What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Giving Compass' Take:
• High Quality Project Based Learning allows students to authentically connect with the local community through projects that require a multi-disciplinary, self-directed approach. At Liceo Pablo Neruda in Chile, students work on projects with local solar companies.
• How can businesses and organizations connect with schools to produce benefits for students and the broader community? What elements of this project style are translatable to other contexts?
• Read other HQPBL case studies: The Met and School21.
At Liceo Pablo Neruda, a high poverty school in northern Chile, a majority of the 700+ students are low-income students (77%) and many lack basic resources and face food insecurity. The school’s principal, Jacqueline Retamales Espinoza, has become a regional champion for PBL. She described the importance of creating an engaging learning environment for students at Pablo Neruda—one where teachers and students share leadership and where learning is co-constructed.
The school’s initial PBL projects were organized into a single subject area for upperclassmen in practical career preparation courses such as nursing, mining, and electronics, among others.
While these projects are still centered upon students’ mastery of discipline-specific standards, they also encourage them to integrate and apply what they are learning. In the process, students collaborate, are pushed intellectually, and motivated to accomplish tasks they might not have otherwise done in a single-subject setting.
When considering an effort of high ambition like implementing quality PBL, it might make sense to look skyward. This isn’t just waxing poetic; one organization mobilized a number of schools—Liceo Pablo Neruda included—in a multidisciplinary effort that harnessed a natural power source. It makes sense, as the region where the town of Arica and Liceo Pablo Neruda are situated is, in fact, home to some of the clearest skies in the world. Its exceptional transparency and high levels of irradiation make the Atacama Desert an ideal testing ground for new solar technologies.
Led by the Solar Energy Resource Center (SERC) Chile, a consortium of academic institutions have partnered with area schools and businesses on the new project, aptly named Ayllu Solar, as ayllu means “community” in two local languages. LaFors was brought in to work on the project, which emphasizes sustainable development for the region’s urban and rural communities through the harvesting and implementation of solar energy, to support the training and implementation of Project Based Learning.
One of the most exhilarating aspects of PBL lies in its ability to connect rigorous academics with the challenges of “real life.” In the case of the project with Ayllu Solar, students from all participating schools had an opportunity to present their projects to the community in a public park in downtown Arica.
In a number of locations across Chile, several organizations and schools have embraced PBL—and officials in the country’s Ministry of Education are gearing up to implement capstone project experiences in the last two years of high school. Yet while there are universal elements to PBL, challenges can arise when attempting to implement a previously untested approach in an academic environment. When considering PBL from a global perspective, educators need to keep in mind that cultural norms regularly play a role as well.