The discussions, co-sponsored by Bass Connections, DukeEngage and the Duke Community Service Center, take place every Tuesday night at the Social Science Research Institute in Gross Chem.
“On the elementary level, it means that the children do most of their learning through working on projects,” Patton said. “When they came to visit, teachers would invariably say, ‘This is wonderful, but we can’t possibly do this in our school.' We wanted to demonstrate that it can be done with a diverse student body and the resources available to public schools—and we’ve done it.”
The approach, which focuses on allowing students to work in groups on self-proposed projects, has been implemented successfully in two schools by Patton, including the Central Park School for Children in Durham, which opened in 2002.
Part of the approach is redefining the role of the teacher within a classroom from an instructor to a guide, Patton explained. For example, a fourth grade class at CPSC raised more than $5,000 on kickstarter.com to make their classroom completely energy independent by installing solar panels, which they learned more about through poems, songs and research.
“It’s easier to individualize a child’s role within the group and the contribution to the project so that it suits each child where they are,” Patton said, who explained that children with special needs especially thrive in this environment.
Further, children in these environments directly shape the course of their education by determining projects, creating methods for evaluation from their peers, delegating tasks and determining resource allocation.
A few drawbacks of the approach include inconsistent methods to report individual student and school-wide progress in achieving specific educational goals, getting children to sit still during long state-administered exams and resources from the state.
Senior Kim Higuera explained that she attended the discussion because it matched her interest in project-based learning from previous experiences.
“I think project-based learning is basically the buildup to college and the research experience,” Higuera said.
A part of the series' Education and Human Development theme, the talks are designed to make research topics more available to students and faculty who are not necessarily involved in the program.
“The notion across all the themes is that we’re encouraging faculty to get undergraduates involved in research that they otherwise wouldn’t be,” said Martin Zelder, director of undergraduate studies for the Initiative on Education and Human Development within Bass Connections.
Zelder explained that members of these research-oriented project teams reached a small audience, but the topics explored have larger impacts.
“The first element is that we have these project teams, but that’s only going to capture those students who are committed to doing that in a more formal way and those who are selected,” Zelder said. “We understood that there are ideas here that are ideas here that are of interest to the broader community—you don’t have to be on a project team if you can sample what the ideas are—these talks are a way to get your feet wet.”
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