Dr. Moshe Krakowski is an assistant professor at The Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration at Yeshiva University.

Dr. Juli Kramer is the Principal of Yeshivat Sha’arei DAT High School (YSD) in Denver, Colorado and an Adjunct Professor in the Teacher Education Program at the University of Denver.

Mrs. Naomi Lev is Assistant Principal and Director of Post-Secondary Guidance at Yeshivat Sha’arei DAT High School (YSD) in Denver, Colorado.

The authors describe the theory and practice of Problem Based Learning (PBL) in Jewish studies. PBL, they argue, empowers students in healthy ways.

Problem (and project) based learning is an approach to the design and implementation of curricula that has gained wide currency in secular educational settings over the last twenty years, in particular in science and math classes. This approach has only recently been developed in Jewish educational contexts, and the transition to Judaic subject matter has revealed some significant learning and motivational benefits, as well as some significant challenges. One of the largest and most central benefits of the PBL approach is student empowerment, as PBL curricula allow students to take charge of their own learning in powerful ways. This paper will identify the key features of problem and project based learning, and will use two case studies from Judaic studies classrooms that have successfully employed this approach to illustrate how students can be empowered through deep engagement in meaningful projects and problems.

What is problem (or project) based learning?

A central misconception about PBL is that it amounts to nothing more than engaging students in exciting projects to stimulate learning. This view fails to capture the essence of PBL, however, which doesn’t require engagement in a project at all; the key features of problem and project based learning actually are:

• A driving project or problem that is central to the curriculum: In PBL the project or problem drives the entire curriculum. Instead of learning material in a class that culminates in a project, or learning material and doing a project alongside, in a PBL class all the learning is the result of trying to solve a problem or complete a project. The class begins with the framing of a project or problem that the students will explore, and the students engage in research and learning activities in order to accomplish their goals.
• A realistic constructive investigation: In a PBL curriculum, students engage in activities that are realistic in some way. They use data or methods from the real world to accomplish things that are authentically meaningful. This involves constructive investigation, such as designing something, making a decision, solving a problem, or building a model of something. This constructive investigation need not be a “project,” as long as it involves authentic research to come to some real world solution to a problem.
• Student agency: As we will discus at greater length, PBL units are substantially student driven. The topic of investigation is often identified and selected by students, whether individually or as a group. Once chosen the actual investigation is directed by students alone or, more frequently, in collaboration with peers. PBL harnesses students’ social interactions, as members of a classroom community, but also as members of broader communities, by giving them access to outside experts and enabling them to address community needs and/or concerns. A successful PBL model affords students the opportunity to form a community of scholars who share their experiences and knowledge, as well as support each others’ learning.
• Problems cross-cut domains: Because PBL units are built around a driving problem, and all learning is acquired in the pursuit of solving the problem or completing the project, PBL units don’t usually sit easily in one content domain. A project to design a blueprint for a new school playground might include elements of math, elementary physics, engineering, architecture, child motor development, and school needs, along with an investigation into public zoning and health and safety requirements. This feature enables students to make connections and integrate meaning across the curriculum. As a result, they understand the value and importance of content beyond memorizing it for the test, and feel empowered by their ability to use information in complex ways for important reasons.

Background

Problem and project based learning curricula originally grew out of a constructivist educational paradigm. In short, constructivism recognizes that all learning is active – that is, we don’t passively receive information and store it away in the form given to us, but when we learn things, we actively connect them to pre-existing knowledge and build complex knowledge structures that incorporate new information in novel ways. This cognitive reality exists no matter how information is presented to us; regardless of how active or passive the structure of the classroom, students will be actively assimilating information in personal, and often idiosyncratic ways. In the last 25 years, researchers have started to investigate how they might take advantage of this fact, to build curricula that would be more attuned to how people actually learn. One such approach is PBL, which embeds the learning in real-world contexts and meaningful problems. Aside from promoting active learning this approach has the advantage of presenting knowledge in meaningful structures that promote high levels of motivation and cognitive engagement. Students assimilate the information in its context of use, rather than as abstract (often disconnected) information, which means that they are more likely to retain the information, and more likely to personally engage with it.

In the Judaic studies classroom PBL curricula have the potential to transform student learning in powerful ways. In particular, gemara and halakhah are prime contexts for PBL as the current reality is one in which those subjects seem highly abstract and disconnected from student lives. Consequently, students may struggle in these classes, often feeling bored and confused. Additionally, schools have struggled to demonstrate the significance of religious classes in a context where secular academics, SATs, and college prep are often more dominant realities for the students, and the traditional pedagogical models used often do little to engage students’ lives in meaningful ways. In this context, problem based learning offers a mechanism to engage the students in gemara and halakhah in a way that builds connections between the text based legal codes and practices that are personally important and relevant to them. This sense of personal meaning and importance empowers students in a number of critical ways:

1. Student choice: Students have substantial authority to determine the course of their studies, both within a project, and in choosing projects.
2. Relevance to students’ lives: Projects and problems that students work on often have direct relevance to issues of concern to the students themselves.
3. Ownership of learning: Students take ownership of the learning – directing the learning in ways that make their activities less about fulfilling class requirements and more about actually doing something meaningful to them. They are trying to find something out about the world, rather than trying to get the right answers for the test.
4. Making a difference: Often, projects and problems make a difference in the real world, as they have the capacity to address contemporary issues in more in depth ways than most traditional classroom structures. By making a difference for others, students also gain the added benefit of a heightened sense of self-esteem and self-advocacy.
5. Respect: In a PBL classroom, there is a mutual respect that comes from teachers and students working together to solve problems. Students also have more nuanced and complex types of respect for one another, as they draw on the skills and capabilities of different students to increase their own learning.

To see how some of these features play out in a Jewish school, take the following two examples. The first comes from Yeshivat Sha’arei DAT, a small innovative modern Orthodox high school in Denver, CO, which is implementing PBL in most of its Judaic curriculum. They recently implemented the following unit:

Kashrut in the real world: Is Starbucks Kosher?

Observance of kashrut is something that has more everyday significance to observant Jews than much of the halakhah students learn. Yet, students’ observance of kashrut can vary from extremely meticulous to rather lax, and when it comes to the laws of kashrut in the wild (that is, outside the well-regulated Kosher home environment) even adults have difficulty in ascertaining when and whether specific items may be eaten. In this context, students at Yeshivat Sha’arei DAT were engaged in an animated discussion regarding the reliability of a website purporting to identify which Starbucks items were permissible to purchase. Following a number of in-class discussions of the topic, the teacher guided students to develop their discussion into a project that would allow students to determine for themselves which items could be purchased. The teacher facilitated the students in formulating some more precise driving questions, and suggested that the students work to craft a position paper that would articulate the Jewish legal issues and practical considerations to be accounted for when looking at websites proclaiming to have authority on the kashrut of Starbucks products. Successful implementation of PBL experiences requires this type of positive, mentoring relationship.

Teachers provided the students with wide ranging materials for their research, including relevant Jewish legal sources, such as gemara, rishonim (medieval commentaries), the Shulhan Arukh, and other more contemporary poskim (halakhic decisors), which required fluency with the texts and careful analysis. Teachers also provided videos and references on the machinery, ingredients, and workplace practices at Starbucks, and contact information for outside experts on kashrut in commercial settings. In order to arrive at an understanding of how Starbucks intersected with kashrut, students needed to understand critical halakhic concepts such as batel beshishim (that a 60/1 ratio is needed to legally nullify the presence of one food in another), and noten ta-am (a principle that determines when one food technically imparts taste to another). They also needed a wealth of knowledge about how workplace practices at Starbucks pertain to these principles. To identify essential questions and begin to address their problem, students visited several Starbucks and other coffee vendors, examining their cleaning processes, product selection, and employee practices. Some of the questions students ultimately investigated during this preliminary phase and in later research include: What type of dishwasher or dishwashing process does Starbucks use? Is the steamer on the espresso machine used only for milk or are flavorings added? Are food items served at a particular Starbucks? If so, how is equipment washed? Are the ingredients used on site the same as those listed in the company manual? Is there a consistency to ingredients used?

To help answer their legal and technical questions, students contacted three rabbinical agencies and ultimately connected with an administrator at the CRC – a rabbinical agency based in Chicago that had put out a detailed analysis of the kashrut of Starbucks beverages. During their conversation, the administrator led them in a discussion of the various complex issues involved, and armed with questions raised by that discussion and their previous research, students visited different Starbucks locations to assess for themselves what drinks they could purchase, if any. Students ultimately composed a position paper that used textual sources to support a set of guidelines to navigate the complexity of Kosher Starbucks beverages and enumerated critical questions to ask when ordering. Teachers noted that a year later, students were still actively using what they learned, applying the kashrut questions they had identified as important to many other applicable settings, beyond Starbucks, and not assuming that kashrut practices remained static.

Student Empowerment
One of the definitions given for empowerment is that a school community supports students to take responsibility for their lives, as students try to meet their needs within a learning setting. In the Starbucks example, students took responsibility and investigated for themselves what they were allowed to drink. The curriculum afforded the students substantial choice in what to study, within a context that was relevant to their lives, giving them the opportunity to take ownership of the learning process. These features match four of the five ways that PBL can support empowerment noted above (student choice, relevance, ownership, and respect) and resulted in a learning process that shifted the power structure from the teacher to the students in two important arenas: academics and social interaction.

The classroom power structure shifted academically together with the curricular shift. In most traditional classes teachers set the agenda and students must dance to their tune; if we are learning gemara, the rebbe determines the agenda and I have only two options – to follow or not. In that context, if my goal as a student is primarily to get a good grade in class, in order to accomplish my goal I have to do what that rebbe says – he has the power. In the Starbucks example, however, my goal is not primarily to get a good grade, as the agenda was not set by the teacher alone, but by class concerns and discussions, resulting in a program of study that matters to me. Since I’m pursuing my own interests, I am empowered; the power has shifted to the class, rather than the rebbe alone. This change in the power differential must be teacher generated, since the power is theirs to give. Teachers must believe in student capabilities, have a willingness to allow for mistakes along the way, and evidence an ability to provide a solid initial structure and further scaffolding as needed. Moreover, teachers need to exude excitement for and a commitment to support students in their efforts.

The classroom power structure also shifts socially. When pursuing goals set by the teacher, even if I work with groups of other students, my responsibility is to the teacher. I have to fulfill his goals, meet his criteria for success, and manage my activities to please him. When pursuing goals in the context of a PBL class, as in the Starbucks example, I am responsible to my peers and to myself, as well as to the teacher. In order to find out what we can drink, my group needs me to give them an accurate summary of this piece of Shulhan Arukh, and I need to rely on them to meet my needs. In this way, the classroom structure helps students take responsibility for meeting their needs within a learning context in a way that empowers them, rather than the teacher alone.

Empowering students also shifts the classroom relationship between teachers and students, creating a bidirectional hierarchy of respect. As students learn and explore, they turn to their teachers for advice and guidance; these are meaningful, mutual conversations, bound in an authentic respectful relationship. Teachers hear students in novel ways, responding to their stronger voices by treating them, not as objects of their teaching, but as legitimate human beings. At the same time, students see their teachers in a new light, aware of the depth and breadth of teachers’ knowledge in multiple areas. They are partners in learning, with teachers garnering respect from students, not simply by virtue of their position (purely a signifier), but because students are acutely aware that the teachers have so much to offer. In PBL classrooms, students also begin to see the strengths and passions of one another. Instead of simply determining respect on a narrow set of criteria (e.g., test scores, skill in discussions), students see each other for the complex, inspired, and passionate people they are. Respect for each other increases, as does an awareness of how to benefit from the skills and resources of each student to improve every student’s learning.

Making a difference

Another definition sometimes given in the literature for student empowerment is to make students believe in their ability to act effectively in the world. This can be seen clearly in a PBL unit conducted in a pilot program for a new girls’ school, the Binah School, opening in Sharon, MA. In their pilot program the curriculum development was substantially driven by students, who contributed their own ideas and interests in choosing and creating projects. One topic that ultimately drove an 8-week unit was built around the Biblical verses dealing with the mishkan (the Tabernacle), and coalesced around questions of how a mishkan and mikdash (a Temple) are different, and what it means to create a mishkan, a place for God to rest, in our lives today.

For the Binah School students, their driving project dovetailed with a service learning project, as they investigated how they could impact the environment around them to be an appropriate resting place for God, and ultimately decided on a project promoting curbside composting. Using some traditional commentaries’ discussions of the phrase ve-asu li mikdash (they shall make for a sanctuary – Exodus 25:8) as a call to take action in the world, and veshakhanti betokham (I will dwell in their midst) as a responsibility to make the world fit for God’s presence, the students investigated how they might impact their own community to make it a more appropriate dwelling place for God. Ultimately, this investigation led them to both primary and secondary research into the real world realities of composting, and how a communal composting program might be designed to improve a community and thereby create an appropriate dwelling for God. With the help of their math classes, which focused primarily on data analysis, statistics, and creating meaningful info-graphics, they were able to quantify the results of a survey sent to residents of Sharon regarding their willingness to participate in composting, making a strong case for the cost savings composting offered, in addition to its environmental benefits. Students concluded their project by presenting their research to the Superintendent of the Town of Sharon’s Department of Public Works, and wrote up their findings in a lengthy collaborative final report. As a result of the students’ presentation, Sharon’s Department of Public Works ultimately applied for a grant to fund a pilot program for curbside composting. The support they gained from the Department of Public Works allowed the students to put into action their plan for taking food waste and using it to develop rich soil and future plant growth, which allowed them to act on the idea of veshakhanti betokham.

In this example, student empowerment is substantially derived from students’ (accurate) perception that what they are doing makes a real world difference. Using an authentic problem (how can we improve our environment?) in the context of Judaic studies (understanding the mishkan) allowed the students to not only delve deeply into an understanding of the mishkan, but to change the world around them in positive ways. Problem based learning, given its focus on authentic real world problems, is an excellent medium for this type of student empowerment, as it provides a framework for taking Jewish knowledge out of the classroom and into students’ lived experiences.

Conclusions

For years researchers have recognized the numerous benefits of problem based learning in secular educational contexts. Among the varied intertwined cognitive and motivational benefits in PBL, researchers have recognized the substantially empowering nature of this classroom structure, and it seems clear that this applies in Judaic contexts as well. Nonetheless, questions remain about the use of PBL in Judaic settings, questions that relate to curricular demands, textual skills, and student accountability. Hidden among all these questions is this implicit concern: how much agency can we realistically let students have? Don’t we have specific content we must cover, or specific skills we must develop? These are real concerns, and they should not be trivialized. The beauty of PBL, however, is that curricular goals (both content and skills) can be covered through targeted projects and problems. When planning, if teachers ask critical questions about how student-directed PBL methods could enhance student learning of a particular skill or piece of content (while inspiring them and increasing their motivation), PBL becomes a powerful tool for the acquisition of that skill or content. This targeted approach to PBL does give up some student choice, but many of the same empowering aspects remain, without sacrificing curricular goals. Ultimately, PBL may have the potential to transform Judaic curricula, as students feel empowered to use those domains to engage in their own lives in meaningful ways.