Experts Warn of PBL Pitfalls

No one claims it’s an easy way to teach, but proponents of project-based learning say it is far ahead of other approaches in motivating students and helping them thoroughly learn more of what counts.

But critics and advocates alike warn that enthusiasm for PBL can go too far—producing parodies of effective projects, failing to play to individual teachers’ strengths, and wasting precious class time.

Ben Daley, the chief academic officer of the High Tech High charter school network based in San Diego, is deeply committed to PBL. Still, he lets his new teachers start slow. “I tell them to just do what they know to do really well at first,” he said. “If they go crazy with a big ambitious project and [do] not accomplish much,...