative assessment, which does not allow for students to revise their work based
on feedback. Rachel scored Low on her project because the products receive only a final grade
from the teacher before being sent to the competition for judging. Students do not get any
formative feedback because they complete the entire task as an extended homework assignment.
Public product. The Project Design Rubric assesses two aspects of public product:
whether or not students show their work to an audience outside of school, and if the students
must explain in detail their reasoning behind the decisions they made and what they learned from
engaging in the project. Two teachers earned High ratings in both aspects, two teachers earned
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one Middle and one High mark, two teachers earned Middle scores in both aspects, and four
teachers earned one Low and one Middle score on the rubric.
High scoring. Isaac and Marie both earned High scores on their project designs because
they both require the students to present their final projects to a public audience and explain their
reasoning behind the choices they made throughout the entire build of the project and answer any
other relevant questions that the public audience may ask. Marie chose to arrange a public
interaction where the students engaged the public to interact with their projects while the crowd
asks the student designers pointed questions about the processes they took to design the project.
Isaac created an opportunity where a panel of experts arrived on campus to watch the students
demonstrate the functionality of their projects and ask questions about the design process and the
science involved during the scope of the project.
Middle-high scoring. Teachers with Middle-High scoring projects were able to make the
student work public beyond the classroom but did not require that the students explain their
reasoning or learning process to the public audience. Pascal’s project was made public by
having the final project displayed on student resumes, emails, websites, and all project work that
they use to interact with vendors, mentors, and other public they may contact for the purposes of
the class. However, the public audience is not specifically targeted to ask questions about the
project or to hear about the students’ reasoning behind their choices. These items are still bound
to classroom evaluation with the teacher only. Similarly, Rachel’s project is made public by
having the students submit their projects to a contest. The outside audience judges the projects
but does not provide any feedback or ask any questions about the student process.
Middle and low scoring. Middle and Low scoring projects either limit the project
presentation to the classroom or do not present projects in a formal manner to anyone besides the
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teacher, and do not require students to explain publicly anything about how they chose to design
the project or to publicly address what they learned during the process. For example, Rosalind’s
project requires that students present their poster to the class, but not to a public audience. Then
students privately discuss what they learned during the process in a write-up handed in to the
teacher rather than as an open-forum.
Extent teachers design high-quality PBL unit plans. As mentioned before, project
design plans are considered high-quality if they earn no more than one Low rating for all aspects
and earn a majority of High scores for all aspects. The bottom of Figure 3 shows a tally of
ratings on each PBL unit plan for all fourteen aspects assessed on the Project Design Rubric.
Using these criteria, Isaac, Marie, and Pascal all have been able to design a high-quality PBL.
Therefore, three of the nine teachers have produced high-quality unit plans with the
documentation to support adherence to what Larmer et al. (2015) call Gold Standard PBL project
design.
Project Based Teaching Rubric
The Project Based Teaching Rubric (Appendix D) has thirty-three points of assessment
spread across the categories of Design and Plan, Align to Standards, Build the Culture, Manage
Activities, Scaffold Student Learning, Assess Student Learning, and Engage and Coach. Each
aspect of assessment is indicated by a bold, right-pointed arrow on the rubric and can be scored
as Beginning PBL Teacher (Low), Developing PBL Teacher (Middle), or Gold Standard PBL
Teacher (High). In order for the PBL delivery to be considered high-quality, observations
should earn a majority of points in the Gold Standard PBL Teacher (High) column and no more
than three points in the Beginning PBL Teacher (Low) column. Again, these teachers are still
developing as PBL teachers, and it should be expected that there is still room for growth in their
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practice delivering PBL. Since only seven teachers were in the process of delivering PBL units
while the researcher was gathering data, two of the teachers, Rachel and Jane, were not observed
or assessed with the Project Based Teaching Rubric. As such, the extent to which teachers are
delivering high-quality PBL will be limited to the seven teachers that were observed. Figure 4
illustrates how teachers scored in each category of assessment. The graph titles indicate how
many aspects of each category are assessed on the rubric.
Design and plan. The Project Based Teaching Rubric assesses three aspects of the
design and plan of the project: the extent to which the project includes all Essential Project
Design Elements per the Project Design Rubric assessed in the previous section, the level of
detail in the plan, and whether the teacher has resources readily available for the students to use.
The Design and Plan category for the teaching rubric differs from the planning rubric in that it
specifically looks for detailed written plans, so teachers with high scoring Project Design Rubrics
may have lower scores in the Project Based Teaching Rubric for the Design and Plan Category.
Two teachers scored two High and one Middle, two teachers scored 1 High, 1 Middle, and 1
Low, two teachers scored 1 High and 2 Low, and one teacher scored 1 Middle and 2 Low.

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Figure 4. Project based teaching rubric results for the seven observed teachers

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Highest scoring. Isaac and Dorothy had the highest scoring rubrics for Design and Plan.
Both teachers had resources at the ready for their students to immediately use, and both had
detailed calendars that included daily events complete with plans for scaffolding when necessary.
Both teachers earned one Middle score because each teacher had some Essential Project Design
Elements (Appendix E) that could have been improved. For example, Dorothy’s plan did not
call for a public presentation of the student products and the final products lacked complete
authenticity because the products were not intended for use beyond the classroom. Isaac’s plans
also could have had a more authentic product, as the project products have limited purpose
beyond the scope of the classroom. A more authentic product would have the intention to use
the product beyond the scope of the classroom. Other teachers with a High score mark earned
them for having the materials to hand during the project. Albert had science kits and computers
for his class to use, Rosalind had materials, computers, and poster paper at the ready, Pascal had
relevant software and computers available, and Marie had all lab supplies available for students
to use.
Middle and low scoring. Teachers earning Middle and Low scores in the Design and
Plan category did not have written plans or a project calendar, did not anticipate all resources
necessary, or did not include all the Essential Project Design Elements. For example, Pascal’s
project did not include written plans for scaffolding or written plans for how the teacher plans to
assess student learning on an individual and a group basis. Although Pascal likely had such
ideas organized in his mind or written in a teacher plan book, having the plan written down will
facilitate his ability to stay focused, and be mindful about the daily goals. Charles scored Low
on planning because he had no documentation to follow regarding his PBL lesson. He
mentioned that he felt writing a plan would limit student voice and choice. Larmer et al. (2015)
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mention that new teachers should err on the side of over planning rather than under planning a
PBL as the beginning structure is more important for developing teacher confidence than having
ample amounts of student voice and choice.
Align to standards. The Project Based Teaching Rubric assesses two aspects for
aligning the plan to standards: How clear the alignment of standards to the criteria of the product
is, and that all assessments, scaffolding, and critique focus also explicitly refer back to standards.
Aligning to Standards on the teaching rubric differs from the key knowledge, understanding and
success skills category on the project design rubric because the design rubric focuses on 21st
century success skills and general project focus on knowledge derived from the standards while
the teaching rubric focuses on how deeply the teacher links all class activities to the outcomes
derived from the standards. Teachers not only have to explicitly keep the final product
standards-based, but also the scaffolding activities, methods of critique, and rubrics for
assessments. One teacher earned High scores for both aspects, one teacher earned a High and
Middle score, two teachers received both Middle scores, one teacher earned a middle and low
score, and two teachers earned Low scores on both aspects.
High scoring. High scores are earned for detailed unit plans that lay out a rough calendar
of activities in such a way that every milestone of the project has a link to the particular standard
it addresses. Additionally, the activities students engage within, such as scaffolding for
achievement, feedback and revision, and all rubrics will also refer to the standards of student
achievement. Dorothy earned High scores on both aspects because her unit plan had a full
calendar that clearly linked all aspects of scaffolding, critique, assessment, and final product to
the targeted standards. To achieve this goal, Dorothy’s unit plan used various tables with a
column that asked for what standards are addressed for each activity.
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Middle scoring. Middle scoring teachers did not explicitly link all aspects of the project
deliverables to specific standards in such a way that makes it clear students have reached the
standards targeted in the unit plan. Additionally, embedded activities, such as scaffolding,
critique, or rubric assessments only sometimes or partially refer to achieving the standards
mentioned in the unit plan. Marie earned a Middle score because her initial declaration of
standards did not include NGSS standards, but only addressed success skills. These success
skills were not referred to when establishing the components that the project needed to include
such as sturdiness, blueprints, instructions, safety precautions, and the components that needed to
be in the line-up.
Low scoring. Low scoring teachers give students criteria for final products, but never
mention how the standards connect to them or the standards are not included at all. Additionally,
none of the activities or milestones for the project contain any explicit connection to the
standards. Albert earned Low scores because although he stated standards in his lesson plans,
the standards did not seem to align with activities, or final products. The mentioned standards do
not cover the same fundamental knowledge and understanding developed through the project
progression. Either different standards should be chosen for this project, or the project should be
altered to fall in line with what the standards call for students to be able to accomplish in their
school work.
Build the culture. The Project Based Teaching Rubric assesses six aspects for teacher
efforts to build the culture: the extent that norms are established and monitored by students, the
extent that student voice and choice is used to drive the direction of the project according to
student interests, how well students understand what they need to do to stay on task without
teacher instruction, how well the students work together as a team, the understanding that
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students have about there being more than one correct answer to a problem, and the extent to
which students value grit, critique, and revision of work. Referring to scores as High-Middle-
Low, one teacher scored 4-2-0, one teacher scored 3-3-0, one teacher scored 2-4-0, one teacher
scored 0-5-1, one teacher scored 0-4-2, one teacher scored 0-3-3, and one teacher scored 0-0-6.
Mostly high scoring. Isaac was scored mostly High in building the culture. His students
self-regulated during class, as the researcher heard instances of team members telling others to,
“stop texting and come help me.” Students were able to use their own voice and choice to come
up with solutions to problems they encountered during building. The teacher would check in
regularly with the entire class, but the students knew what they had to work on without the
teacher having to individually check in with each team first. Additionally, students understood
that they had many options to solve the problem instead of adhering to the idea that there was
only one approach. This was apparent in student design, as many students used various methods
of daisy-chaining physical interactions in their projects to reach the same goal. In fact, students
interpreted the final goal of the project in creative ways, which made each project unique.
However, there was some evidence in the class of some groups giving up before they had done
enough revision. One group decided to stop making adjustments to their project because it had
already worked once. However, the teacher encouraged all teams to test the projects for
reliability, which would require multiple test trials. Additionally, some groups did not work
productively with their time. There were two students who sat together watching YouTube
videos on their phones instead of helping their two other partners complete the final steps of the
project design, for instance.
Mostly middle scoring. Typical Middle scoring projects have students that are beginning
to approach smooth independence while working. These students know the norms, but still need
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teachers to remind them when the norms are broken. Student voice and choice is restricted in
scope, allowing students to choose from a variety of predetermined ideas. Students have some
periods of working independently from the teacher but require help as soon as they encounter an
obstacle. Teachers need to intervene more often as students wander off task, and students may
feel timid to express their ideas because they have a slight fear that they might not be as right as
they could be. Also, students are willing to revise their work, but only when the teacher insists.
Charles scored mostly Middle on his project because students were shy about expressing their
solutions to the problem. One student said, “I know this is probably not the best way to do it,”
when the researcher asked her reasons for choosing the solution she implemented. The student
seemed to care more about the perception of how correct her answer was than how well she was
able to articulate her reasoning. Additionally, the students required teacher presence to stay on
task with the assignment. When the teacher moved to the adjoining room to help groups that had
moved in there to work, many of the groups of students in the other room would take a break to
chat about social themes on campus, check their phones for notifications, or watch videos until
the teacher came back into the room.
Mostly low scoring. Teachers with mostly low scores had not built stable norms in the
classroom or built in much autonomy for students to be productive without direct teacher
supervision. Albert scored Low in building the culture because he had little control over student
behavior. At one point during the class, he turned on music because he felt it helped students
concentrate. However, after he sat down with a student to help answer some of her questions on
the project, a few students approached the radio, turned up the volume, and began picking a
sequence of songs for the classroom. It took about two minutes before the majority of students
had attention on what song would play next instead of their projects. The teacher had his
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attention on another group at the time, and perhaps did not notice the disruption of the class
around the music.
Manage activities. The Project Based Teaching Rubric assesses five aspects covering
how teachers manage PBL activities: the mixture of individual, team, and whole group
interaction, the extent norms are followed such that class time is used efficiently, the types of
management tools the teacher uses, the extent to which schedules and checkpoints are able to be
met, and the care with which the teams are formed. Referring to scores as High-Middle-Low,
one teacher scored 5-0-0, one teacher scored 3-1-1, one teacher scored 1-4-0, one teacher scored
1-3-1, one teacher scored 0-4-1, one teacher scored 0-3-2, and one scored 0-2-3.
Mostly high scoring. Mostly High scoring teachers were able to manage the classroom
such that time was spent mostly on task, and too much time was not spent on one activity
without making a transition into another activity. These teachers were able to break up the time
in class in a way that held students accountable for working, and to not keep students working
for too long such that they begin to wander off task. For example, Isaac managed his classroom
by beginning the class with an outline of checkpoints the class had to meet, a given set of time
for each task, and an outline of his time expectations written on the board. He gave his class
three-minute warnings to allow for them to transition into the next stage of the class. After
allowing groups to work together on building the project, he checked in with the entire group of
students, and had each group report out their status. He then directed groups to divide their work
up independently. Students were asked to individually mark on their journals a running record of
the steps they had taken to build the project. After allowing students some time to complete this
task, he got the attention of the class again to remind them of the time limits they had and the
goals they had to achieve. For students that were falling behind, he reminded them to prioritize
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the work such that more important work got done first because the less important work would
not impact the results of the project as much if the students found that they did not have time to
complete it. By breaking the class up into smaller increments of time to complete manageable
goals, the students were able to work continuously and effectively.
Mostly low scoring. Albert scored mostly Low on his Manage Activities assessment
because in a time period of ninety-five minutes, he began the class time with announcing the
objectives that the students needed to meet followed by a short 7-minute lecture covering the
equations the students needed to complete the task, and then allowed the students to work.
Although he did check in with two or three groups, he only approached groups that specifically
raised their hands. Additionally, he did not give any time warnings, whole group check-ins, or
arrange group interactivity throughout the lesson. As a result, after about 30 minutes, sixteen of
the thirty students were off task either by watching YouTube videos or they were gathered
around the computer at the front of the room attempting to choose a series of songs to play for
the duration of the class. The teacher was deeply involved in assisting a single student with her
project, so it is possible that the teacher did not know this was happening in the classroom.
Scaffold student learning. The Project Based Teaching Rubric assesses four aspects
covering how teachers scaffold student learning: the extent that teachers offer access to
supporting instruction when necessary while removing supports when students no longer need
them, the extent that scaffolding is given when triggered by student questions, if and how
success skills are taught, and the balance between scaffolding student inquiry and allowing
students to work independently. Referring to scores as High-Middle-Low, one teacher scored a
3-1-0, one teacher scored a 2-2-0, two teachers scored a 0-4-0, two teachers scored a 0-1-3, and
one teacher scored a 0-0-4.
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Mostly high scoring. Isaac scored mostly High for scaffolding student learning. When
Isaac sets the students to work independently, he checks in with all groups. When students ask
him targeted questions about their projects, he is careful not to give the students direct answers
even if he knows what is going wrong with the project. Instead, he will guide the students by
asking them to check certain aspects of the project or to run a small test trial set up in a certain
way that will expose the problem for the students to see. In this way, the students discover for
themselves what is going wrong with their projects instead of having the teacher tell them what
is wrong and having the students change things because it is what the teacher said they should
do. Isaac knows when to let the students work through a problem without his help by focusing
on cues. If the students keep working and trying new things, Isaac allows them to continue
without interruption. If, however, the students stop working entirely, or get off task, he quickly
arrives to assist with the scaffolding to keep the team going.
Mostly low scoring. Low scoring and Mostly Low scoring teachers do not really account
for scaffolding during class time and treat all students equally despite disparate needs. Teachers
may frontload information without any student inquiry guiding the information. When students
are asked to do research, many times it is not structured or guided by the teacher, and as a result,
deeper questions about the information do not get posed in class. Rosalind scored Low for
scaffolding student learning because when the researcher discussed the project with students, six
out of the eight groups mentioned that they did not know how to make their projects, and that the
only instruction the teacher offered was an online tutorial that the students had to complete
individually. While the teacher may have offered more instruction on how to make the projects,
it is evident that student understanding and confidence in their work was low. Many of the
students had a difficult time connecting the project requirements with the science they were
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learning, which indicates that the teacher was not able to communicate the purpose to her
students in a way that helped them understand the connection. Students also did not understand
where to look for information to help them achieve their goals. The use of structured scaffolding
would have been an appropriate way to get confused and unproductive students back on task.
Assess student learning. The Project Based Teaching Rubric assesses six aspects
covering how teachers assess student learning: The extent to which the final product of the
project is used to assess targeted learning objectives and success skills, the extent to which the
assessment covers individual learning, the use of formative assessment throughout the project,
the regularity of critique and revision, the number times students engage in self and peer
assessment, and the use of rubrics aligned to standards. Referring to scores as High-Middle-
Low, one teacher received a 3-3-0, one received a 3-2-1, one received a 3-1-2, one received a 2-
3-1, one received a 0-5-1, and two received a 0-2-4.
High-middle scoring. The best performing teachers on the Project Based Teaching
Rubric scored mostly in the High and the Middle range. Marie scored High for her division of
individual and group assessment, the range of activities she assessed, and her use of formative
assessment. Her assessment of the units including listening to student reasoning with support
from evidence obtained through experimentation, collecting individual tests on the key content
knowledge, having individuals reflect on their personal websites, formative quizzes at the
beginning of each class, group share-outs, and by assessing the final project itself. These
assessments are evenly distributed between group and individual assessment. Her use of
formative assessment by beginning the class with short, low-stakes quizzes that students peer
grade and correct as a group invites students to learn from their mistakes and gives students
familiarity with what information is important to retain, and in this way, students learn through
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formative assessment. Some areas where Marie is still developing include aligning her rubrics to
NGSS standards instead of just success skills, and to ensure that students regularly use the rubric
to assess their own projects and others throughout the duration of the project. In Marie’s class, it
also appears that students do more peer assessing than they do self-assessing their own work.
When students make arguments about results of their experiments, for example, no groups
mentioned the possibility of human error in the results. Additionally, when students presented an
argument to the class about which experiment design would work best for the project, there was
little thoughtful discourse between separate groups with differing opinions. Instead, groups sat
silently listening to each other’s arguments, with the teacher asking more probing questions and
offering suggestions or points of insight instead of other teams in the class.
Low scoring. Charles scored in the Beginning PBL Teacher range for most aspects of
Assessing student learning. He had no formal documentation, nor did he have a formal rubric
written that the students could refer to. Instead, he chose to verbally state what the requirements
were for the final competition. This called for several students saying that they did not know
how they were going to be graded on the project. Although there was evidence of formal
assessment going on in the classroom as the teacher walked around the class and assisted
students in building their projects, the process of critique was not formalized for all students to
participate. In this way, the teams were isolated from each other, and very few students
interacted with others in the class beyond their groups. The researcher understood from speaking
with the teacher and observing the students that the majority of the grade would be on the group
performance in the final presentation, however, the teacher may have intended to assess some
aspects individually or have been taking notes on individual students, which may influence
grading for some students of which the researcher was not aware. It did not appear to the
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researcher that the teacher structured any self-assessment of work throughout the duration of the
project, but instead that the students had the task to build and test their projects and then present
it without bringing the class together to talk about what students had learned while in the middle
of the project.
Engage and coach. The Project Based Teaching Rubric assesses seven aspects covering
how teachers engage and coach their students: How well the teachers know their students and
use that knowledge to build upon project ideas, the extent to which the teacher and the students
create benchmarks together to reach the goals of the project, how enthusiastic the students feel
about their project progress, the role that students’ questioning plays in the direction of the
product development, the expectations that teachers and students have for the resulting work,
how well the teacher and students identify and meet individual needs within the classroom, and
the quality of reflection, revision, and appropriate praise. Referring to scores as High-Middle-
Low, one teacher received a 6-0-1, one teacher received a 2-3-2, one teacher received a 0-7-0,
one teacher received a 0-5-2, one teacher received a 0-4-3, one teacher received a 0-1-6, and one
teacher received a 0-0-7.
High scoring. High scores on this category of the rubric require teachers to know their
students really well and use that knowledge as a foundation for instructional design. Students
with such a teacher become directors of their own learning by contributing to the rules and
creating their own benchmarks and milestones to meet. Students will be enthusiastic about their
projects as the project represents personal aspects of each group. The teacher holds high
expectations for the students, and the students hold these expectations for themselves. The
teacher has identified the needs of each student through building close relationships and the
students have identified the needs of each other by working closely in groups. The teachers
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should also have a regular reflective schedule they use with the students while recognizing what
students have accomplished over time. Isaac scores very highly in this domain. As the
researcher observed the classroom climate, it was clear the teacher knew the individual students
well enough to use this knowledge to guide students. He would joke regularly with students and
ask pointed questions when checking into each group that would differ according to group needs.
Students were enthusiastic about what they were accomplishing in the class. Each group was
eager to demonstrate their progress on their projects to the researcher, to explain the theme they
chose, and to engage with the researcher as to why this was important to them. The only area
that the researcher would have liked to have seen during the observation was a formal public
reflection, if only for a few minutes, during the class period, to go over what students felt they
did well, what they felt they needed to continue to work on, and any failures they could learn
from such that the teacher could assess the progress of each group, and the students could learn
from each other’s experiences.
Low scoring. Low scoring teachers may have some knowledge of their students, but the
teachers did not use this knowledge to adjust instruction or product building. The teacher will
create the project goals without asking for students’ opinions. The students do the assignment
not because they feel connected personally to the assignment, but because they have to complete
it to get a grade. The teacher likely does not refer back to the driving question to guide students
along a path of inquiry. Additionally, the teacher’s expectations do not align with student
capability or they may not be clear to the students. Beginning PBL teachers may not know how
to build strong relationships with their students, and as such, may not have the means to identify
individual student needs. Also, when reflection occurs with the project, it is often limited to
occurring at the very end of the project, which limits the ability for students to learn from each
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other or their own mistakes during the entire process. Rosalind scored as a beginning PBL
teacher for how she engaged and coached her students during the observation time. After
speaking to many of the student groups, none of them understood the purpose of their project.
The teacher knew that the students did not like using the provided materials for the project, but
instead of asking for student input to make it more interesting to them, or collectively
communicating to the students to talk about the issue, she persisted in requiring the students to
meet the deadline. As such, the students continued with the task, but the only motivation they
mentioned to do so was to achieve a decent grade for their work.
Extent teachers implement high-quality PBL. As mentioned previously, the
implementation of PBL by the teachers is considered high-quality if the teachers earn no more
than three Low ratings for all aspects and earn a majority of High scores for all aspects on the
Project Based Teaching Rubric. The bottom of Figure 4 shows a tally of ratings on each
teaching observation for all thirty-three aspects assessed on the Project Based Teaching Rubric.
Using these criteria, Isaac was the only teacher to achieve an overall Gold Standard score.
Therefore, one of the seven teachers observed exhibited behaviors of teaching that Larmer et al.
(2015) call a Gold Standard PBL teaching practice.
Knowledge, Motivational, and Organizational Influences Affecting
Teacher Performance
This section will discuss the results and findings that relate to the second research
question: What are the knowledge, motivation and organizational influences related to achieving
the goal of implementing two high-quality NGSS-aligned PBL units in every science classroom
by the end of the 2017–2018 school year? In order to target the question, results from the
teacher observations, documentation analysis, interview transcriptions and survey results (see
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Appendix G) were examined when applicable in reference to the assumed knowledge,
motivation, and organizational influences addressed in the Chapter 2 literature review. This
section will analyze each assumed influence in order to verify or discount the influence based on
evidence extracted from the data collection. Survey items are analyzed based upon frequency of
response only as nine teachers were surveyed, which is too small of a sample for deeper
statistical analysis.
Conceptual Knowledge Influence: Teachers Have a Partial Understanding of the NGSS
The conceptual knowledge assumed influence was that teachers need to know what the
NGSS vision is for teachers to approach science instruction in contrast to traditional teaching
methods under previous standards. The main result for this section was:
• Most teachers understand that NGSS calls for students to do science rather than know
science facts, but few teachers indicated knowledge of shifting laboratory procedures
away from verifying results using known, pre-structured labs to designing unique
experiments to explain student-observed phenomena.
The survey item used to initially assess a general feeling of what teachers felt about their
own understanding of the NGSS is illustrated in Figure 5.
The results of this survey item indicate that three teachers feel they need more help
understanding how to meet the NGSS standards while six teachers feel that they do not need help
understanding the standards. These results indicate that the majority of teachers feel a high level
of confidence in their knowledge of NGSS standards. These results cannot be used alone to
assess this knowledge, however, as it does not account for teachers that do not know that they
lack complete understanding of the topic. Rodríguez et al. (2014) mention that teachers may
continue to implement ineffective instructional techniques because they have an inflated view of
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their own content delivery. Therefore, the researcher looked for evidence of understanding
NGSS standards in interview responses (see Appendix B for full interview protocol).

Figure 5. Question 12: I need more help understanding how to meet the NGSS standards

When investigating the interviews, it was found that the majority of the teachers had a
basic conceptual understanding of the NGSS standards, but only a few were able to articulate the
basic structure of the standards and how they apply to student learning. The researcher looked
for an indication of knowing the three main ways that the NGSS Lead States (2013) has
explained the shift in teaching expectations: using facts to explain phenomena rather than
memorizing facts, changing laboratory experiences from following a set procedure to engaging
in the eight science and engineering practices, and the idea of using experimentation to explain
observed phenomena rather than to use experimentation solely to verify expected outcomes.
Most teachers explained that the NGSS standards shifted away from memorizing facts to
being able to do science activities. Rachel mentioned that, “I felt like the other science standards
were more a list of what you need to make sure the students memorized.” She mentioned that
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the new standards have, “more focus on the engineering and the critical thinking.” Jane felt like
the new standards are, “based in kids learning skills,” whereas the old standards, “were definitely
just content.” Dorothy said that the, “old standards were students will know . . . now it is
students will be able to do . . . things like explaining, arguing, communicating, [and] analyzing.”
Isaac mentioned that students were, “doing more of the work of scientists and engineers and less
knowing the facts that scientists might know.” Marie mentioned that previously, “everything
was like, students will know, students will know, students will know.” She goes on to mention
that the new standards are, “written in a way that really gets to the core of the eight science and
engineering practices.” These five teachers all touched upon the basic idea that the standards
move beyond memorizing facts and instead ask students to behave scientifically. Although this
explanation of the new standards is correct, the concepts of moving from knowing science fact to
knowing how to do science practices is only a portion of the NGSS Lead States (2013) vision.
Of the teachers with a basic knowledge of the NGSS, only a minority responded with a
more in-depth definition of the scope of the standards. Isaac responded with in depth knowledge
of the standards when he mentioned that, “emphasis is a lot more on kids designing their own
experiments, running their own experiments, analyzing data, using models, and communicating
out their findings.” These elements include the three basic changes from the old to the new
standards as kids designing their own experiments would imply that they use experiments as a
way to explain what they see. Analyzing data, using models, and communicating findings are all
part of the science and engineering practices, which also includes the fact that Isaac feels
students need to explain what they observe.
Dorothy also included knowledge of these aspects when she mentions that while
designing projects she first looks at all aspects of the standards including to, “first look at the
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performance expectations . . . then look at the core ideas.” Dorothy’s mention that NGSS
requires students to do, “things like explaining, arguing, communicating, and analyzing,” also
indicates that she understands various aspects of the Science and Engineering practices that the
NGSS want to include in science instruction.
Marie also mentions more aspects of the standards when she says that her students are,
“getting practice in creating their own labs, designing their own labs, and using evidence to back
up their claims.” Although Marie also expresses uncertainty in her complete understanding of
the standards when she notes, “when I feel like I have a grasp on it, then all of a sudden it’s like,
I have no idea. I don’t know how to read them and really assess them.” Her doubt about her true
understanding of the standards shows that she still struggles conceptually with what the
standards mean, but also, whether or not she can apply what she knows. Jane also expressed
uncertainty in the specifics of the standards when she explains how she designs units aligned to
the standards when she asks, “what are those called? Science practices, I guess.” Jane wants to
include the standards, but she is not familiar enough with them conceptually to remember what
the dimensions of the standards are named.
Three other teachers indicated that they felt the standards were the same, or they felt they
could not explain the difference between NGSS and previous standards because they were new
teachers. In this case, the researcher looked for evidence that the teachers understood the deeper
concepts of the standards through interview feedback. Charles felt like the standards were, “just
repackaged. I think that the new standards are more clear, but they are still the standards and they
are the same ones.” Charles’ explanation indicates that he does not think that the standards have
essentially changed in scope, which means he may not have changed his approach to teaching
science since the launch of NGSS at the school.
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Albert mentions that he came in to teaching, “under NGSS.” So he, “can’t compare them
to anything.” When probing further, he mentions that the NGSS, “are general enough that you
can apply them effectively and in a wide variety of ways,” but he does not mention any
connection to teaching science and engineering practices, shifting toward inquiry labs, and
explaining observed phenomena. Pascal gives a similar answer to Albert that the new standards
give teachers, “flexibility, which is good. You don’t have to do everything by the book and it
doesn’t go into too much detail.” Rosalind had the perspective that the, “NGSS does a better job
showing that science is not isolated.” This statement touches on the NGSS focus on Cross
Cutting Concepts that reach into math and English domains for educating science. However, this
is still a limited explanation of how the NGSS is supposed to change the way science is taught.
The results from the interviews indicate that at least six teachers did not express a deep
conceptual knowledge of the NGSS standards. However, it is possible that teachers may know
more than they expressed in interviews. The researcher did not ask pointed questions as it was
important to the researcher to understand the natural thought process of the teachers without
asking them test-like questions that explicitly looked for all aspects of the NGSS vision.
Therefore, some teachers may have indicated low conceptual knowledge because they did not
think to say certain things that they knew about the NGSS because they may not have felt it
applied to the question asked. As such, this influence has not been a verified influence, but is
deemed a highly probable influence, which is important to address because Adoniou (2015)
found that teachers with large gaps in content knowledge and applied knowledge in their content
area struggled to teach with deep meaning. Since the NGSS imbeds content knowledge
standards with a vision for its execution, teachers without deep conceptual understanding for the
standards may struggle to implement them in a meaningful way within their classroom. Since
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only two teachers scored highly on the Project Based Teaching Rubric for aligning to standards
(see Figure 4), this data corroborates that teachers may not conceptually know the standards well
enough to incorporate them into their project designs.
Procedural Knowledge Influence: Teachers Do Not Use Relevant Resources as an Aid
The procedural knowledge assumed influence was that teachers need to know how to
design and implement an effective project-based science unit. The main results from this section
are:
• The three teachers who have referred back to the BIE provided materials to design
projects have been the most successful in designing projects.
• The majority of teachers do not refer back to the PBL materials to assist in designing
projects, and these teachers score lowly on the Project Design Rubric.
• Teachers need to use an aid to assist in learning appropriate project design procedure.
The survey items used to initially assess a general feeling of teacher ability to design PBL
unit plans cover teacher response to PBL professional development in respect to learning design
and implementation of PBL. Figures 6 and 7 show the various responses.
The results indicate that the majority of teachers feel that they need more help to deliver
PBL in the classroom. Also, a minority of teachers felt that the professional development that
they had received was not useful. This indicates that the majority of the teachers felt that
although the professional development was useful, perhaps it was not enough to provide a
complete education on how to implement PBL.

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Figure 6. Question 10: I need more PBL professional development sessions to help me
implement PBL in my classrooms

Figure 7. Question 13: The professional development that I have received for Project Based
Learning has been useful in preparing to deliver units in Project Based Learning

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Returning back to Figures 3 and 4, three of the nine teachers provided a mostly High
scoring project unit design, while only one teacher demonstrated a mostly High scoring delivery
of PBL on the Project Based Teaching Rubric. This shows that a minority of teachers were able
to design a PBL unit with all the qualities that the Buck Institute for Education call for, and only
one of the teachers that produced a High scoring unit, Isaac, was able to demonstrate high-
quality PBL implementation. Although six teachers did not provide a High scoring project plan,
it does not conclude that that reason is they do not know how to create one. Several factors may
play a key role in this behavior, including accountability measures by the organization for
teachers to provide structured unit plans.
In the interview, some teachers expressed uncertainty in their delivery of PBL. Jane
mentioned, “I’d like to get better at what a good PBL is and make sure I know what I am doing
before I involve others.” She mentioned that the professional development she received, “was
fine, but it left a lot out.” She could, “see what it was supposed to do, but I don’t know how to
get there.” Ultimately, she felt that she does not, “know how to apply it to what [she is] trying to
teach.” As such, Jane has not created her own materials for the project she intends to teach in the
future. This aligned with the documentation Jane provided, which looked like it was in the initial
stages of planning with brainstorming of lists of ideas for products and checkpoints, while
missing some of the key structures assessed in the Project Design Rubric. Other teachers
mentioned having a similar issue when beginning to teach PBL. Dorothy, a teacher who has
practiced PBL for over five years, mentioned that when she first began learning how to do PBL,
the professional development, “gave us plenty of time to work on a PBL unit, but I feel like I still
didn’t have a good idea of how PBL worked until I actually started doing it in the classroom.”
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Many teachers mentioned that the Buck Institute Professional Development was very
helpful, but then admitted that they rarely look at the materials they received during the PBL
training that assist teachers in designing high-quality PBL units. Rachel says that she does not
use the PBL workbook, but, “I just plan it in the way that’s in my head.” Rosalind also said the
PBL training, “was good because it was three days of them really walking you through how to do
it.” She also said she did not look back at the instructional materials from the professional
development, and when asked if she made a write-up of her project unit she mentioned, “not that
formal. But I’ve definitely talked through individual parts.” This was a pattern with many
teachers including Pascal who felt, “bogged down,” by using the instructional materials, but
thought the PBL training, “was the best one,” and that it, “went through the steps of making up a
project.” Charles mentioned that he has, “gone back to the PBL instructional materials,” but he
does not, “go back a lot.” Since the teachers that mentioned they do not look back at the
instructional materials are the same teachers with low scoring PBL unit plans, it seems like
teachers need to use an aid to assist them to create proper unit plans.
Teachers that continually go back to refer to the plans have the highest scoring unit plans.
Isaac, Marie, and Dorothy all mentioned that they look back at the materials as they design their
lessons. Pascal mentioned that he also used to refer to the materials until he felt bogged down by
it. This implies that teachers who refer to the instructional material as they create their plans do
a better job in designing PBL unit plans. Isaac, who has been able to produce both a high-quality
unit plan and show high-quality PBL implementation, states that, “my perspective is that often
times when people aren’t doing things right it’s because they don’t know how to do things right.”
Since the majority of teachers are not producing high-quality unit plans and are not
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implementing high-quality PBL, it has been verified through data analysis that teachers need to
know how to design and implement an effective PBL science unit.
Metacognitive Knowledge Influence: Teachers Need to Structure Their Reflections
The metacognitive knowledge assumed influence was that teachers need to know how to
reflect on their own practices and alter instruction based on these reflections. Since
metacognitive knowledge is difficult to assess through a survey, interviews were the sole source
of information for this knowledge influence. The researcher looked for evidence of altering
instruction based on reacting to both student indicators and self-actions. Teachers should go
beyond just responding to student behavior in their reflections, but they should also indicate that
they spend some time noting down what they feel worked and did not work in the classroom
while delivering projects such that teachers can transform this knowledge of their classroom to
improve student outcomes (Rodgers, 2002). If teachers do not make a practice of writing down
reflective thoughts, they may be forgotten by the time the teachers need to make use of them.
The main results of this section were:
• Most teachers don’t mention a habit for recording their reflections to refer back to
them.
• Most teachers limit their reflective discourse to how students are learning the material
without including reflections on their own behaviors.
• It is highly probable that teachers need to know how to reflect on their own practices.
Four teachers indicated difficulty with reflecting about their teaching practice. For
example, Pascal stated that he does not uniformly change his delivery of lessons based on student
reaction because, “I don’t care if they don’t like it, in the sense that if I know it is a good lesson
and a lot of students are into it.” However, he will consider altering instruction for a small
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number of students if they, “didn’t want to do [the project], maybe I can talk to them and we can
find a solution with those two.” Although Pascal is willing to alter instruction for a small group
of individuals, a deeper reflection may offer insight as to how the whole project could be
presented in such a way that the whole class feels freedom to adapt the project to their interests
from the start. Albert mentions that when his students do not understand a topic, he will, “really
slow down and hand out a pile of worksheets and just sit down and start practicing . . . that way I
get about 70% . . . . There’s always the ten or fifteen percent that’s not going to try and the ten
percent that it’s just too tough for them, but that’s about as good as I’m going to get.” This
commentary suggests that Albert has decided that he cannot change the number of students that
engage in his class even though he admits, “I don’t like the number.” Reflection in the form of
writing notes could assist Albert to continually attempt to improve his delivery, classroom
management, pacing, and student-teacher relationships among other aspects of the classroom
environment such that he could continually raise the number of students engaged, and increase
the ability of the students that he feels can never understand the material. Rosalind also
mentions that sometimes student outcomes are low because of the students themselves. “Some
kids just don’t learn well in projects . . . because to say it bluntly, they’re too lazy. They’re not
mature enough.” Rosalind feels like she cannot change the situation based on inherent qualities
within the students. If she had the opportunity to reflect on her own delivery, she may see
aspects of her classroom she could change that might improve student reactions. However,
Rosalind has difficulty reflecting because of time. “If they don’t give us the time, it’s hard to
reflect. In the midst of a year, it’s really hard to have time to reflect on how you’re doing.” This
shows that Rosalind has the urge to apply reflection to her teaching but feels too overwhelmed
with other responsibilities to properly engage in reflection. Echoing Rosalind’s sentiment, Jane
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also mentioned, “I’m not so good at the reflection part, I think, finding the time to do all that.”
Time, therefore, seems to play a factor in establishing a conscious effort to reflect in everyday
teaching practice.
Charles, Isaac, and Dorothy indicated they alter instruction based on student reactions,
but it was still unclear whether or not this reflection was something done only mentally or if it
drove the process of altering future instruction in writing. For example, Charles indicates that he
notices, “some of the kids just need more help on one part but not the other, and that’s all part of
being present in the classroom for each one of those groups as they are working.” Being present
is one step in Rodgers’ (2002) reflective cycle, but the rest of the cycle involves analysis of what
was observed and an iterative change in instructional design based on the analysis. Since
Charles also does not write down unit plans for his PBL projects, he may not remember all the
nuances of what he experiences while being present for the students. Charles could improve his
reflective practice by incorporating writing reflective notes to himself. Isaac and Dorothy speak
about altering instruction when they sense students do not understand the material at a deep
level, but also make no mention of writing down reflective thoughts to use for future project
modification. These teachers may be writing down their thoughts, but the results from the
interviews made it unclear.
The most reflective interview statements expressed the need to continually improve how
they structure the classroom and referred to writing down these ideas. Rachel states that she,
“will write notes to myself at the end of every unit so that I know that didn’t work, or that
worked, and that this is what I should change before I do it again next year.” The act of writing
down her thoughts allows for her to review the notes prior to approaching the project again in
subsequent years so that she can change her delivery of the unit before launching the project
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again. Marie feels that reflection is a part of gold standard teaching, and her ability to reflect, “is
sort of the best model for students . . . that sometimes what you do doesn’t work out, and you
have to tweak it.” Marie indicates that she not only reflects on her own constant improvement as
a teacher, but also finds value in modeling a practice of reflection to her students.
The assumed metacognitive influence was found to be highly probable in that four of the
teachers implied not fully incorporating a reflective process in their work or indicated a level of
difficulty with engaging in reflection. Three other teachers indicated a level of reflection but did
not clearly indicate that they recorded their thoughts for future use. Only two of the teachers
expressed evidence for a complete process of reflection integrated into their daily teaching
practice. As such, recommendations should be made for the organization to improve the level of
reflection, especially for the teachers indicating a direct need or no established practice for it.
Motivational Influence of Expectancy Value: PBL Should Not Be Used All the Time
The motivational assumed influence of expectancy value was that teachers need to
believe that PBL can produce high student achievement and that it works in concert with the
vision of NGSS. The main results are:
• The majority of teachers mention that PBL works better with some students, but not
with all students.
• The influence that teachers need to have a high expectancy value for PBL was
validated through the interviews.
The responses to survey items used to initially assess a general understanding of how
much teachers value the technique of PBL can be seen in Figures 8 through 11.

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Figure 8. Question 15: I am convinced that Project Based Learning is valuable for students to
engage in at least once in a school year

Figure 9. Question 20: PBL is relevant for our school

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Figure 10. Question 21: I think that PBL is just a fad

Figure 11. Question 23: My students achieve higher in science as a result of PBL

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All teachers agreed that PBL was relevant for the school and valuable for students to
engage in at least once a year. However, three of the teachers indicated that they felt PBL was
just a fad and three teachers indicated that they did not feel their students achieved higher in
science due to engagement in PBL. If teachers feel like PBL is just a fad, they may think that the
practice will not last in the classroom, which will make it more difficult for them to invest in
altering their practice toward PBL. Additionally, teachers may not see the value in delivering
PBL if they believe that their students do not achieve to a higher standard because of PBL.
Interviews were analyzed to get a deeper understanding of teachers’ thoughts about their
future expectations for PBL. Every teacher agreed the NGSS standards link well with PBL
instruction, so the analysis focused on how teachers perceive student achievement with PBL.
Four teachers agreed that PBL uniformly benefits student achievement. Albert supports learning
how to teach PBL because, “people learn better by doing than they do by being lectured to, and I
completely agree and support that.” Marie supports PBL, “because they need to make their
discoveries on their own. Everything that I’ve ever learned, really learned, I’ve had to learn on
my own.” Rosalind also mentions she feels PBL is a better way to learn because, “it definitely
gives a better quality. You just learn everything better when it’s you doing it instead of
listening.” Isaac mentions the applicability of PBL to real-world contexts that make it especially
worthwhile, “The benefit of PBL is that it has kids pushing to make stuff work in the real world
. . . there’s a deal of frustration there, but I think there are some valuable lessons from having
frustration.” Here Isaac acknowledges that students will feel frustrated during the project but
sees this as a valuable learning experience rather than a setback for students.
The five other teachers feel that PBL is good for certain specific subjects or objectives
but may not work well for all students and should not be practiced all the time in the classroom.
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Pascal mentions that, “there are always students who prefer to be told the information directly,
and that’s an option. [PBL] is great, but it shouldn’t be only PBL.” Charles agrees that
sometimes other methods of instruction should also be used based on student behavior during
PBL implementation. Charles says:
PBL is great when the individual does it, but if the individual doesn’t buy-in to it, they
rely on the team to support them, and that’s my problem with PBL. I believe in it, but I
don’t believe in a hundred percent [delivery]. I’m probably down in the 60% zone.
Dorothy feels like certain learning objectives are not conducive to PBL instruction. In her
classes, “I do want to do some projects, but it’s very lab-skills-based and scientific method
based. PBL just doesn’t work very well in those classes.” Jane indicates that different students
have different styles of learning, which may get in the way of a successful PBL implementation:
Some kids are going to learn one way better than the other. Not everyone can learn better
by doing group work and collaboration. Some kids like to be lectured and they get a lot
from that. They all have different styles.
Mayer (2011) indicates that since there is no current research-based support for learning styles,
teachers should not individualize instruction based on learning style, but instead should utilize
the guidance principles of coaching, scaffolding, modeling, questioning, and feedback to support
student learning. Rachel believes that PBL is not a necessary component to educating students,
“I don’t know if it changes the quality. It enhances, maybe. I think you can have a quality
education without it, honestly.”
Since the majority of teachers expressed the sentiment that PBL works for some students
but not every student, there appears to be a majority of teachers with low expectancy values
regarding implementing PBL, which validates the influence. Duzor (2010) notes that teacher
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transfer of new teaching methods will not occur when teachers think it is not necessary for use
within their teaching environments. This correlates with the fact that two of the most
experienced PBL teachers at the school, Isaac and Marie, both have a high expectancy value for
PBL and performed the highest on the Project Based Teaching Rubric. The two other teachers
with high expectancy value for PBL, Rosalind and Albert, are both teachers in their second year
of professional teaching, which could indicate why they performed the lowest on the Project
Based Teaching Rubric. Maulana, Helms-Lorenz, and Van de Grift (2015) found that new
teachers improve considerably in their first three years. As such, the new teachers with high
expectancy for PBL have a high likelihood of improving their PBL performance with the
appropriate development opportunities (Maulana et al., 2015).
Motivational Influence of Self-Efficacy
The motivational assumed influence of self-efficacy was that teachers need to feel a high
confidence level in their ability to implement a successful PBL unit of study in the classroom.
The main results of this section were:
• One of the nine teachers feels fully confident in designing and implementing PBL
units.
• Two teachers recognize they improve with practice.
• Six teachers expressed uncertainty with their ability to implement PBL well.
• The influence that teachers need to feel confident in their ability to implement PBL
has been verified through interview responses.
The response to the survey item used to initially assess a general understanding of teacher
confidence in implementing PBL can be seen in Figure 12.

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Figure 12. Question 11: I am confident that I can design a unit using Project Based Learning that
aligns to the NGSS standards

The survey results indicate that only one teacher did not feel confident in the ability to
design a PBL unit plan. Interviews were analyzed for evidence of teacher confidence in both
designing and implementing PBL and correlated with teacher performance results on the Project
Based Teaching Rubric and the Project Design Rubric.
Findings from the interviews indicate that only one teacher feels fully confident in
designing and implementing PBL. Isaac mentioned that, “I just finished . . . one. That one was
really good. I felt like I structured it more strongly this year than previous years. I feel pretty
good about their output and I feel like it’s more fun for me to teach.” Not only does Isaac feel
like his delivery of PBL is improving, but he also is having fun during the implementation.
Isaac’s self-efficacy corresponds with the fact that Isaac scored the highest on both the Project
Based Teaching and Project Design rubrics, and was the only teacher found to be implementing
high-quality PBL.
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Two teachers expressed that they felt they were consistently getting better at delivering
PBL, but also indicated that they still felt there was room for more improvement. Dorothy
admits that:
I was afraid of it, and I didn’t do a very good job of it in my first year or my second year.
I’m just getting a little bit better every year. But then like anything, the more you do it,
the better you get at it.
She knows she still needs to improve but finds reassurance in looking back on her progress each
year with it. Marie echoed Dorothy’s statement with, “I feel like it’s gotten better. The first year
their products turned out great, but their science sucked. The second year around, they knew the
content better.” Marie also mentions her habit to look back to see that she has improved on her
delivery every year. Additionally, she mentions that she is getting better at the design of her
projects when she states, “I feel like I’m getting better at tweaking things to make my units a
little bit more conducive, so they are more authentic.” These teachers indicate constant growth
toward achieving high standards in PBL delivery and unit design, which reinforce self-efficacy
as Pajares (2006) suggests that self-efficacy will improve when people experience a success.
Six teachers noted significant uncertainty in their ability to design and implement high-
quality PBL. For Rachel, Rosalind and Charles, the uncertainty is based on managing unwieldy
students. Rachel feels that certain students cannot do PBL because she, “could have never
trusted that we could sit there and have discussions like I can with juniors and seniors.” She
feels that even after many years of experience as a teacher if she, “ended up with so many
behavior issues in one class, that even as a better teacher now, I don’t know if that would have
made a difference,” in trying to manage a classroom of lower-level students with PBL. Rosalind
also struggles with classroom management of students. She states that, “In this next project, I’m
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giving them the most freedom that I’ve ever given them, and I’m really nervous about doing
that.” Charles feels like he cannot motivate students that have already given up, “some of the
kids don’t see value, and it’s zero effort. They just put out nothing. They don’t care about the
grade. They don’t care.” Pajares (2006) indicates that losses such as these can lower self-
efficacy.
Jane, Pascal, and Albert all feel a significant level of uncertainty about how to deliver
PBL. Jane says that, “I don’t even know if I do them right.” Pascal shares this sentiment when
he says that:
I kind of know how to put together a PBL lesson. I don’t know how well I can pull it off
yet because I haven’t done a ton of them, and I don’t know if I do it in a proper, formal
way.
While Albert has a specific confusion about how to integrate developing content knowledge
within the structure of a PBL when he mentions that, “There’s a component of PBL that I’m very
uncomfortable with, that there are times you need to deliver theory, and they don’t accommodate
that at all.” If these teachers already know they have uncertainty about delivering PBL, then
their self-efficacy is likely not high enough for them to persist in delivering it when they
encounter difficulties (Pajares, 2006). Since the majority of the teachers indicated symptoms of
lower self-efficacy, this assumed influence has been validated as an area to address for
recommendations.
Motivational Influence of Collective Efficacy: Teachers Get Along but Keep to Themselves
The motivational assumed influence of collective efficacy mentions that teachers need to
share the same belief in program goals and act upon them collectively. The main results from
this section were:
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• Teachers mention they get along with each other well but are in the habit of
developing lessons individually because they teach different subjects and lack time to
collaborate.
• Teachers feel like their views of PBL do not align.
• The assumed influence that teachers need to share the same belief in the program has
been validated through interviews.
The response to the survey items used to initially assess a general understanding of
teacher confidence in implementing PBL can be seen in Figures 13–14.

Figure 13. Question 24: My department offers strong support in PBL implementation

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Figure 14. Question 25: I work well with the other science teachers

All science teachers expressed that they got along well with the other science teachers
and only one teacher felt that the department did not offer strong support in PBL implementation.
Interviews were therefore consulted to understand the nature behind what teachers mean by
working well with each other. For example, perhaps they work well together because they
collaborate or stay out of each other’s teaching affairs. Additionally, the interviews were
consulted for insight behind what teachers understood as support from the science department,
and whether or not the department shared a common vision and belief about the program goals.
Many teachers indicated that while they get along with each other well and have formed a
lunchroom community, they still feel very isolated in their work or prefer to stay isolated. Albert
mentions that he gets very little interaction with other teachers about his PBL implementation.
“Isaac will come in every once in a while and take a look. Charles has come in once or twice.
That’s about it. There’s not a lot of interaction. It’s like teaching is a lonely profession.”
However, Albert desires more collaboration time with others. “I need more collaboration time
with the other teachers so we can co-develop those things.” Rosalind has not done any formal
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collaboration or discussion of unit plans but only speaks verbally to other teachers during lunch.
Her collaboration has never been, “that formal, like I need you to review what I’m doing or help
edit it, but I’ve definitely talked through individual parts.” Marie says she feels, “very isolated in
what I do and the projects that I develop because some of the other teachers just have different
views of PBL.” This general feeling of differing viewpoints is echoed by several other teachers.
Pascal indicates that, “there are different ideas of how to implement the project, which is not
consistent across.” As such, he feels uncomfortable expressing his unique viewpoint in groups,
“We collaborate a little bit to come up with lessons, but I don’t have much say in any one
particular topic.” He tolerates this because he feels overwhelmed in time, so instead of adhering
to his vision of PBL, he will implement someone else’s idea, which makes him feel a little guilty.
“It’s almost like I’m selling my soul a little bit to save time.” Dorothy also agrees that it is
difficult to work with other teachers that do not share the same vision.
I’ve had really positive experiences with teachers that are buying into it and want to do it
or are already doing it, but not so much with teachers that are not sure about it or that
have never done it before.
According to Donohoo (2017), collective efficacy is fostered by a department that shares
educational values and vision. If teachers feel isolated by differing viewpoints, it is likely to
weaken collective efficacy within the organization.
Other teachers feel that they cannot collaborate with other teachers if the other teachers
are not teaching the same subject. For example, Charles states that, “Collaboration doesn’t work
super well in my exact instance because nobody else does the same classes that I do.” Rosalind
has not done any formal collaboration or discussion of unit plans but only speaks verbally to
other teachers during lunch. Her collaboration has never been, “that formal, like I need you to
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review what I’m doing or help edit it, but I’ve definitely talked through individual parts.” Isaac
also feels alone in his PBL implementation. “I’ve been pretty isolated with it. I’m the only
teacher who teaches this class.” Additionally, when he has attempted to collaborate, he did not
feel it was successful. “I’ve tried to roll it out to other physics classes, and that’s been more
challenging than I imagined.” Rachel agrees that collaboration has not been helpful across
different science subject matters. “If they’re not teaching the same subject, I don’t really find it
that useful. If no one else is teaching it, I would rather bounce ideas off myself, cause that’s how
I work.” If collaboration is structured in a way that supports each other through subject matter
instead of concentrating on PBL design and feedback, it can cause problems while collaborating
in groups. Jane, for example, expresses the need for more collaboration just to ignite creativity:
“We definitely need more collaboration if you want to do it. It needs some help, it needs
resources, and the more people you have to bounce ideas off of, and get ideas from, the better.”
Her vision of collaboration does not seem to preclude any specific subject matter, but instead,
she appears to welcome a range of ideas from everyone.
Survey results indicate that teachers have already established a good sense of camaraderie
with each other as a community, but detailed interviews revealed that despite getting along well
with each other, teachers isolate themselves from collaborating with PBL because either their
courses do not align, or they feel like they share different visions of how to implement PBL.
Since no teachers offered any reflection of a strong sense of sharing beliefs or collectively acting
upon goals together, the need for teacher collective efficacy has been verified as a priority to
address in the recommendations of Chapter 5. Donohoo (2017) suggests that strong collective
efficacy will strengthen relationship within the department and increase collective vision.
Bandura (2000) states that a group with high collective efficacy can accomplish more than the
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sum of individual inputs. Therefore, unifying the science department’s vision of PBL and
finding a means to collaborate without the need to teach the same subject should increase
organizational performance.
Organizational Influence: The Cultural Model of Teacher Resistance to Change
The assumed organizational cultural model influence of teacher resistance states that
teachers have a general resistance to change in instructional techniques. The main results are:
• The majority of the teachers lack the appropriate buy-in to completely invest in PBL.
• All teachers mention that they lack the necessary time to make the change toward
more PBL with as high a quality as they would like.
• The assumed influence that teachers have a general resistance to change in
instructional techniques has been validated.
The response to the survey item used to initially assess a general understanding of teacher
resistance to implementing PBL can be seen in Figure 15.

Figure 15. Question 19: I have the supplies I need to implement PBL

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Only two teachers claimed that they had enough supplies to implement PBL. Teachers
may use a lack of resources as a reason for having an inability to implement PBL well. Agócs
(1997) mentions that teachers may sabotage the change initiative by implementing the changed
pedagogical style so poorly that it will inevitably fail. If all teachers feel they need special
resources to implement PBL, that could indicate an initiative to fail in delivering the new method
with what teachers might consider a valid excuse. Additionally, Fidishun (2000) indicates that
adult learners resist change if they feel others are imposing actions upon them. If teachers resist
change they may find it difficult to find the time and the resources because they do not have the
motivation to do so.
Interview analysis showed that many teachers indicated that the initiative did not properly
establish teacher buy-in. For example, Rachel mentioned that, “Most of the resistance I’ve seen
or heard is when teachers think maybe it’s the only way the school wants us to teach. They
already have a set curriculum, and you don’t want to change it.” If teachers think it is the only
way the school wants them to teach, it could feel like they are being forced into teaching that
way without the proper independent choice to do so. Marie thinks, “There are a lot of teachers
that feel like what they’re doing is not wrong.” She adds that teachers feel forced into it: “You
either get on the train, or you are going to get left behind.” Charles agrees with Marie when he
states, “There’s a big push to go hundred percent PBL, I don’t agree with that.” Pascal describes
it as, “They are set in their old ways. They have their labs ready and everything so it’s very
difficult. There is a lot of resistance in implementing something new.” Dorothy thinks, “some
teachers also want to see more evidence, like what does the research say about it? Is it truly a
more effective way to teach and learn?” Jane asks, “Why are they pushing this?” These
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collective comments firmly establish that teachers in general have a feeling of resistance toward
the change initiative.
Additionally, every single teacher mentioned not having enough time to do PBL well.
Rosalind stated that, “I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed is teachers feeling they don’t have
enough time and support to do all the things that we’re supposed to do.” Charles said, “It’s a
huge time suck.” Jane lamented that, “time is what is preventing me the most. And resources.”
Isaac mentions that he thinks, “schoolwide it always comes down to like asking for more without
giving any more time. I think that we cycled through so many different pushes and teachers feel
like they’re being asked to do more.” Marie says teachers, “feel like PBL is a waste of time,”
and that, “I really don’t have the time to sit down and go through the whole process.” Dorothy
adds, “There is resistance for a couple of reasons. It’s new and learning something new requires
a lot of effort and time and mental energy.” Pascal also concurs, “My limitation is mainly time.”
Finally, Albert sums it up with, “There’s not enough time in the day to do it. It’s all time and
time.” If teachers do not feel they are given the appropriate resource of time, then they may not
engage in the initiative that appears to them to be very time consuming. This may also explain
why teachers are not hitting the gold standard quality on the rubrics more often. The survey
results align with the commentary in that every teacher mentioned lacking the resource of time.
The Organizational Cultural Model of teacher resistance has therefore been verified. All
teachers recognize that there is resistance to the PBL effort, and all teachers connect the
resistance to a lack of time to engage in the effort. Additionally, the majority of teachers
indicated some level of feeling forced into doing it, rather than feeling like they had a say in the
school’s initiative to implement PBL. This influence will be addressed in the recommendations
of Chapter 5.
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Organizational Influence: The Cultural Model of Trust
The assumed organizational cultural model influence of trust states that teachers need to
have trust in administrators and their decisions. The main results of the section are:
• All teachers indicated a lack of confidence in administrative decisions.
• The assumed influence that teachers need to trust in administrators and their decisions
has been found as highly probable.
The response to the survey items used to initially assess a general understanding of
teacher trust in their administrators can be seen in Figures 16 and 17.

Figure 16. Question 14: I have the freedom to adapt Project Based Learning to my unique
teaching style

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Figure 17. Question 18: I have strong administrative support

Figure 16 shows that only one teacher feels there is not enough freedom to adapt PBL to
a personal teaching style. This implies a large measure of trust that administration can look past
various teaching styles while assessing teacher implementation of PBL. If teachers feel a level
of freedom in their work, then they likely trust that the administrators allow them to express
themselves, since trust increases the risk taking on the job, and consequently, job performance
(Colquitt, Scott, & Lepine, 2007). However, Figure 17 indicates that three teachers disagree that
they have strong administrative support. This indicates the several of the teachers do not feel
their needs are met by administration. A close look at interview transcripts was made to find
evidence for trust in administration or lack thereof within the teacher commentary.
All teachers indicated a lack of confidence in administrative decisions. Pascal lacked
faith in the motives behind administrative decisions. He feels that maybe the administration
begins new initiatives because they are legally required to do so. “I don’t know their motives
behind [the PBL initiative], like some bureaucratic motive that they have to do something new
every time.” Dorothy does not trust how the administration allocates the budget to sustain the
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PBL initiative: “Our system of funding projects is not sustainable in that it’s not institutionalized.
There’s no budget. It’s just kind of from year to year, a project, a project.” Charles distrusts
administration and district leaders because he feels they become inspired on a whim but lack the
follow through to implement their ideas well:
Somebody gets an idea, somebody gives them a PhD — I’m bagging on the PhD because
that’s usually where it comes from — from superintendent down, and they get hired on
that idea, and we’re going to implement it. Not that it’s a bad idea, but if you don’t get
the team buy-in on it, it doesn’t happen.
Isaac expresses a desire for administrators that have the knowledge and awareness to give great
feedback, “I would love to have administrators who really are confident enough and competent
enough to be able to say you could do blank, blank, blank, blank.” Rosalind echoes this idea
when she says, “I don’t know if the principal really has the stuff and the guidance to help people
if they are not teaching to the standards.” Several teachers feel that the district has too many
initiatives to adequately manage and account for. Jane states, “There are so many different
focuses from the district and the school, so it’s hard.” Albert thinks, “the meetings I go into and
training sessions, they don’t have goals and they don’t achieve their goals, so I walk out and say
that was a waste of time.” Wasted time was a theme in Rachel’s response that:
It feels like we spend so much time doing all these little things that we’re all checking in
with each other and in writing our ideas that we’re not actually spending any time
researching the project or working on the project.
Marie puts a positive spin on the efforts to train teachers when she says, “Although the district
has been really good about giving us training and giving us opportunities, there’s always still
more that needs to happen.” Ultimately Marie, “just really wish[es] that we had more time to
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develop our units.” These comments indicate that the teachers do not fully trust the motives
behind the initiatives or the leadership expertise to get the job done effectively.
The Cultural Model Influence of trust was found as highly probable. Although the
teachers all spoke to feeling a lack of trust in administrative decision making, the administration
at LHHS has hired a new principal and a new vice principal in the year 2017–2018. These
administrators may be able to inspire trust in their teaching staff, but since the interviews were
completed during the first semester of the year, the teachers did not have enough time with the
new administration to build significant levels of trust yet. Therefore, it is recommended that the
organization address the trust issues with the previous administration early in the transition to the
new administration as discussed in Chapter 5.
Organizational Influence: The Cultural Setting of Clear Expectations
The assumed organizational cultural setting influence of setting clear expectations states
that the school needs to have clear standards around teaching methods and expectations to guide
teachers to incorporate new types of instruction. There were no survey items addressing this
influence, so interviews were analyzed to pinpoint teachers’ thoughts on the expectations that the
school has for their teaching. The main results were:
• Eight of the nine teachers mentioned that they didn’t know exactly what the teaching
expectations were.
• The cultural setting that the school needs to set clear expectations to guide teachers to
incorporate new practices has been validated.
Of all teachers, only Dorothy was able to clearly describe what she felt the expectations
were. She mentioned how she feels the NGSS need to be implemented and integrated within
PBL, how many projects to do, and even listed several of the PBL gold standards that she was
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expected to hit. Dorothy makes it a point to discuss such teaching standards regularly in
meetings because they are meant to be utilized to increase equity and close the achievement gap
at the school. As a result, Dorothy thinks, “it’s pretty clear right now what instruction in the
classrooms is supposed to look like.”
However, her eight department colleagues feel the opposite. Teachers mainly felt that the
teaching expectations were not clear or that teachers had different conceptual understandings of
what PBL should look like. Jane felt the expectations were, “unclear. When I was working with
another teacher and they first started talking about PBL it was like, is this recommended? Are
they checking? They never said, and they have never asked.” Albert feels similarly that,
“there’s no clear expectations to me on what to do as a teacher, so I don’t know how to interpret
the expectations.” Pascal offers that he knows basically what he should accomplish, but not how
he should go about doing it. He states, “I know what I’m expected to do, but I don’t know what
the administration is expecting really from me.” Charles corroborates Pascal’s comment when
he mentions that the administration says they want the students to do PBL, to deliver the NGSS,
and to have 21st century skills, but, “they don’t show us exactly how. I guess it’s my job to mix
those appropriately.” Rosalind states something similar with her comment that, “they’re not
clear about how many you have to do or how well of a project does it have to be. It’s just clear
that we have to do it.” Isaac recognizes the confusion a lack of clarity brings, “No, I don’t think
there’s any clarity in what’s expected. I think different teachers have different interpretations of
what is and is not a project-based unit.” Marie also comments on different teacher
interpretations. She comments that a big focus is on, “getting students to perform better.
Whether or not our teachers read that as do more PBL or do more traditional so that they do well
on their tests, that’s the fine line where you might lose people.” Rachel sums it up perfectly with
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her suggestion that, “maybe there should actually be more guidance on the projects, because
right now I feel like there’s not necessarily a lot.”
Kluger and DeNisi (1996) state that learning and motivation will be improved if those
undergoing a change initiative have clear goals. Only one teacher felt she had clarity in those
goals. Therefore, the Cultural Setting Influence that administration needs to provide clear
expectations to the teachers is validated. As such, it will be addressed for recommendations in
Chapter 5.
Organizational Influence: The Cultural Setting of Accountability
The assumed organizational setting influence of accountability states that teachers need
to be held accountable for performance or delivery of professional development received. The
main research results included:
• Most teachers mentioned a lack of accountability or perceived only informal
accountability measures for delivering high-quality PBL.
• The influence that teachers need to be held accountable for their performance or
delivery of professional development received has been validated.
The response to the survey item used to initially assess a general understanding of teacher
accountability can be seen in Figure 18.

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Figure 18. Question 22: My administration holds me accountable for implementing PBL

Two teachers felt that the administration does not hold the teachers accountable for
implementing PBL. The question still arises as to how each teacher interprets accountability.
Some teachers may feel that holding a project exhibition night where teachers present one project
from one class counts as accountability. However, this is a soft accountability as there are no
standards of assessing projects in this manner, and administrators do not necessarily visit each
classroom during the event. Therefore, the interviews were analyzed for evidence on how
teachers interpret accountability measures at the school.
When asked if the administration holds him accountable for delivering PBL, Pascal
responded with, “It doesn’t. So far it has not done it. In the future, maybe it will.” Dorothy
agrees with Pascal when she states, “Nobody’s said how they’re going to know that I actually did
one PBL each semester.” Jane has the same sentiment that, “they’ve never asked me if I’m
doing one or not, so I don’t think there is any.” When asked if the administrators are holding the
teachers accountable for reaching the gold standards for PBL, Marie responded, “I don’t know if
they are. The administration tries to say stuff like what Isaac does is the gold standard so do what
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he does, but they don’t hold us to the standard, I guess.” Isaac adds that, “in terms of the
administration checking up or looking at specific techniques that work in project-based
instruction, I haven’t seen that.” Ultimately, Rachel thinks the accountability systems are not
enough. She feels, “like maybe there should be more accountability on the quality of projects
because anyone can just throw out a project.”
In some circumstances teachers felt like administration was beginning to deliver an
informal level of accountability. Charles mentioned that, “today the principal walked through,
and I think that was probably an assessment of me doing PBL. It was probably not a formal
assessment.” However, Charles was uncertain about what the visit from the principal actually
meant. Rosalind had a similar experience when, “The principal actually sat in my classroom for
like five minutes, and he said he was going to give me feedback, but he has not done that yet.”
She said that the observation occurred three weeks prior. However, there is some question as to
how effective a short observation might be. For example, Albert feels that the accountability
measures are ineffective because a, “five-minute or ten-minute observation in one class a couple
of times a year is no assessment.”
The findings from the interviews indicate that more teachers feel that the accountability
for PBL is not upheld than they expressed on the survey. This may be because teachers were not
using the same definition as the researcher for accountability when responding to the survey.
Interviews offered the researcher the chance to clarify the meaning behind the term to get more
detailed responses of what teachers felt about accountability. Ultimately all teachers agreed that
accountability systems were either not present or informally done with respect to holding
teachers accountable for implementing PBL following their training with the Buck Institute for
Education. Therefore, the lack of accountability has been verified as an organizational influence
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affecting performance. One way to increase accountability and organizational performance is by
using data-driven benchmarking (Bogue & Hall, 2003; Marsh, 2012). Since only Isaac has
shown to reach a high-quality implementation of PBL, the lack of accountability aligns with poor
performance outcomes. Recommendations for how to improve these outcomes are found in
Chapter 5.
Summary
The intention of this chapter was to analyze data collected to answer the research
questions such that appropriate recommendations can be made and implemented in a timely
manner within the organization to assist in its goal to have all science teachers implementing
high-quality PBL by the end of the 2017–2018 school year. Analysis of the data has found that
only one of the nine science teachers has already reached the performance goal of designing and
implementing high-quality science instruction using project-based learning as defined by Larmer
et al.’s (2015) Gold Standard PBL rubrics. Additionally, it explored the knowledge, motivation,
and organizational influences that were assumed to influence teacher performance. Of these, it
was verified that teachers need to know how to design and implement an effective project-based
science unit. Both the conceptual knowledge influence that teachers need to know the NGSS
vision for approaching science instruction in contrast to traditional teaching methods, and the
metacognitive influence that teachers need to know how to reflect on their own practice and use
the reflections to alter instruction were found to be highly probable. The motivational influences
that teachers need to believe that PBL can produce high student achievement (expectancy value),
that teachers need to feel confident that they can implement a successful PBL unit (self-efficacy),
and that teachers need to share the same beliefs in program goals and act upon them collectively
(collective efficacy) were all verified. In terms of organizational influences, the Cultural Model
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of resistance to change was verified and the cultural model of trust in administrators was found
highly probable. Both the cultural settings of setting clear expectations for teacher instruction
and holding the teachers accountable for delivering gold standard PBL were also verified.
These influences all affect each other in terms of organizational success. If teachers
cannot design a high-quality project linked to the NGSS standards, it is unlikely that they will
implement the project well. If teachers do not know what the implementation of PBL should
look like, then no amount of reflection can assist them in improving their performance because
they lack standards to compare their performance against. If administration is not clear about the
standards, the teachers will not know if they are achieving to the administration’s expectations,
which is complicated by the fact that a lack of accountability may send the message to the
teachers that PBL is not an important goal for them to focus on. These influences can confuse
teachers and drop a teacher’s expectancy value for PBL because they get the sense that the
administration lacks follow-through. Additionally, many teachers will not persist with the task
of implementing PBL or trying to improve their implementation if they have a low self-efficacy
for the task and lack a strong departmental vision for how teachers should support the
organizational effort to implement PBL. Therefore, the organization has to work to change some
of the cultural models and settings to align with the organizational vision and goals.

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CHAPTER 5
SOLUTIONS AND INTEGRATED IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION PLANS
Chapter 4 provided a detailed analysis of the data collected to answer the first two
research questions of this study, which evaluated the extent that LHHS was reaching its goal of
implementing high-quality project-based learning units in the science department and finding the
knowledge, motivational, and organizational influences behind reaching this goal. The data was
used to validate the assumed influences following Clark and Estes’ (2008) framework, themes
were synthesized throughout the analysis, and further effects were discussed. This chapter
answers the third research question:
What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
This chapter was organized in sections covering the validated and highly probable influences
within the knowledge, motivation, and organization dimensions per Clark and Estes’ (2008)
conceptual framework. Additionally, recommendations and an integrated evaluation and
implementation plan were made following Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick’s (2016) New World
Kirkpatrick Model for how to build capacity in the verified knowledge, motivational, and
organizational influences. Finally, this chapter finishes with a discussion of the strengths and
weaknesses in the research approach, limitations and delimitations, followed by possible areas to
research in future studies. The chapter will open with a review of the project purpose and
questions.
Purpose of the Project and Questions
The purpose of this project was to evaluate the degree to which Little Hills High School
is achieving its goal of implementing three high-quality Next Generation Science Standards
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(NGSS)-aligned Project Based Learning (PBL) units in every science classroom by the end of
the 2017–2018 school year. The analysis will focus on knowledge, motivation and
organizational influences related to achieving this organizational goal. While a complete
evaluation project would focus on all stakeholders in the organization, for practical purposes the
stakeholders to be focused on in this analysis are the science teachers.
As such, the questions that guided this study were the following:
1. To what extent is the organization meeting its goal of implementing high-quality Next
Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned Project Based Learning (PBL) units in
every science classroom by the end of the 2017–2018 school year?
2. What are the knowledge, motivation and organizational influences related to
achieving the goal of implementing three high-quality NGSS-aligned PBL units in
every science classroom by the end of the 2017–2018 school year?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
Recommendations for Practice to Address KMO Influences
Knowledge Recommendations
Introduction. This study used Krathwohl’s (2002) Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to
organize the knowledge influences into three different types: the declarative knowledge that
governs teacher understanding of the NGSS standards, the procedural knowledge that governs a
teacher’s ability to design and implement a high-quality project-based learning unit, and the
metacognitive knowledge that teachers need to have to reflect and improve upon their own
practice. Teachers’ conceptual declarative knowledge of the full scope of the NGSS standards
was assessed through interviews. A need for the conceptual knowledge for the entire scope of
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the three dimensions of the NGSS standards was found to be highly probable. Priority was given
to knowing the NGSS standards because public high school teachers need to be held accountable
for meeting the educational standards of the state despite the teaching methodology that they
utilize. The need for teachers to have the procedural knowledge for how to design and
implement a high-quality unit using project-based learning was verified. It was important to give
this influence priority because of the high variability in results, duration, and level of
involvement with projects across each teacher. Both the declarative and procedural knowledge
influences align with the principles of Information Processing Theory as explained by Schraw
and McCrudden (2013), who state that the organization of knowledge can influence learning and
application of information and that mastery requires practice. Teachers attempting to learn a
new method of instructional delivery have a high probability for the need to organize the
information and practice the skills they need to combine the standards and the new methods
effectively with their students for a successful outcome.
The metacognitive need for teachers to know how to reflect upon their practice and alter
instruction based on these reflections was verified. Metacognitive influences are derived from
Baker’s (2006) findings that metacognitive exercises increase learning. Reflection is likely to
assist teachers to stay on target to reach their goals, to learn from prior mistakes, and to feel in
control of the results they seek in the classroom. Table 5 outlines the verified and highly
probable knowledge influencers that have been validated through the analysis of the data
collected through surveys, interviews, class observations, and project-based unit plans. In order
to reduce the ongoing impact of the verified and highly probable knowledge influences, Table 5
also lists a series of recommendations that are grounded in Information Processing Theory.

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Table 5
Summary of Knowledge Influences and Recommendations
Assumed Knowledge
Influence: Cause,
Need, or Asset*
Validated
Yes, High
Probability,
or No
(Y, HP, N)
Priority
Yes, No
(Y, N) Principle and Citation
Context-Specific
Recommendation
Teachers need to
know what the NGSS
vision is for teachers
to approach science
instruction in contrast
to traditional
teaching methods
under previous
standards. (D)
HP Y How individuals
organize knowledge
influences how they
learn and apply what
they know (Schraw &
McCrudden, 2013).
(Information
Processing Theory)
Provide a job aid
(poster) of science
practices with
examples for each
practice that is
subject-specific.
Provide charts of
NGSS standards
specific to each
classroom.
Teachers need to
know how to design
and implement an
effective project-
based science unit.
(P)
Y Y To develop mastery,
individuals must
acquire component
skills, practice
integrating them, and
know when to apply
what they have learned
(Schraw &
McCrudden, 2013).
(Information
Processing Theory)
(All teachers have
already taken PD in
PBL as mandated by
the district)
Provide a job aid that
provides the steps for
teachers to design and
implement effective
project-based science
units.
Teachers need to
know how to reflect
on own practices and
alter instruction
based on these
reflections. (M)
HP Y The use of
metacognitive
strategies facilitates
learning (Baker, 2006).
(Information
Processing Theory)
Provide a PBL
instructional
coach/mentor.
Instructional
coach/mentor will
assist teachers to set
up an instructionally
focused reflection
journal through
modeling.
* (D) stands for Declarative Knowledge, (P) stands for Procedural Knowledge and (M) stands
for Metacognitive Knowledge.

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Declarative knowledge solutions, or description of needs or assets. For the purposes
of this research, declarative knowledge is considered a combination of factual and conceptual
knowledge. Krathwohl (2002) explains that factual knowledge consists of fundamental
definitions or details of items, and conceptual knowledge consists of how factual knowledge can
be classified or interact together. Teachers do not thoroughly understand what the NGSS vision
is to approach science instruction in contrast to traditional teaching methods under previous
California state standards (D). Schraw and McCrudden (2013) discovered that the way in which
people organize information impacts their learning and application of the information. This
implies that providing visual aids with information grouped in a manner that mirrors desired job
functions would assist employees in applying the information appropriately as they work.
Teachers that need assistance in teaching lessons that align to the NGSS standards would benefit
from a guide posted in the classroom that clearly shows the teacher all the disciplinary core
ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices that each science teacher
needs to teach their specific subject such that the curriculum aligns with the vision of learning
science under NGSS.
Multiple research teams have found that teacher learning is optimal when done in
classroom settings (Anderson & Mitchener, 1994; Borko & Putnam, 1996). Providing relevant
information for teachers to refer to while in their teaching environment may enhance the
probability that teachers will use the information and may increase teacher exposure to the
principles. Shernoff, Sinha, Bressler, and Schultz (2017) performed a qualitative study on
teacher perceptions in shifting toward NGSS alignment. The researchers found that teachers felt
that the freedom for them to adapt their teaching to the NGSS standards coupled with the
complexity of the dimensions of the NGSS made adhering to the standards overwhelming.
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Therefore, providing assistance for teachers to reduce the complexity of the information through
a logical organizational scheme should assist teachers to reduce the feeling of being
overwhelmed.
Procedural knowledge solutions, or description of needs or assets. Krathwohl (2002)
suggests that procedural knowledge includes understanding how to follow an algorithm, applying
methods, and having the ability to distinguish which step in the process to apply at the right time.
Teachers need to know how to design and implement effective PBL units of instruction (P).
Even after taking PBL preparation, teachers claim to have difficulty designing and implementing
science instruction using project-based learning techniques. Schraw and McCrudden (2013)
state that mastery of a procedure requires people to know the skills required for implementation,
practice using them, and knowledge of when to use them. Since teachers need to acquire
procedural knowledge, Schraw and McCrudden’s (2013) requirements for procedural mastery
can be applied by creating a job aid that clearly outlines the steps of creating a PBL unit of study
in a flowchart format that teachers can use as a template for their practice.
Davis (2003) discovered that science teachers undergoing significant school reform of
pedagogical delivery required learning and decision-making structures to be established in order
to maintain a departmentally unified growth toward the new educational goals. Davis (2003)
also discovered that teachers were better able to learn new pedagogical procedures when they
could apply them in small portions rather than all at once. This aligns with Information
Processing Theory because teachers are choosing to learn in small, digestible components while
applying them, practicing, and adding additional procedures only when they find ease in
applying the previous ones (Schraw & McCrudden, 2013). Flowcharts align with this principle
since teachers can identify at what point in the procedure they need assistance and focus on only
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that one aspect of delivery without concentrating on all the other elements of the instructional
design.
Metacognitive knowledge solutions, or description of needs or assets. Mayer (2011)
defines metacognition as having awareness and control over one’s own cognitive processing.
Teachers need a regular strategy for reflecting on their own practices and altering their own
instruction based on these reflections (M). Baker (2006) indicates that learning is facilitated by
metacognitive activities. Mayer (2011) explains that self-regulated learners have both the ability
to know how they learn and to control their own learning. This implies that engaging in self-
reflective activities can improve knowledge of one’s own way of learning and it can encourage
self-monitoring such that learning becomes optimized. Teachers can utilize these principles by
receiving coaching and assistance in maintaining a self-reflective journal.
Davis (2003) notes that communication plays a central role in the success of teachers
implementing science curriculum reform. Self-reflection aids in communication with others
when reflection includes writing down thoughts as they occur. Teachers therefore can have a
written record of their thoughts which reduces the chance that something a teacher wishes to
communicate to others will be forgotten. In a study examining 188 preservice science teachers’
development into professionals, Michalsky (2012) found that development that scaffolded
metacognitive techniques along with cognitive and motivational techniques provided
significantly better transfer of teacher learning and performance than with scaffolded
motivational techniques alone or with scaffolded metacognitive and cognitive techniques only.
Metacognitive techniques therefore are an essential ingredient in meaning making and in
applying learned skills. Michalsky (2012) used scaffolding for metacognition that included
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written answers to reflective questions. Teacher coaches can therefore effectively use reflective
questions to guide written teacher reflection as a method to enhance teacher learning.
Motivation Recommendations
Introduction. This study focused on three main motivational influences that affect
teachers: the expectancy value that teachers need to believe that PBL can result in high student
achievement, and that the NGSS works in synergy with PBL, the self-efficacy teachers need to
feel confident in their ability to implement high-quality PBL, and the collective-efficacy that
teachers need to act coherently as a team moving toward the same goals. Data analysis resulted
in verifying all three motivational influences. Table 6 outlines the assumed motivation
influencers that have been validated through analysis of the data collected through surveys,
interviews, class observations, and project-based unit plans. Eccles (2006) explains that having a
high expectancy value for an activity can increase the ability to learn and apply the activity,
which implies that teachers need to have a high expectancy value for project-based learning in
order to learn how to apply it well. The concepts of self-efficacy and collective-efficacy as
explained by Pajares (2006) indicate that self and collective efficacy for a task can be increased
through feedback and modeling by experts, which is important because having high efficacy for
a task increases learning and motivation. Additionally, Pajares (2006) states that high levels of
efficacy increase expectancy values, which implies that these motivational influences enhance
each other. Table 6 also lists a series of recommendations to reduce the ongoing impact of non-
optimal motivational influences.

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Table 6
Summary of Motivation Influences and Recommendations
Assumed
Motivation
Influence: Cause,
Need, or Asset
Validated
Yes, High
Probability,
No
(Y, HP, N)
Priority
Yes, No
(Y, N) Principle and Citation
Context-Specific
Recommendation
Expectancy Value:
Teachers need to
believe that project-
based learning can
produce high
student achievement
and that it works in
concert with the
vision of the NGSS.
Y Y Higher expectations
for success and
perceptions of
confidence can
positively influence
learning and
motivation (Eccles,
2006).
Provide training with an
instructional coaching
mentor that has success
implementing PBL, has
respect of the teachers,
and can offer
enthusiasm and model
values for the task.
Self-Efficacy:
Teachers need to
feel a high
confidence level in
their ability to
implement a
successful project-
based learning unit
of study in a science
classroom.
Y Y Feedback and
modeling increases
self-efficacy (Pajares,
2006).
Provide PBL
instructional coaching
mentor that observes
teacher implementation
and provides private
feedback focused on
effort rather than ability.
Coach can co-teach to
offer appropriate
modeling of certain
tasks.
Collective efficacy:
Teachers need to
share the same
beliefs in program
goals and act upon
them collectively.
Y Y Learning and
motivation are
enhanced when
learners have positive
expectancies for
success (Pajares,
2006).
Provide designated
collaboration time with
an instructional
coaching mentor that
offers enthusiasm and
models successful
actions, where teachers
can plan PBL units for
common courses and
offer constructive peer
feedback. Instructional
coaching mentor should
be the same person for
all motivational
recommendations.

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Expectancy value. Expectancy value theory discusses the motivational influence behind
what people expect to occur as a result of their applied effort in concert with how much they feel
the outcome is worth (Eccles, 2006). Teachers need to believe that project-based learning will
produce high student achievement and that it works in concert with the vision of the NGSS.
Eccles (2006) indicates that when people have confidence and high expectations for success,
they are more likely to have improved learning and motivation as a result. Eccles (2006)
suggests that providing a believable role model that can display passion for the task can remedy
expectancy value issues. Therefore, the recommendation is to provide training by a respected
mentor who models enthusiasm and confidence for PBL and NGSS.
A teacher may have strong attainment values for how classrooms should be structured
and how content should be delivered. If the practices of PBL significantly diverge from a
teacher’s previously held values for how instruction should be carried out, then according to
Duzor (2010), teachers may perform poorly or resist implementing it altogether. PBL can only
be effectively assessed as a successful teaching strategy if the teachers attempt to implement it to
the best of their ability, which requires a high degree of teacher motivation to be present (Lam et
al., 2010). In addition, teachers must have a high utility value in place for PBL. According to
Duzor (2010), transfer of new methods will not occur when teachers think it is not necessary to
use within their teaching environments (Duzor, 2010). Since California has adopted NGSS
standards, teachers will need to adjust how they teach to satisfy the shift from teaching facts to
teaching applications of knowledge to students (Reiser, 2013). Larmer et al. (2015) explain that
a well-designed science unit of instruction delivered with PBL can easily satisfy the
requirements of the NGSS. If teachers are aware that PBL works well with NGSS and
understand that NGSS standards are now required by the state, then they should have a high
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utility value for implementing PBL in place. Therefore, theory would suggest that improving
teacher expectancy value should improve the delivery of PBL units using NGSS standards.
Self-efficacy. Bandura (1997) wrote extensively on self-efficacy and defined it as the
level to which individuals assess their own abilities to either learn material or accomplish goals.
Teachers need to feel a high confidence level in their ability to implement a successful project-
based learning unit of study in a science classroom. Pajares (2006) suggests that providing
prompt feedback and modeling desired practices increases self-efficacy. Therefore, if teachers
have access to examples of high-quality project-based learning units implemented in classroom
settings, then they can attempt to follow observed strategies. With immediate professional
feedback on their performance, they can begin to feel more confidence in their application of
PBL. Thus, the recommendation to improve teacher self-efficacy is to provide a PBL coach that
observes teacher implementation and provides private feedback focused on effort rather than
ability. This coach can co-teach to offer appropriate modeling of certain tasks.
Improved teacher self-efficacy has wide-ranging positive effects in in the classroom.
Teacher motivation arising from higher levels of teacher self-efficacy correlate strongly to better
student achievement as well. For example, Lam et al. (2010) found that teachers with higher
confidence showed higher motivation in implementing PBL, resulting in overall higher student
achievement. The positive correlation between motivation and student achievement aligns well
with Gibson and Dembo’s (1984) earlier finding that confident teachers with accurate
perceptions of self-efficacy persist on a given task for longer and are willing to use complicated
methods of instruction. Since PBL is a more complicated structure for delivering classroom
instruction (Larmer et al., 2015), teachers will need high self-efficacy to persist in their efforts.
However, it is important to note that overconfident teachers may tend to continue implementing
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ineffective instructional techniques because they have an inflated view of their own content
delivery (Rodríguez et al., 2014). In this way, teachers not only need to feel confident, but they
must accurately assess their current capacity for instructional delivery to effectively improve
when necessary. The recommendation for high-quality models and immediate feedback should
assist teachers in increasing self-efficacy while providing an accurate assessment of teaching
performance.
Collective efficacy. Bandura (2000) expanded his theory on self-efficacy to include his
belief that as a team people can achieve more than they can as individuals. Under this theory,
Bandura (2000) suggests that group accomplishments are not a simple summation of individual
members’ self-efficacy. Instead, a group operates well when all members share the same belief
and act upon that belief. There is an indication that Bandura’s (2000) concept of collective
efficacy also influences teacher motivation to implement effective PBL units. Teachers need to
share the same beliefs in program goals and act upon them collectively. Pajares (2006) states
that motivation is enhanced when learners have positive expectancies for success. Collective
efficacy may therefore be enhanced if the science department can collaborate regularly with a
leader that can sustain enthusiasm and high expectations for success. The recommendation to
improve the collective efficacy of the science teachers will be to provide designated
collaboration time with a team mentor that offers enthusiasm and models successful actions,
where teachers can plan PBL units for common courses and offer constructive peer feedback.
High collective efficacy in teachers suggests a strong group interaction and alignment
among them. Lam et al. (2010) found that teachers with strong relationships with colleagues and
support from administration felt higher degrees of self-determination to continue implementing
PBL and obtained positive results from their efforts. Since Bandura (2000) indicates that high
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levels of collective efficacy positively affect the self-efficacy of teachers, increasing the
collective efficacy of the science department can improve the implementation of PBL units in the
science classrooms. With increased collaboration time, teachers can provide peer feedback,
discuss problems, hold each other accountable for high fidelity to PBL, and unify the vision of
the department, which can increase the achievement of the science department as a whole.
Organization Recommendations
Introduction. Schein (2010) divides organizational culture into three structural levels:
artifacts, espoused beliefs and values, and basic underlying assumptions. Of these levels,
espoused beliefs and values and basic underlying assumptions fall under the cultural model
classification because they do not have tangible qualities. Schein (2010) differentiates cultural
settings from cultural models in that they are observable in employee behavior. Schneider et al.
(1996) argue that initiating cultural change must occur on the level of cultural settings because
cultural settings are observable phenomena that can be manipulated. Therefore, the validated
cultural settings will be directly addressed with actionable recommendations at a higher priority
than the cultural model influences. The cultural model of a need for teacher trust in the
administration and their decisions was found to be highly probable, while the rest of the
influences were validated through analysis of the data collected through surveys, interviews,
class observations, and project-based unit plans. Both Rueda (2011) and Clark and Estes (2008)
emphasize that if an organization’s cultural models, or the general stakeholder behavior within
the organization, and the cultural settings, or the procedures and resources used to accomplish
tasks, do not align with the values behind the organization vision, they can impede the attainment
of organizational goals. Table 7 outlines the organizational influence and lists recommendations
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rooted in organizational change theory for the organization to use to realign the cultural models
and settings to fit the organizational vision, mission, and goals.

Table 7
Summary of Organization Influences and Recommendations
Assumed
Organization
Influence: Cause,
Need, or Asset*
Validated
Yes, High
Probability,
No
(V, HP, N)
Priority
Yes,
No
(Y, N) Principle and Citation
Context-Specific
Recommendation
Cultural Model
Influence 1:
Teachers have a
general resistance
to change in
instructional
techniques.
Y Y Organizational effectiveness
increases when leaders facilitate
creative and collaborative
problem solving.
Related research:
Adult learners resist learning
when they feel others are
imposing information, ideas or
actions on them (Fidishun, 2000).
Administrators shall
include opportunities for
staff to bring diverse
opinions to the table
regarding change
initiatives.
Cultural Model
Influence 2:
Teachers need to
have trust in
administrators
and their
decisions.
HP Y Organizational effectiveness
increases when leaders are
trustworthy and, in turn, trust
their team. The most visible
demonstration of trust by a leader
is accountable autonomy.
“Organizations with high levels of
cultural trust tend to produce
high-quality products and services
at less cost because they can
recruit and retain highly
motivated employees. These
employees are more likely to
enjoy their work, take the time to
do their jobs correctly; make their
own decisions; take risks;
innovate; embrace the
organization’s vision, mission,
and values; and display
organizational citizenship
behavior (e.g., helping a co-
worker in need)” (Colquitt et al.,
2007, as cited in Starnes, Truhon
& McCarthy, 2010, p. 6).
1. Administrators shall
establish a methodology to
log commitments and
levels of meeting them.
2. Administrators to allow
teaching staff to adapt new
methodologies to their
own individual style by
providing a series of short
term, realistic goals that
teams of teachers are
allowed to collaborate to
determine how to reach.
(Provide designated
collaboration time for
this.)

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Table 7, continued
Assumed Organization
Influence: Cause,
Need, or Asset*
Validated
Yes, High
Probability,
No
(V, HP, N)
Priority
Yes,
No
(Y, N) Principle and Citation
Context-Specific
Recommendation
Cultural Setting
Influence 1: The school
needs to have clear
standards around
teaching methods and
expectations to guide
teachers to incorporate
new types of
instruction or lessons.
Y Y Learning, motivation and
performance will be
enhanced if participants
have clear, current and
challenging goals. For
feedback to be effective, it
should be timely, concrete
(task focused) and goal-
focused (Kluger & DeNisi,
1996).
Administrators to provide
timely, concrete, goal-
focused feedback to
teachers regarding
reaching established goals.
Administrators to find
time in staff meetings to
affirm the improvements
and accomplishments of
teachers while fairly
recognizing and
celebrating the work of
others.
Administrators to find a
method to ensure that
performance appraisals are
conducted fairly and
routinely, and that rewards
are based on merit.
Cultural Setting
Influence 2: Teachers
need to be held
accountable for
performance or
utilization of
professional
development received.
Y Y People are more productive
when goal setting and
benchmarking are utilized to
evaluate progress and drive
organizational performance
in accountability.
Related research:
Different types of
benchmarking contribute
data to improve
organizational performance
(Bogue & Hall, 2003;
Marsh, 2012).
1. Administrators shall
articulate the importance
and usage of data-driven
benchmarking in
improving organizational
performance.
2. Administrators shall
distinguish between peer-
based and standards-based
benchmarking as two ways
to benchmark
organizational
performance.
3. Utilize peer-based and
standards-based
benchmarking to alleviate
issues of accountability for
implementing PBL.

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Cultural models: Resistance to change. Cultural models penetrate deeply into the
psychological functioning of an organization’s personnel. Schneider et al. (1996) argue that
cultural models are subconscious beliefs and values that cannot be observed directly. One
subconscious belief that has surfaced repeatedly in the organization is the general resistance that
teachers have to changing their instructional techniques. When the organization depends upon
using updated teaching techniques to maintain relevance and high student achievement, teacher
resistance can reduce organizational efficacy. Clark and Estes (2008) indicate that
organizational effectiveness increases when leaders facilitate creative and collaborative problem
solving. One recommendation to increase creative and collaborative problem solving is to
include opportunities for staff to bring diverse opinions to the table regarding change initiatives.
Adult learners resist learning when they feel others are imposing information, ideas or
actions on them (Fidishun, 2000). In addition, Agócs (1997) mentions that to effectively resist
change, the resisting group must hold a significant level of power within the organization. For
example, public school teachers have the power to resist any change initiated by administration
in specific pedagogy, especially teachers with tenure. Tenured teachers may feel safe to
challenge pedagogical change initiatives by administration because administration cannot easily
let them go. However, if administration allows sufficient time for creative and collaborative
problem solving, it is likely that those who resist will collaborate and hear from others that
support the change. Together, teachers can work out solutions that work with the initiative,
which simultaneously makes teachers feel more autonomous and increases their accountability to
each other. Increased autonomy should decrease the feeling that administration continues to
impose its will upon the staff, which will decrease the impulse to resist the change.
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Cultural models: Lack of trust. Another cultural model extant within the organization
is a lack of trust in the leadership. However, teachers need to have trust in administrators and
their decisions. Organizations produce higher quality products when a relationship of trust exists
among the leaders and staff. The organization can improve the level of trust first by delivering
on its own promises to the stakeholders. Therefore, it is recommended that administrators
establish a methodology to log their own commitments and levels of meeting them.
Additionally, the organization can improve the level of trust from its teachers by deliberately
showing that it trusts the teachers to execute the organizational vision. To establish this trust,
administrators should give the teaching staff the autonomy to adapt new methodologies to their
own individual style by providing a series of short term, realistic goals that teams of teachers are
allowed to collaborate to determine how to reach.
Problems with trust tend to arise from a series of negative interactions between
administrators and employees (Korsgaard, Brodt, & Whitener, 2002). In Korsgaard et al.’s
(2002) study, it was found that negative encounters between managers and employees did not
connect to a lack of trust if the employees perceived the managers to exhibit a high level of
concern and continued communication and vice versa. Teachers may not trust the administration
in a public school if a series of negative altercations builds up with a lack of open
communication and concern flowing from the administrator to the teacher. If the administration
keeps its promises with the staff, then the staff should feel more comfortable communicating
with the administration and approach it with difficult issues, partly because the teachers will
respect an administration that follows through with its promises. Additionally, when
administrators initiate trust by giving teachers autonomy, the teachers are more likely to
reciprocate trust, which will increase organizational performance.
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Cultural settings: Communication of expectation. Schneider et al. (1996) define four
different dimensions to cultural settings including the type of interpersonal relationships within
the organization, the way the organizational hierarchy behaves, what the work is like in the
organization, and the supports or awards in place to assist work performance. Schein (2010)
differentiates cultural settings from cultural models in that they are observable in employee
behavior. One observed behavior at this organization is that administration does not clearly
communicate teaching expectations. The organization needs to have clear standards around
teaching methods or written expectations to guide teachers to incorporate new types of
instruction or lessons. Kluger and DeNisi (1996) suggest that employees with clear, current, and
challenging goals have enhanced learning, motivation and performance. Moreover, Kluger and
DeNisi suggest that feedback on the goals needs to occur soon after observation, and it should
focus on the goals to be met and the tasks completed. It is recommended that administrators
provide timely, concrete, goal-focused feedback to teachers regarding reaching established goals
and to find time in staff meetings to affirm the improvements and accomplishments of teachers
while fairly recognizing and celebrating the work of others. Administrators need to find a
method to ensure that performance appraisals are conducted fairly and routinely, and that any
rewards or recognition are based on merit.
Schneider et al. (1996) explain that failures in Total Quality Management efforts to make
Total Organizational Changes have failed in part because management did not make its
objectives completely clear to the staff. When this occurs, employees have no focus for their
change efforts, resulting in staff ignoring the changes or sporadically implementing them. To
improve the likelihood of implementation, management would have to make it clear what they
expect as an outcome of employee work. If teachers in a public school are told during meetings
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that they should implement a new type of pedagogy without having a written documentation of
new standards or expectations, the teachers will not be able to map the delivery of their course
material to the new expectations as they will have no timeline or specific goals to achieve by the
end of the year. Thus, these teachers may hover in a state of limbo, waiting for the clear
documentation to arrive before they start to implement the expected change. Providing teachers
with expected goals and holding them accountable to achieving them should improve
organizational conditions.
Cultural settings: Accountability systems. Another cultural setting affecting the
organization occurs because teachers have no accountability systems in place for performing the
required changes or applying concepts from professional development received. One way to
increase accountability and organizational performance is by using data-driven benchmarking
(Bogue & Hall, 2003; Marsh, 2012). It is therefore recommended that administrators articulate
the importance and usage of data-driven benchmarking in improving organizational
performance, distinguish between peer-based and standards-based benchmarking as two ways to
benchmark organizational performance, and utilize peer-based and standards-based
benchmarking to alleviate issues of accountability for implementing PBL.
Leaders must hold their employees accountable for upholding the standards of change
initiatives by setting up systems of support, or accountability systems, and rewards or
recognition systems that highlight exemplary service (Schneider et al., 1996). In addition to this,
an appropriate amount of recognition has been linked to increasing intrinsic motivation, which in
turn, enhances dedication to contribute to the initiative of change (Hansen et al., 2002). If
teachers have no systems or procedures in place to hold them accountable to new standards of
teaching, then they will likely ignore their duties or not be aware of how well they are doing in
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upholding those standards. In addition, teachers will have low intrinsic motivation to persist in
any initiative for major change if they never get recognized for their efforts. Hansen et al. (2002)
recommend that not only should new programs clearly identify how employees need to modify
their work procedures, but also that the recognition system needs to clearly communicate how
the employees must satisfy the needed changes. If teachers in the organization have this clear
communication or evaluation of expectations, then the likelihood that the change will occur will
increase.
Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plan
Implementation and Evaluation Framework
The following implementation and evaluation plan was developed based on the methods
outlined in the New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). The New
World Kirkpatrick Model expands upon the original Kirkpatrick Model (2006) in that the Level
1 Evaluation that tests the extent that trainees enjoy their training expands beyond only looking
at customer satisfaction to including trainee engagement and the relevance of the training to the
trainee. Level 2, which measures how well trainees have acquired new knowledge has expanded
beyond measuring knowledge, skill, and attitude, to including confidence and commitment.
Level 3, which measures how well trainees apply the skills and information presented during the
training, now includes specified required drivers that encourage the application of desired trainee
behaviors. Level 4, which measures the degree to which the goals have been reaches as a result
of program implementation, now includes Leading Indicators, which includes assessing the
behaviors needed to accomplish the stakeholder goals. According to the New World Kirkpatrick
Model, the evaluation should begin at Level 4 with the goals of the organization in mind and
work backwards to Levels 3, 2, and 1 (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). The backwards design
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allows for the training intervention to be evaluated for quality before the training is over. The
following sections will detail the implementation plan for Levels 4 to 1 respectively.
Organizational Purpose, Need and Expectations
The purpose of Little Hills High School is to promote critical thinking, optimal learning,
and achievement for all students. In the subject of science, Project Based Learning (PBL) shows
great promise in building critical thinking, learning optimally, and enhancing student
achievement if done to a high standard. This research analyzed knowledge, motivational, and
organizational influences that may impede teachers from achieving high-quality PBL delivery.
In order to assist teachers to implement high-quality PBL, a one-to-one instructional coaching
mentorship program was proposed which would provide personal assistance to design and
deliver PBL in its first phase, and extend into mentoring teachers to work together to sustain high
standards of PBL project design and delivery in its second stage. The district has already
employed an instructional coach who has worked successfully with the science teachers in
previous years and who has the appropriate training for instructional coaching. If utilized in an
organized teacher development program, this instructional coach can offer high-quality
instructional support to the science staff. This instructional coach would primarily utilize
modeling, feedback, constructive discourse, and questioning to assist teachers in PBL design and
delivery rather than require teachers to follow a scripted or dictated teaching format. If
implemented, this instructional coaching mentorship should result in the science teachers
delivering at least two high-quality project-based units aligned to the NGSS standards a year.
Level 4: Results and Leading Indicators
Table 8 lists the proposed results and leading indicators from Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick
(2016). The outcomes are divided into ones that are evident to the public, or external, and ones
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that are evident only within the confines of the organization, or internal. The main focus is for
the organization to reach the internal outcomes such that the external outcomes can be realized.

Table 8
Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Outcomes
Outcome Metric(s) Method(s)
External Outcomes
1. All students graduating LHHS
will have taken at least 1 biology
course and 1 physical science
course. earning at least a C- or
higher in all sciences.
Number of science courses
taken on transcripts.
Analyze final senior
transcripts prior to
graduation day.
2. All students graduating LHHS
will have earned grades of C- and
higher in all science courses taken.
Grades on final transcripts. Analyze final senior
transcripts prior to
graduation day.
3. Higher percentages of students
will report enjoying their science
courses in comparison to previous
years.
Number of positive student
reports on science courses.
Deliver and analyze the
annual senior exit survey.
Internal Outcomes
4. All science teachers will deliver
at least 3 high-quality PBL units.
Unit plans score highly on
Buck Institute for Education’s
Project Plan Scoring Rubric
and the Project Based Teaching
Rubric.
Procure PBL unit plans and
assess against the scoring
rubric.
5. All science teachers will align
PBL units to NGSS standards.
Unit plans mention sequitur
and correct standards for the
subject matter and connect
standards to lesson activities.
Procure PBL unit plans and
assess against NGSS
standards for that subject
matter.
6. Increased teacher confidence and
satisfaction.
Feedback from teachers. Set aside regular times for
1:1 conversations between
principal or vice principals
and teachers.

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Level 3: Behavior
Critical behaviors. The science teachers at Little Hills High School are the stakeholders
of focus who will each engage in a one on one mentorship with a professional PBL coach in high
school science. The first critical behavior that teachers must exhibit following the mentorship is
that teachers must correctly design and document a PBL unit of study aligned to NGSS
standards. Second, teachers must correctly implement the PBL unit they designed using
formative assessments, summative assessments, and short-term achievable goals. Finally,
teachers must identify and procure suitable resources to complete projects before project
implementation. Table 9 enumerates the metrics, methods, and timing needed to assess the
extent at which the critical behaviors are evident.
Required drivers. Science teachers will require some scaffolding and structure to keep
the training they have received mentally accessible and applicable. Teachers will require several
forms of knowledge reinforcement that are easy for them to reference while designing new
projects. They will also require regular encouragement from their peers, rewards for meeting
goals, and some level of monitoring from the administration to stay the task. Table 10 lists out
the methods, and timing of specific supports and how each support connects back to the Level 3
critical behaviors.

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Table 9
Critical Behaviors, Metrics, Methods, and Timing for Teacher Development
Critical Behavior Metric(s) Method(s) Timing
1. Correctly design
and document a PBL
unit of study aligned
to NGSS standards.
Score on PBL
design rubric.
Standards match
course description
and project topic.
Department head will review proposed
PBL units according to BIE’s design
rubric and give it a stamp of approval or
suggestions for revision.
Before proposed
implementation of each PBL
unit.

Department head will assign groups of
teachers to work collaboratively to assess
and suggest ideas for project planning.
Department head assigns
groups at beginning of year.
Groups meet once a month.

Department head will identify any
teachers that continuously struggle with
PBL design despite previous aids and
assign a trained PBL instructional
coaching mentor to directly mentor
teacher in project development until
project is complete.
After first PBL Unit, to be
reassessed after each PBL
unit completion.
2. Correctly
instruct/implement
PBL using formative
assessments,
summative
assessments, and
short-term achievable
goals.
Number of
projects
completed in a
year.
PBL instructional coaching mentor will
spot check lesson delivery through
classroom observations, student
interactions, and viewing student work.
During first project
implementation, once daily.
Thereafter, once a week
during project delivery.

Quality of student
products.
Department head will assign teachers
collaborative partners that will observe
each other’s student products, delivery,
goals set and met, and collaborate
together during department meetings.
Teachers observe another
teacher’s PBL class once a
week and provide
immediate feedback.
Teachers collaborate twice a
month to review each
other’s student products.
3. Identify and
procure suitable
resources to complete
projects before
project
implementation.
Number of
requests for
resources for
projects after
projects begins
(where zero is
ideal).
Department will make an inventory of all
existing supplies/equipment/tools and a
check-out form.
At the beginning of each
year.
Inventory to be updated as
soon as more supplies are
introduced to the
department.

Department will make a resource wish-
list with prices and vendors. Department
head will route requests to proper place.
As supplies are needed.

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Table 10
Required Drivers to Support Teachers’ Critical Behaviors
Method(s) Timing
Critical
Behaviors
Supported
1, 2, 3
Etc.
Reinforcing
Job Aid including checklist of steps for designing PBL units. Ongoing 1
Job Aid including NGSS standards specific to each classroom
and all science practices.
Ongoing 1
Job Aid including Gold Standard PBL teacher practices. Ongoing 1, 2
Reflection forms for teachers to ask questions, reflect on teaching
practice, and reflect on PBL implementation.
Ongoing 1, 2
Inventory forms hosted online and accessible by teachers only. Ongoing 3
Department meetings with all science teachers to establish goals
and time frames.
Weekly 1, 2, 3
Department meetings to troubleshoot problems and for training
purposes.
Every
month
1, 2, 3
PBL instructional coaching mentor observations and training
sessions.
Coach
available
daily
1, 2, 3
Department meeting time for teaching groups to collaborate and
offer feedback.
Every two
weeks.
1, 2, 3
Encouraging
Collaboration and peer modeling during department meetings. Weekly 1, 2, 3
Feedback and coaching from PBL instructional coaching mentor
and partnered teacher pairs.
Ongoing 1, 2, 3

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Table 10, continued
Method(s) Timing
Critical
Behaviors
Supported
1, 2, 3
Etc.
Rewarding
Performance incentive when student performance on state testing
in science increases.
Each year 1, 2, 3
Public acknowledgement, such as a mention at staff meetings,
when department performance hits a benchmark.
Each
semester
1, 2, 3
Monitoring
School to hold a Project Presentation night where each teacher
showcases student projects to parents during open house.
Each
semester
1, 2, 3
Administrators to interview teachers and ask reflective questions
about how they perceive their growth in PBL.
Each
semester
during
teacher
evaluations
1, 2, 3
Department head will check the progress of PBL development
and implementation in department meetings.
Each
department
meeting
1, 2, 3

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Organizational support. In order to support the critical behaviors needed from the
science teachers, the organization must provide appropriate support. Teachers need to correctly
design and document a PBL unit of study that aligns to the NGSS standards. The organization
can support these behaviors by giving autonomy to the teachers as they brainstorm teaching
methods that they can perform to fit within a unit of PBL. Administration can allot time for the
science teacher to collaborate and bring diverse opinions to the table about how the PBL units
should be designed. Administration can make clear, short-term goals for how long the PBL
should last, and when the PBL should be completed before the next period of implementation.
Administration will provide simple job aids specific to each major genre of science to assist
teachers in hitting the major needs to high-quality PBL. Finally, the administration will provide
a budget for the science department to work with in order to procure sufficient resources to
deliver projects equitably.
Level 2: Learning
Learning goals. After the recommended solutions are implemented, especially the one-
to-one teacher-coach mentoring program, the stakeholders will be able to:
1. Recognize the correct NGSS standards and Science and Engineering Practices to use
in a project-based learning unit. (D)
2. Recall the Gold Standard PBL Essential Project Design Elements and the Project
Based Teaching Practices with 100% accuracy. (D)
3. Design a PBL Unit that satisfies all 7 Essential Project Design Elements. (P)
4. Implement a PBL unit while incorporating/applying the 7 Project Based Teaching
Practices. (P)
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5. Detect areas in need of improvement in PBL others’ and their own unit plans using a
Project Design Rubric. (M)
6. Provide constructive feedback to other teachers about their use of Project Based
Teaching Practices. (M)
7. Monitor progress through the PBL Unit and adjust instruction as necessary for student
learning. (M)
8. Evaluate feedback from other teachers, coaches, or administrators to make
adjustments to instruction as necessary. (M)
9. Create reflective writings on PBL implementation, teaching experiences, and
observations. (M)
10. Show confidence that they can design and implement a successful PBL unit.
(Efficacy)
11. Value the outcomes of PBL on student learning. (Value)
12. Show confidence in collaborating with mentors and teachers. (Collective Efficacy)
Program. The learning goals mentioned in the previous list will be achieved with a
personal, individualized training program executed by a PBL instructional coaching mentor,
followed up by group collaborative activities done together during science department meetings,
and finalized with observations and feedback during PBL implementation. The science teachers
have varied levels of experience with and expertise in PBL, so a personalized learning program
is essential to meet the needs of every teacher. The individualized learning will consist of
mentoring the learners who need assistance in writing effective NGSS-linked PBL units in their
respective subjects. The teachers with more experience and expertise in developing units will
focus on evaluating previously written units and improving them. Following the individual
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trainings, all teachers will participate in group activities with the PBL instructional coaching
mentor during weekly scheduled department meetings. It is expected that the mentor will
individually meet with teachers for five one-hour sessions, observe at least five classes of each
teacher throughout the implementation of the PBL, and hold collaborative sessions for four 1.5-
hour department meetings. This is a total of 16 hours of time for each teacher to be under the
mentorship of an expert.
Individualized training program detail. During the individual mentor meetings, the
teachers will be provided a job aid that includes the NGSS standards that the teacher is expected
to cover during the school year. The teacher will also be provided a job aid that includes 7
reasons to use PBL, 7 essential project design elements, 5 steps for designing a project, 7 key
project-based teaching practices, a project design rubric, and a checklist for essential project
elements. The mentor will demonstrate how to use these job aids through modeling. The mentor
will then provide another job aid that includes an example of a well-designed project in the
teacher’s field of study, and a poorly designed project in the teacher’s field of study. The mentor
will work together with the teacher to identify where the essential elements of project design can
be found in the exemplary project and identify missing elements in the poorly designed project.
Mentors will work together with teachers to improve the poorly designed project. Once the
mentor feels the teacher understands the process of designing a project using the NGSS
standards, the mentor will work with the teacher to begin designing or editing a project for the
teacher’s class with the teacher using the aids.
Group mentoring. Once all teachers have a complete project, mentors will arrive at the
science department meetings to show videos of exemplary implementation of high school
science PBLs. Mentor will facilitate discussions around PBL teacher management techniques
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and align these to the PBL Gold Standard Project Teaching Practices. Mentors will show videos
of non-optimal project implementation either by anonymous teachers or purposely scripted and
induce discussions around what needs to be improved according to the PBL teaching practices.
Teachers will form small groups that will exchange projects with each other for evaluation and
feedback. At the end of department meetings, teachers will write anonymous answers to
reflective questions on a notecard for feedback.
Individual observations. The PBL instructional coaching mentor will arrive to observe
various stages of the PBL implementation for each teacher. Additionally, the mentor will
provide immediate constructive feedback to the teachers, who will use this information and
reflection to form an action plan for whatever may need improvement. Teachers will write goals
after each feedback session to show the mentor, who will seek evidence for their attainments
during the next teacher observation. The goal of these three elements of the program is to
educate teachers how to design an effective PBL and coach them through successful
implementation of one to raise self-efficacy. An additional goal is to strengthen collective
efficacy with the teachers by forming collaborative groups that can rely on each other for
constructive feedback on projects.
Components of learning. Teachers must have the basic declarative knowledge of the
essential elements of PBL and the elements of teaching one before they can design a project.
They must also have knowledge of the NGSS standards that they are expected to teach such that
they can deliberately incorporate elements of the standards into the project. Therefore, it is
important for the mentor to evaluate the teachers’ understanding of these elements by having
them discuss them or recall them during the teacher-mentor meeting. The mentor can also
evaluate whether or not a teacher knows procedural knowledge by asking them to identify
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missing steps from a demonstration or by describing the actions they would take from beginning
to end. Evaluation of procedural knowledge for both designing and implementing PBL is
essential for teachers to have to have success and increase confidence. Table 11 lists the
essential evaluation methods with the corresponding timing to assess learning.
Level 1: Reaction
Table 12 lists the methods, tools, and timing for evaluating the mentoring program at the
Level 1 stage of the New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). In order
to measure the teachers’ reactions to the program, three different categories of reaction have
been defined. Evaluators need to see the level of engagement that the teachers exhibit during the
program, how relevant the teachers feel the program information is to their jobs, and how
satisfied the teachers feel with the course. Methods and tools to measure each category are
detailed in Table 12.

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Table 11
Components of Learning for the Program
Method(s) or Activity(ies) Timing
Declarative Knowledge “I know it.”
Assess previous PBL unit plans with
Project Design Rubric.
Prior to program, immediately after program, a
few months after program.
Knowledge checks through mentor to
teacher discussion.
Periodically during the in-person mentorship,
documented with mentor-written observation
notes.
Knowledge checks through
individual/group activities.
Periodically during the mentored department
collaboration sessions.
Procedural Skills “I can do it right now.”
Teacher observation of proper PBL
teaching practices.
Prior to program, immediately after program, a
few months after program.
Provide Unit Plans and have teachers
identify missing elements from PBL
Essential Project Design.
During in-person mentorship sessions.
Demonstration of using the job aids to
successfully use NGSS standards and
Project Design Elements in designing a
PBL unit.
During in-person mentorship sessions.
Quality of the feedback from science
teachers during peer project review
sessions.
During all the mentored department collaboration
sessions.
Individual application of the Essential
Teaching Practices while implementing
the PBL unit.
At the end of the workshop during classroom
observations by the mentor.
Quality of reflective journaling done
throughout design and implementation
of PBL.
During mentored department and collaboration
sessions, and at the end of the workshop, mentor
will ask to review reflective journals, or
interview teachers about their reflections.

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Table 11, continued
Method(s) or Activity(ies) Timing
Attitude “I believe this is worthwhile.”
Mentor’s observation of participants’
statements and actions demonstrating that
they see the benefit of PBL as a teaching
tool.
During the one on one interaction and during
mentored department meetings.
Discussions of the value of PBL in group
setting.
During the mentored department meetings.
Value expressed in reflective writings or
discussions.
Discussion of reflections both in mentored
department meetings and follow up individual
mentor meetings.
Confidence “I think I can do it on the job.”
Survey items using scaled items. Immediately following the program and delayed
for one to two months after the program.
Discussions following practice and
feedback.
During the mentored department meetings.
Confidence expressed in reflective
writings or discussions.
After the course upon reflective journal review
or discussion of reflections both in mentored
department meetings and follow up individual
mentor meetings.
Commitment “I will do it on the job.”
Survey items using scaled items. Immediately following the program and delayed
for one to two months after the program.
Discussions following practice and
feedback.
During the mentored department meetings.
Create an individual action plan. During in-person mentorship sessions.
Commitment expressed in reflective
writings or discussions.
After the course upon reflective journal review
or discussion of reflections both in mentored
department meetings and follow up individual
mentor meetings.

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Table 12
Components to Measure Reactions to the Program
Method(s) or Tool(s) Timing
Engagement
Survey items using scaled items Immediately following the program.
Observation by mentor During the individual mentor/teacher time and during
mentored department meetings.
Observation by department head During mentored department meetings.
Attendance Teacher keeps appointments to meet with mentor.
Teacher arrives for mentored department meetings.
Program evaluation Two months after the course.
Relevance
Survey items using scaled items Immediately following the program and delayed for
one to two months after the program.
Brief pulse-check with
participants via discussion
(ongoing)
During the one-on-one interaction and during mentored
department meetings.
Program evaluation Two months after the course.
Customer Satisfaction
Brief pulse-check with
participants via discussion
(ongoing)
During the one on one interaction and during mentored
department meetings.
Program evaluation Two months after the course.

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Evaluation Tools
Immediately following the program implementation. During the one-to-one
mentorship, the mentor will collect observational data on teacher engagement, relevance, and
satisfaction with the course. These observations will continue throughout the mentored
department meetings and will cover in vivo Level 1 formative assessments. During the final in-
person meeting, mentors will make action items for the teacher to commit to work on improving
the quality of PBL design and implementation. The mentor will also guide teachers through
various in-person practices where teachers need to identify Gold Standard PBL flaws in example
PBL unit plans and identify missing and positive PBL Teaching practices in example movies,
which will cover in vivo Level 2 formative assessments.
Immediately following the entire mentorship program, the instructor will pass out a
survey evaluation. Levels 1 and 2 will be assessed with a combination of Likert scale items, a
few open-ended questions, and an item that asks teachers to select all that apply (see Appendix F
for the detailed items on this survey). Level 2 skills will be assessed through the mentor
collecting individually developed PBL unit plans from each teacher and assessing them against
the Project Design Rubric (in Appendix E) and observing classroom PBL implementation and
assessing that against the Project Based Teaching Rubric (in Appendix D).
Delayed for a period after the program implementation. After a teacher has the
chance to design a second PBL and begin implementing it following the mentored PBL program,
the mentor will again assess Level 2 skills by evaluating the PBL unit plan against the Project
Design Rubric and assessing teacher observations with the Project Based Teaching Rubric. This
should occur between 2 and 3 months following the program. The leadership will also pass out a
survey with Likert items, free response, and rating tables that will assess relevance and customer
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satisfaction for Level 1, the Level 3 desired behaviors, and Level 4 leading indicators and desired
results (see Appendix G).
Data Analysis and Reporting
The Levels 3 and 4 goals of the science teachers include the behaviors expected for all
science teachers to be able to accomplish the overall outcome of implementing high-quality
project-based learning units that align to the NGSS standards. These goals will be measured by
assessing the teachers with the Buck Institute for Education’s Project Based Teaching Rubric and
the Project Design Rubric. The teachers will be assessed with these rubrics before commencing
the one-on-one mentorship with the instructional coach, immediately after the mentorship, two
months following the mentorship, and again six months after the training. In order to maintain
consistency with the assessments, the same person will perform the assessments at each time
interval. The assessments will score the teacher on adherence to high-quality project design and
delivery. Figure 19 shows an example of how the results of these assessments can be graphed
over time. All teacher results can be combined together into a progress dashboard as seen in
Figure 20.
Levels 2 and 1 goals will also be graphed based on the surveys implemented during the
program and based on assessments made by the instructional coach following each meeting with
a teacher. Results will be displayed as a series of bar graphs for each teacher and displayed as a
dashboard for each teacher with significant improvement or decline highlighted on the page.

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Figure 19. Example of levels 3 and 4 progress for a teacher with hypothetical data

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Teacher A

Teacher B

Teacher C

Teacher D

Teacher E

Teacher F

Teacher G

Teacher H

Teacher I

Figure 20. Dashboard of teacher performance data

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Summary
One of the main advantages of using Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick’s (2016) New World
model is that by working backwards, it keeps the evaluation focused on the final outcomes of the
training, which makes it very apparent whether or not the training has been successful or not. If
the training is successful, then it is important to find out why it was successful so that the
successful actions will carry through to future trainings. If the training is not successful, then
evaluators can step backwards through the levels to find the data that would pinpoint a weakness
in the program. When a weakness is found, the program should be modified to increase efficacy.
Since feedback from the program will be collected while the program is being implemented,
negative feedback should be acted upon immediately to improve delivery while the training is
still ongoing. This will maximize the effectiveness of the course such that any negative
influences do not have a chance to propagate throughout the entire program. So far if
implemented in this fashion, the one-on-one mentoring and teacher collaboration training should
improve the ability of the teachers to apply project-based learning effectively in their classrooms
while meeting the NGSS standards and feel motivated to continue learning how to improve their
project delivery as they more ahead in designing and implementing more of them in the future.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Approach
Using the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework was one of this study’s greatest
strengths. The organization of influences into the three major dimensions of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational factors made it easy to identify areas to investigate and to analyze
how those factors interact and influence each other within the organization. The final stage of
Clark and Estes’ (2008) framework includes evaluation. This study incorporated Kirkpatrick and
Kirkpatrick’s (2016) New World Kirkpatrick Model to inform evaluation during implementation
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of recommended solutions. The Kirkpatrick model fits well within Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap
analysis as evaluating during solution implementation assists in avoiding solutions that do not
work, and continuously calls for reflection and modification of the solutions such that the results
of the implementation will be maximized (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016).
One weakness in Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis approach is that the researcher
needs to have an intimate knowledge of the organization in order to make insightful decisions
about assumed KMO influences that affect the stakeholder performance. As research is often
bounded in time constraints, the chosen assumed influences are limited enough to bound the
study to a reasonable time frame for performance improvement. If the researcher chooses
influences that are not validated, it may require additional data collection to find influences that
are validated. Therefore, a researcher with intimate knowledge of the organization would be
necessary to identify the most likely influences, which makes it difficult to hire consultants to
perform gap analysis work for organizational improvement. Additionally, the approach is
specific to singular organizations, which makes results less generalizable across all similar
organizations, as each may have significantly different KMO factors that drive the organization.
Lastly, there is a possibility that the proposed solutions will not be implemented because of
district resources and budget concerns that are beyond the direct control of the organization.
Limitations and Delimitations
It is important to address any limitations, or aspects that the researcher cannot control, in
the study to minimize the effect they may have on the study’s results. This study focused on
evaluating a small group of specialized teachers in a public suburban high school. As such, the
results cannot be used to generalize recommendations for all high schools in the state or the
nation. However, the results can be suggested to apply to demographically similar schools in the
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country that are also attempting to transition toward implementing PBL in all science courses.
Time also limited the study as data had to be collected between early September and December
of the 2017–2018 school year. Because of the brief window for data collection, two of the
teachers did not implement a project-based learning unit in that time, which may not have
allowed the researcher to get a complete understanding of the knowledge, motivational, and
organizational factors that influence these teachers during lesson observations. In addition,
several teachers did not have project unit plans written down, or the organization of the plans
were not collected in a singular unit plan but distributed over teacher planning books and
instructional materials. As a result, the researcher may have incorrectly evaluated pieces of unit
plans as missing if the teacher had inadvertently omitted a piece of the plan when providing the
researcher with written unit plan materials. Teachers may mentally plan aspects of gold standard
PBL project design without explicitly writing them in the unit plans, which may make their
project design performance appear lower than it actually is.
The qualitative nature of the study was limited also by the quality of the interview
responses. Teachers may have omitted information in their responses that they felt represented
them in a negative light. Teachers may also have omitted information because they understood
the question differently than it was intended. Additionally, the researcher may have missed some
information by not providing the correct probing question to solicit responses. As such, the
researcher triangulated interview responses with classroom observations and with lesson plans
and surveys to minimize the impact of omitted data from interviews.
This study also contains delimitations, or choices made by the researcher that limit the
scope of the research. The main objective of the study was to evaluate how well the organization
has accomplished its goal to implement authentic project-based learning in its science classrooms
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that align to the Next Generation Science Standards. It was the researcher’s goal to use the
information of the study to assist the organization in reaching this goal if the data found that it
has not achieved the goal, or to uncover the successful actions driving the change if the goal has
been reached or exceeded. The researcher chose this objective to research because project-based
learning is a leading promising practice that if done well can lead to more student interest and
future engagement in STEM, a goal the researcher holds a deep passion for. Based on the nature
of the research objective, the researcher chose to research a singular organization based on
convenience and access to the school. Therefore, generalization of the results will be limited to
public high school science teachers in the process of learning how to implement project-based
learning in their classrooms. This study is also delimited by the researcher’s use of Clark and
Estes’ (2008) framework of knowledge, motivational, and organizational (KMO) factors that
influence organizational change initiatives. The researcher looked specifically for KMO factors
that affect teacher performance, which bounds the study to these three influencers and to the
researcher’s assumptions for which influencers to investigate.
Future Study
Evidence in the interviews suggests that even after attending PBL 101, the understanding
of what a project should look like in the classroom and how to implement one ranges widely
from teacher to teacher. Since such differences can cause a lack of unity in the vision for PBL, it
would benefit teachers to investigate teachers’ various understandings of high-quality PBL and
the KMO factors behind BIE teacher development courses that shape these understandings.
Additionally, it would be useful to expand the study to include a broad range of public
high schools across the United States that are in the process of transitioning teaching methods to
include PBL. Having data from across many public schools can identify more general influences
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that affect a majority of schools in the nation. Research findings from such a study could
broaden the influence of the study as the results can be generalized across multiple contexts.
Recommendations from a more generalized study could be applied to more public high schools
across the nation, offering the chance to increase the efficacy of PBL integration into high school
STEM programs.
Insight from teacher interviews also brought to the surface a potential conflict between
the vision schools have for their students to be productive members of society with skills that
will assist them to succeed in the 21st century and the methods that the nation uses to assess
student and school progress toward these goals. A research study that looks into alignment
between the vision schools and teachers have for their students’ success and the methods to
assess the success of schools would bring to light any misalignment with how students and
schools are held accountable for learning, and the type of learning the schools value as a product
in their students.
Conclusion
This study was conducted to evaluate the extent to which the science teachers at a small
suburban high school in Northern California have been meeting the school goal to implement
high-quality Project Based Learning (PBL) units aligned to the Next Generation Science
Standards (NGSS). Using Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis framework, the study
investigated the knowledge, motivational, and organizational factors affecting teacher
performance. It was found that one of the nine teachers delivered high-quality PBL units aligned
to NGSS per the Buck Institute for Education’s definition of Gold Standard PBL design and
teaching. The implications behind these findings predict further gaps in teacher performance as
teachers struggle to implement new techniques without fully understanding what is expected of
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205
them, without knowing what high-quality PBL looks like in the context of their own classroom,
and without the proper organizational supports to undergo a sweeping change in instructional
technique. If LHHS utilizes the recommendations found within this chapter for teacher
development designed to target the specific influences behind the teacher performance gap, the
organization is likely to increase the performance of its teachers, which will also likely improve
teacher confidence as well as student outcomes.

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APPENDIX A
SURVEY QUESTIONS
For Questions 1-5 and Question 7, Please respond with a number.

1. I have worked at this school for ____ years.

2. I have worked as a teacher for ____ years.

3. I teach ____ periods in a day.

4. I teach ______ different courses this year.

5. I teach _____ courses that are officially considered Science courses.

6. I have implemented ____ Project Based Learning (PBL) units prior to this year.
❏ 0
❏ 1-2
❏ 3-4
❏ 5-6
❏ more than 6

7. I intend to implement ______ PBL units this year.

8. I have taken the following professional development sessions from the Buck Institute for
Education (Please check all that apply):
❏ PBL 101 in School Year __________
❏ PBL 201 in School Year __________
❏ PBL Coaching Academy (instructional coaching) in School Year ________
❏ PBL Leadership Academy in School Year _________

9. I have taken project-based learning professional development offered by institutions other than
the Buck Institute for Education.
❏ Yes
❏ No

9a. If yes, about how many PD days? ___________

10. I need more PBL professional development sessions to help me implement PBL in my
classrooms.
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

11. I am confident that I can design a unit using Project Based Learning that aligns to the NGSS
standards.
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree
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12. I need more help understanding how to meet the NGSS standards.
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

13. The professional development that I have received for Project Based Learning has been
useful in preparing to deliver units in Project Based Learning.
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

14. I have the freedom to adapt Project Based Learning to my unique teaching style.
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

15. I am convinced that Project Based Learning is valuable for students to engage in at least once
in a school year.
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

16. The instructional materials I have access to are sufficient for me to deliver high-quality
project-based learning units in my science courses.
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

17. I would like more instructional coaching with PBL
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

18. I have strong administrative support
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

19. I have the supplies I need to implement PBL
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

20. PBL is relevant for our school
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

21. I think that PBL is just a fad
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

22. My administration holds me accountable for implementing PBL.
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

23. My students achieve higher in science as a result of PBL
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

24. My department offers strong support in PBL implementation
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree

25. I work well with the other science teachers
⭖ Strongly Disagree ⭖ Disagree ⭖ Agree ⭖Strongly Agree
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APPENDIX B
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
Introductory Protocol

The purpose of our conversation today will be for me to explore your ideas about Project Based
Learning. In order to assist note taking during the interview, I would like to make an audio
recording of our conversation. This recording will be transcribed and destroyed after the
interview, with no identifying information attached to the transcription. Only I will have access
to the original recordings and transcriptions. This information will not be passed to any district
employees, and only my dissertation professors and committee, who are all USC professors and
unaffiliated with this school district, will read the results of my analysis of the information and
any relevant charts or graphs that arise from my collected information.

Please be aware that all information I collect including any notes, transcriptions, or audio feed
will be held as strictly confidential. Your participation in this study is voluntary, which means at
any time you may withdraw your participation in the study in you begin to feel uncomfortable.
The intention of this study is to investigate what changes the organization might consider to
assist in reaching its goals. No harm is intended as a result of this study. Thank you for your
participation in the study and taking time to speak with me today. As one of the wonderful
science teachers supporting San Marin High School, I value your voice, experience, and
suggestions such that we can work together to help our students graduate with high-quality
educations. You have been selected because you are a science teacher, and it is my hope to speak
with all science teachers in the school, since they all offer a unique perspective, experience
levels, and expertise. I am interested not in evaluating teachers, but in learning from them.

Questions

Organization

Cultural Model Influence 1: Teachers need to have trust in administrators and their decisions.
1. What is your understanding of the purpose behind the district initiative to implement
project-based learning in your classroom?
2. Do you feel comfortable with the decision to incorporate Project Based Learning in your
classroom? Why or why not?

Cultural Model Influence 2: Teachers have a general resistance to change in instructional
techniques.
1. What kind of resistance, if any, has there been to the change toward more project-based
learning at the school? How about among the science teachers? How would you describe
your reaction to this change in instructional design?

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Cultural Setting Influence 1: The school needs to have clear standards around teaching methods
and expectations to guide teachers to incorporate new types of instruction or lessons.
1. What is expected of you in terms of implementing project-based learning techniques. Are
these expectations clear to you?
2. Describe your understanding of the teaching standards that this school has for your
teaching? Are these standards clear to you?

Cultural Setting Influence 2: Teachers need to be held accountable for performance or delivery
of professional development received.
1. How has the Buck Institute for Education provided or not provided enough support to
assist you in developing and delivering PBL?
2. In what ways does the administration assess your implementation of PBL? Do you think
this is adequate? Too much? Why?

Knowledge

Conceptual: Teachers need to know what the NGSS vision is for teachers to approach science
instruction in contrast to traditional teaching methods under previous standards.
1. Please describe how you perceive the main difference between the Next Generation
Science Standards and the previous California Science Standards and how PBL interacts
with NGSS.

Procedural: Teachers need to know how to design and implement an effective project-based
science unit.
1. Walk me through the steps you take to design and fully implement a project-based
learning unit.
Probes: What materials used, resources they consult, how much time it takes, if they pilot
ideas, if they seek feedback, adjustments to the lesson plan in vivo.

Metacognitive: Teachers need to know how to reflect on own practices and alter instruction
based on these reflections.
1. Describe a time when you felt it was necessary to change a lesson based on the reactions
of students or student work that you observed during class.
Probe: has this occurred during PBL?
2. Please describe how your teaching has evolved through your experience in the classroom.

Motivation

Expectancy Value: Teachers need to believe that project-based learning can produce high
student achievement and that it works in concert with the vision of the NGSS.
1. How do your students react (or respond) to project-based learning units? Do you think it
changes the quality of their learning? How?

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Self-Efficacy: Teachers need to feel a high confidence level in their ability to implement a
successful project-based learning unit of study in a science classroom.
1. What were some of the successes you had with your current or last project-based learning
unit?

Collective efficacy: Teachers need to share the same beliefs in program goals and act upon them
collectively
1. Describe your interaction with other teachers or coaches while implementing and
designing projects. Has the level of interaction been adequate? Are there places where
more interaction would be useful in your efforts toward project-based learning
instruction?

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APPENDIX C
OBSERVATION PROTOCOL
The following observation protocol has been adopted from Stearns, Morgan, Capraro, and
Capraro’s (2012) efforts to build a classroom observation instrument for project-based learning
in STEM. This instrument has been copied from the researchers’ abbreviated version in their
2012 article, A Teacher Observation Instrument for PBL Classroom Instruction, published in the
Journal of STEM Education. Spaces for commentary and a rating scale for each item have been
added for the researcher’s convenience. A teacher code will be used in lieu of a teacher name to
preserve teacher anonymity.

The researcher will pay particular attention to the following attributes of the lesson:

1. The PBL contains rigorous subject area content, which as a consequence leads to higher-
order thinking.
2. The PBL incorporates NGSS standards and practices.
3. The PBL is not a stand-alone lesson.
4. The PBL contains high functioning activities requiring students to work in organized
groups.
5. The teacher clearly stated goals and tasks.
6. The teacher facilitated the students to remain on-task.
7. The teacher asked effective open-ended questions.
8. The teacher worked with members of all small groups.
9. The teacher achieved objectives he/she identified.
10. The students were actively engaged.
11. The appropriate resources are ready and available for student use.
12. The students could explain the goal(s).
13. The evidence of holistic assessments existed (e.g. rubrics for participation/engagement,
early stages of the PBL, or group work).
14. The teacher identified and engaged students around their prior knowledge.
15. The teacher identified and engaged the students around their cultural diverse contexts.

Notes will be taken on blank paper and immediately following the observation, reflective memos
will be written to discuss the extent to which the elements in this checklist were met supported
with evidence. The following is the format of the observation record.

Project Based Learning Observation Record

Teacher Code: ________ Date/Time ______________Subject area ___________________
PBL Title ___________________________________________________
PBL Description:

Notes on the Observation:

Observer: Date:
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APPENDIX D
BUCK INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATION PROJECT BASED TEACHING RUBRIC
Teachers at LHHS have taken professional development with the Buck Institute for Education
(BIE) on how to develop and implement instruction using Project Based Learning (PBL). This
rubric, developed by the Buck Institute for Education (2017a), will be used in addition to the
Observation Record shown in Appendix B to assess how well teachers adhere specifically to the
BIE’s standards for high-quality PBL.

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APPENDIX E
DOCUMENT ANALYSIS PROTOCOL
Buck Institute for Education Project Design Rubric (Buck Institute for Education, 2017b)
and Elements Checklist (Buck Institute for Education, 2015)
Teachers at LHHS have taken professional development with the Buck Institute for Education
(BIE) on how to develop and implement instruction using Project Based Learning (PBL). This
rubric and checklist, developed by the Buck Institute for Education, will be used to evaluate
collected PBL lesson plans.

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APPENDIX F
QUESTIONS FOR USE IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE TRAINING
These questions will be presented with the Likert-type options: Strongly disagree, Disagree,
Agree, and Strongly Agree.

Level 1: Reaction

Engagement
1. Working with a mentor in private sessions helped me learn.
2. Working with a small group of my peers made PBL development more enjoyable.

Relevance
3. I understand what the district expects from me as I develop and deliver PBL units.
4. My mentor helped me understand how to apply PBL training to my specific subject.
5. Guided collaboration during department meetings helped me to improve my projects.

Customer Satisfaction
6. I think other teachers would enjoy a PBL mentorship.

Level 2: Learning

Knowledge: This section will consist of open-ended questions
7. What do you now know about developing high-quality PBL lessons that you didn’t know
before the mentorship?
8. How has your teaching practice during PBL implementation changed as a result of the
mentorship?

Skills
These will be assessed using the PBL Project Design Rubric for independently created PBL (See
Appendix E) and assessed during teacher observations of this project implementation with the
Project Based Teaching Rubric (See Appendix D).

Attitude. This section resumes the likert scale.
9. I believe that I will teach my PBL units better if I apply what I learned during my
mentorship.
10. It is important for me to have a thoroughly planned project before I begin to implement
PBL.

Confidence
11. I am confident that I can independently design a high-quality PBL unit in my subject.
12. I know I can get quality assistance from my peers if I need help designing a PBL unit.
13. I am confident that I can implement a high-quality PBL and get the desired results from
my students.
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14. I know I can get quality assistance from my peers if I need help delivering portions of my
PBL.
15. If you disagree with any of the above please check all reasons you feel this way below:
a. I do not have the necessary knowledge and skills.
b. I do not have a clear idea of what I am expected to do.
c. I have other, higher priorities.
d. I do not have the necessary resources to apply what I have learned.
e. I do not have the support to apply what I learned.
f. I don’t think that what I learned will work for me.
g. There is not an adequate system of accountability to ensure application of what I
learned.
h. Other (please explain):

Commitment
16. I am committed to applying my PBL training to my work.

Level 4: Results

17. I believe I will see a positive impact if I consistently apply what I learned during my PBL
mentorship.

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APPENDIX G
QUESTIONS FOR DELAYED USE AFTER TRAINING
These questions will be presented with the Likert-type options: Strongly disagree, Disagree,
Agree, and Strongly Agree.

Level 1: Reaction

Relevance
1. I have used the techniques that I learned from my PBL mentorship.

Customer Satisfaction
2. Participating in the PBL mentorship was a good use of my time.

Level 2: Learning

• A new PBL unit will be collected and assessed against the Project Design Rubric.
• A new observation of teacher implementation will be done and assessed with the Project
Based Teaching Rubric.

Level 3: Behavior

3. I have successfully applied to my teaching what I learned during the PBL mentorship.
4. My mentor and I set expectations for my individual training at the beginning of the
training.
5. My mentor and I made a plan for or discussed how I would apply my learning after the
training.
6. Instructions: Using the following rating scale, circle the rating that best describes your
current level of application in your teaching for each listed behavior.
1 — Little or no application
2 — Mild degree of application
3 — Moderate degree of application
4 — Strong degree of application
5 — Very strong degree of application, and desire to help others do the same

Fully planning and documenting PBL units prior to PBL implementation. 1 2 3 4 5
Regularly observing other teachers implement PBL. 1 2 3 4 5
Keeping a reflective journal of teaching practices. 1 2 3 4 5
Providing feedback to other teachers’ PBL unit plans. 1 2 3 4 5
Providing feedback to other teacher’s PBL implementation practices. (After
observations)
1 2 3 4 5
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Using job aids to help create PBL unit plans. 1 2 3 4 5
Altering unit plans based on other teachers’/mentors’/administrators’
feedback.
1 2 3 4 5
Altering teaching PBL practices based on other
teachers’/mentors’/administrators’ feedback.
1 2 3 4 5
Assessing completed project plans with the Project Design Rubric. 1 2 3 4 5

Level 4: Results and Training Evaluation

Leading Indicators
7. I have already seen positive results from my PBL mentorship. (likert item)
8. Please describe a positive outcome you have experienced with your PBL design and/or
implementation since the PBL mentorship. (short answer)

Desired Results (Likert items)
9. The PBL mentorship has made a positive impact on the science department.
10. My participation in the PBL mentorship has made a positive impact on the school.

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APPENDIX H
SURVEY RESULTS
2017-2018 Science Teacher PBL Survey
Q1. I have worked at this school for ____ years.
1
11
2
11
11
21
5
4
10

Q2. I have worked as a teacher for ____ years.
1
11
3
18
11
21
9
6
10

Q3. I teach ____ periods in a day.
5
5
6
5
4
5
5
5
5

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Q4. I teach ____ different courses (preps) this year.
3
2
1
4
3
2
1
2
3

Q5. I teach ____ courses (preps) that are officially considered Science courses.
3
5
1
2
3
2
1
2
2

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Q6. I have implemented____ Project Based Learning (PBL) units prior to this year.

# Answer % Count
1 0 0.00% 0
2 1-2 11.11% 1
3 3-4 22.22% 2
4 5-6 22.22% 2
5 more than 6 44.44% 4
Total 100% 9

Q7. I intend to implement ____ PBL units this year.
6
8
1
8
4
2-3
5-6
6
11

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Q8. I have taken the following professional development sessions from the Buck Institute
for Education (Please check all that apply and add the school year that you took the
development).

# Answer % Count
1 PBL 101 in School Year: 72.73% 8
2 PBL 201 in School Year: 18.18% 2
3 PBL Coaching Academy (instructional coaching) in School Year: 9.09% 1
4 PBL Leadership Academy in School Year: 0.00% 0
Total 100% 11

PBL 101 in School Year — Text
2016
2011?
2015
2015
2016
2012

PBL 201 in School Year — Text — No Data
PBL Coaching Academy (instructional coaching) in School Year — Text
2016

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Q9. I have taken project-based learning professional development offered by institutions
other than the Buck Institute for Education.

# Answer % Count
1 Yes (if yes, about how many PD days?) 33.33% 3
2 No 66.67% 6
Total 100% 9

Yes (if yes, about how many PD days?) — Text
3-6
8
6

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Q10. I need more PBL professional development sessions to help me implement PBL in my
classrooms.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 33.33% 3
2 Disagree 11.11% 1
3 Agree 55.56% 5
4 Strongly Agree 0.00% 0
Total 100% 9

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Q11. I am confident that I can design a unit using Project Based Learning that aligns to the
NGSS standards.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 0.00% 0
2 Disagree 11.11% 1
3 Agree 44.44% 4
4 Strongly Agree 44.44% 4
Total 100% 9

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Q12. I need more help understanding how to meet the NGSS standards.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 33.33% 3
2 Disagree 33.33% 3
3 Agree 22.22% 2
4 Strongly Agree 11.11% 1
Total 100% 9

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Q13. The professional development that I have received for Project Based Learning has
been useful in preparing to deliver units in Project Based Learning.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 0.00% 0
2 Disagree 33.33% 3
3 Agree 22.22% 2
4 Strongly Agree 44.44% 4
Total 100% 9

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Q14. I have the freedom to adapt Project Based Learning to my unique teaching style.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 0.00% 0
2 Disagree 11.11% 1
3 Agree 44.44% 4
4 Strongly Agree 44.44% 4
Total 100% 9

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Q15. I am convinced that Project Based Learning is valuable for students to engage in at
least once in a school year.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 0.00% 0
2 Disagree 0.00% 0
3 Agree 44.44% 4
4 Strongly Agree 55.56% 5
Total 100% 9

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Q16. The instructional materials I have access to are sufficient for me to deliver high-
quality project-based learning units in my science courses.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 11.11% 1
2 Disagree 33.33% 3
3 Agree 33.33% 3
4 Strongly Agree 22.22% 2
Total 100% 9

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Q17. I would like more instructional coaching with PBL.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 0.00% 0
2 Disagree 22.22% 2
3 Agree 66.67% 6
4 Strongly Agree 11.11% 1
Total 100% 9

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Q18. I have strong administrative support.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 11.11% 1
2 Disagree 22.22% 2
3 Agree 44.44% 4
4 Strongly Agree 22.22% 2
Total 100% 9

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Q19. I have the supplies I need to implement PBL.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 22.22% 2
2 Disagree 44.44% 4
3 Agree 33.33% 3
4 Strongly Agree 0.00% 0
Total 100% 9

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Q20. PBL is relevant for our school.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 0.00% 0
2 Disagree 0.00% 0
3 Agree 44.44% 4
4 Strongly Agree 55.56% 5
Total 100% 9

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Q21. I think that PBL is just a fad.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 11.11% 1
2 Disagree 55.56% 5
3 Agree 33.33% 3
4 Strongly Agree 0.00% 0
Total 100% 9

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Q22. My administration holds me accountable for implementing PBL.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 11.11% 1
2 Disagree 11.11% 1
3 Agree 55.56% 5
4 Strongly Agree 22.22% 2
Total 100% 9

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Q23. My students achieve higher in science as a result of PBL.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 0.00% 0
2 Disagree 33.33% 3
3 Agree 66.67% 6
4 Strongly Agree 0.00% 0
Total 100% 9

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Q24. My department offers strong support in PBL implementation.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 0.00% 0
2 Disagree 11.11% 1
3 Agree 55.56% 5
4 Strongly Agree 33.33% 3
Total 100% 9

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Q25. I work well with the other science teachers.

# Answer % Count
1 Strongly Disagree 0.00% 0
2 Disagree 0.00% 0
3 Agree 55.56% 5
4 Strongly Agree 44.44% 4
Total 100% 9

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Asset Metadata

Creator Moritz, Lori (author)

Core Title An evaluation of project based learning implementation in STEM

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Publication Date 02/14/2018

Defense Date 01/12/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag curriculum change,education,High School,high-quality teaching,OAI-PMH Harvest,PBL,project-based learning,science teachers,STEM education,teaching project based learning

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Datta, Monique (committee chair), Ferrario, Kimberly (committee member), Krop, Cathy (committee member)

Creator Email lmoritz@usc.edu,lori@punkpen.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-475035

Unique identifier UC11267198

Identifier etd-MoritzLori-6040.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-475035 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-MoritzLori-6040.pdf

Dmrecord 475035

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Moritz, Lori

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA