I was recently asked a question that left me feeling restless: Does PBL  guarantee acceleration for students from historically underperforming groups? As somebody with deep roots in PBL it was hard to not have an answer to this question-I tend to feel like I have to combat every critique with a thoughtful response because I believe so deeply in the power of PBL as a mechanism for deeper learning. In truth, the question caught me off guard. So I set off to find an answer to this question-I scoured through websites, dug through relevant data, talked to knowledgable colleagues, and investigated related literature. There wasn’t a tidy answer and I was left unsatisfied. And then it hit me…

Perhaps the question was the problem. When we unpack the question, what stories and assumptions lie beneath it?

1. PBL can be a silver bullet solution, or that there is a swift answer for catching students up from years of a system that has failed them.
2. PBL may not be for all kids-just students who are viewed as “high capacity” are then deemed as “ready” for PBL or other innovative and engaging teaching strategies.
3. Learning is defined only by knowledge and skills that are often measured in less-than-meaningful ways.
4. Acceleration is a means to the end. [insert my commentary prematurely here: so there is an “end” in learning?!]
5. There isn’t room in the conversation to discuss what knowledge and skills these students do come with to school
6. The larger power agenda at play here.

When I pealed back these layers and exposed these assumptions I quickly realized why I didn’t have an answer to that initial question-it was a loaded question, situated in beliefs about deeper learning being possible for ALL students, and contradictory definitions of learning.

So what if we explored asking the initial question with a few twists…  How do students from different backgrounds experience acceleration-are they learning deeply? A more unequivocal question would be:  Does acceleration guarantee deeper learning? As we explore the place for acceleration in PBL I can’t help but think back to Delpit’s work- If the intersection of skills and context is deeper learning, then what would an amplified version of this intersection look like? Could this be a new understanding of “acceleration”?

As my dear friend and colleague Jim May (@Jimamay) recently mentioned after watching the students of Polaris Academy in Chicago speak about their learning experiences, “Acceleration is not our foremost challenge – simply fostering growth is”. So often we speak about acceleration as something we do to children, not something we do with them. In the same vein we also speak about it as if it is a place we can “arrive”-as if acceleration leads to a final destination. What if we focused our school reform and instructional efforts on creating ongoing learning experiences where students were engaged, challenged, mirroring activities from the field, and interacting with the world outside the walls of their classrooms? What if we took the kind of commitment we see to acceleration programs and transferred it to a commitment to embody a Warm Demander who personalizes learning for all students, scaffolds learning when necessary, and encourages them to play, explore, and persist in the face of academic challenges? What if we designed our schools-the structures, mechanisms and policies that exist within and around them-to focus on fostering growth and deeper learning for our students, rather than decontextualized acceleration?  What if our actions were a manifestation of the belief that every child would benefit and grow through deeper learning? I would be willing to bet this shift in conversation would exceed our ideas of what is currently defined as “acceleration”. This would be an advancement of our schools as a result of accelerating the learning experiences for ALL students. This would be delivering on our promise of a quality education for every child.