Journal of Science Education and Technology, Vol. 13, No. 4, December 2004 (!

C 2004)

Integrating Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

in Project-Based Instruction: A Case Study
of an Experienced Teacher

Anthony J. Petrosino1

This case study of a teacher who engaged his students in inquiry within a technologically rich
classroom was conducted over 5 weeks, including 15 regularly scheduled classes. Data include
extensive teacher interviews, e-mail, and artifacts such as class notes, curriculum guides, and
handouts. A retrospective analysis methodology was utilized to address what Barron et al.
(1998), called the “major hurdles” in implementing project-based curricula: the simultaneous
changes in curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices. In addition, a framework de-
veloped by the National Research Council’s “How People Learn” was employed to provide
detail on the nature of knowledge, learner, assessment, and community centeredness of the
project-based unit. Finally, the classroom environment created during a unit of astronomy
was analyzed and five principles emerged: the sense of a project, the development of inde-
pendent individuals, creation of a global community of learners, a cyclic nature of instruc-
tion emphasizing conceptual and procedural understanding, and the utilization of distributed
expertise.
KEY WORDS: project-based science; astronomy; inquiry; retrospective analysis.

It should seem rather self-evident that performing
laboratory experiments in cookbook fashion, with-
out understanding the underlying substantive and
methodological principles involved, confers precious
little meaningful understanding, and that many stu-
dents studying mathematics and science find it rela-
tively simple to discover correct answers to problems
without really understanding what they are doing.
(Ausubel, 1963, p. 91)
Renewed interest in what kind of instructional
approaches emphasizes the connection of student un-
derstanding within the context of its use in class-
rooms (Barron et al., 1998). Publications and rec-
ommendations by national educational organizations
clearly reflect this excitement (American Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Science, 1989; Na-
tional Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989;
National Research Council, 1996). Although many
1 The University of Texas, Austin, Texas; e-mail: ajpetrosino@
mail.utexas.edu
of these organizations increasingly espouse inquiry-
based or “hands-on” science, this objective is rarely
pursued successfully in traditional school settings
(Bredderman, 1983; Klopfer, 1990; Polman, 2000;
Stohr-Hunt, 1996). Instead of extended and sys-
temic work to explore a personally meaningful phe-
nomenon or question (Krajcik et al., 2002), students
in hands-on programs often engage in a string of un-
related activities that only emphasize the use of sci-
ence materials and equipment (Brown et al., 1989;
Schauble et al., 1995). Furthermore, although certain
hands-on activities may take place in a laboratory
setting, the activities may seem more like exercises
than experiments if the emphasis is on drill and mas-
tery, the practice of disembodied skills, and perform-
ing procedures whose meanings are unclear to the
students (Lave, 1988; Schauble et al., 1995).
One way of encouraging student engagement
and addressing the contextualization of student
inquiry is through project-based instruction
(Blumenfeld et al., 1991). In recent years, a number

447
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C 2004 Plenum Publishing Corporation
448
of exemplary programs have been developed that
stress inquiry via project-based instruction. Exam-
ples include Computers as Learning Partners (Linn
and Hsi, 1999), Kids as Global Scientists (Songer
et al., 2002), and Schools for Thought (Lamon et al.,
1996). One attribute that bridges these programs is a
sophisticated use of technological resources within
the classroom setting. Krajick et al. (1998) pointed
out that much of the research showing students can
learn the needed strategies for worthwhile scientific
inquiry has been conducted in resource-rich demon-
stration sites or in classes taught by researchers (see
Bruer, 1993, 1994; Roth and Bowen, 1995; Roth
and Roychoudhury, 1993). Krajick et al. continued,
“Although these studies have been useful for estab-
lishing the benefits of inquiry learning, they need to
be supplemented with examinations of the potential
of inquiry in the rough and tumble realities of
regular classrooms” (p. 315). Research has provided
convincing evidence that inquiry-based approaches
assist students in acquiring a sophisticated under-
standing of science (Brown and Campione, 1996),
but has offered few descriptions of how this process
occurs in typical classrooms. A noticeable exception
to this is the work of Joe Polman (Pollman, 2000),
who conducted an extensive longitudinal study of
a classroom teacher implementing project-based
instruction.
This paper is a case study of a teacher who en-
gaged his students in inquiry within a technologically
rich classroom, during a project spanning several
months. This case study is of a classroom that is part
of a project-based, inquiry-rich curriculum project
called Hands on Universe (HOU).2 HOU is a collab-
orative effort between the Lawrence Berkeley Lab-
oratories at the University of California at Berkeley
and 500 high schools around the country. This collab-
orative provides professional astronomy tools to high
school students and their teachers. The HOU cur-
riculum integrates mathematics, science, and tech-
nology in the context of authentic astronomical ex-
plorations. HOU addresses many of the goals for
mathematics and science education standards set by
the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
and the National Research Council. Through astro-
nomical investigations, students develop problem-
solving techniques and critical thinking skills similar
to working scientists in the field. Along the way, stu-
dents discover the need for algebra, geometry, var-
2 For more detailed information please see http://www.
handsonuniverse.org.
Petrosino
ious data representations and interpretations, and
physical principles such as force and motion, en-
ergy transformations, and properties of light. The
classroom computer, image-processing software, and
telecommunications equipment are regarded as re-
search tools that enable students to pursue their
investigations.
This paper addresses details that Barron et al.
(1998) called the “major hurdles” in implementing
project-based curricula: the simultaneous changes
in curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices.
To best structure these changes I utilized a frame-
work proposed by Bransford et al. (1999) known as
the How People Learn framework. Therefore, the
goal of this paper is to describe realistically how
a high school teacher attempts to incorporate ad-
vanced technologies into existing classroom practices
centered on scientific inquiry.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Programs such as Computers as Learning Part-
ners (Linn and Hsi, 1999), Kids as Global Scientists
(Songer et al., 2002), and Schools for Thought
(Lamon et al., 1996) all leverage conceptions of stu-
dent learning and cognition from the past 30 years
(Bruer, 1994). Views of how effective learning pro-
ceeds have shifted from the affordances of drill and
practice and decontextualized lesson units to a focus
on students’ understanding and application of knowl-
edge in contextualized settings, such as project-based
instruction (Krajcik et al., 1998). Moreover, concur-
rent and complementary research from developmen-
tal psychology, cognition, educational technology,
sociology, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and
the design of educational environments had been re-
ported, but not synthesized.
Fortunately, the recent National Research
Council publication, How People Learn: Brain,
Mind, Experience (Bransford et al., 1994), has at-
tempted to synthesize the research and far-reaching
implications for broad-based educational reform,
including changes in Curriculum, Instruction, and
Assessment practices. One of the most salient fea-
tures of How People Learn is the utilization of a four-
part framework for analysis of current research and
practice: (a) knowledge centered, (b) learner cen-
tered, (c) assessment centered, and (d) community
centered. The parts are not mutually exclusive; the
best visual description of the framework is a Venn
diagram with knowledge centered, learner centered,
Integrating Curriculum
and assessment centered intersecting and enclosed
within community centered. These four categories are
potentially very useful in discussing the classroom en-
vironment (Brown et al., 1989) but to date, little re-
search has been reported employing this conceptual
framework.
What follows is a brief description of the four
aspects or frames suggested by How People Learn
(Bransford et al., 1999).
Knowledge Centered
Knowledge-centered analysis focuses on the
kinds of information and activities that help students
develop understanding of disciplines. This focus is
on existing curricula, especially those that emphasize
“doing science” (Duschl, 1990, p. 40) over the mem-
orization of facts. Knowledge-centered teachers use
projects (see Krajcik et al., 1998) as well as meaning-
ful engagement in discipline-specific practices.
Learner Centered
Learner-centered teachers pay careful attention
to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that
learners bring to the classroom environment. In gen-
eral, teachers who are learner centered recognize the
vital nature of building on the conceptual knowledge
that students bring with them to the classroom.
Assessment Centered
One key principle of assessment-centered envi-
ronments is to provide opportunities for feedback
and revision. In addition, assessment is consistent
with teaching (and learning) goals. Assessment is of-
ten differentiated between formative (administered
within the context of the classroom environment)
and summative (what students have learned at the
end of an instructional activity or unit). Appropri-
ately designed assessments, whether external or in-
ternally designed, can inform teachers of any neces-
sary modifications in their practice.
Community Centered
Community-centered learning environments
provide connections between the school and the
broader community that includes the home, after-
school programs, and experts in the discipline
449
separated by distance and accessibility. Connections
to experts outside of school can have a positive influ-
ence on in-school learning because experts provide
opportunities for students to interact with people
interested in and engaged in the subject matter.
Following the publication of How People Learn
(Bransford et al., 1999), a second NRC committee
expanded the program to explore the issues of how
to better link the findings of research on the science
of learning to the actual practice of the classroom.
The resulting report, How People Learn: Bridging
Research and Practice (Donovan et al., 2000), pre-
sented a series of recommendations to shrink the gap
between research and practice. One of the main over-
arching themes of Donovan et al.’s Bridging Research
and Practice is to use the principles of How People
Learn as a lens through which to evaluate existing
education practices and policies. Furthermore, one
of the key findings of both reports is that deep under-
standing requires that the subject matter being taught
be tied to key concepts of principles that the disci-
pline uses to understand the subject. This case-study
analysis therefore utilized the framework presented
by Bransford et al. (1999) as well as the sugges-
tions of Donovan et al. (2000) to make this research
relevant to bridging the gap between research and
practice.
METHODS
Case-Study Methodology
Because case studies do not result in the de-
termination of causal variables, experimental re-
searchers often consider them to be less rigorous, less
reliable, and less useful. However, case studies pro-
vide rich descriptions, deep or insider details, and
highly focused data contextualized by situating it in
the actual setting of the phenomenon being investi-
gated (Bailey, 1998; Johnson and Christensen, 2000;
Willig, 2001). Merriam (1988) pointed out that the
case study is especially well suited to addressing crit-
ical problems of practice (e.g., implementing project-
based science in secondary schools) and to extending
the knowledge base of various aspects of education.
Since the purpose of this research was to describe
and explore project-based instruction in a classroom
setting from a teaching perspective, case-study meth-
ods are appropriate in order to provide a comprehen-
sive picture of how the teacher implemented project-
based instruction.
450
Data Collection
Seven sets of data were collected for this study:
teacher, student, and colleague interviews; e-mail
correspondence with the teacher; field notes of class-
room observations; HOU curriculum; and classroom
artifacts.
1. Teacher interviews. The teacher was inter-
viewed before, during, and after the study.
Interviews occurred following each observa-
tion. These interviews covered pedagogical,
content, and epistemo logical issues centered
around the implementation of the HOU unit
on Photometry.
2. Student interviews. Five students were inter-
viewed immediately after the project was
completed.
3. Colleague interviews. The headmaster was in-
terviewed once concerning the efforts and
ability of the teacher. Two of the teacher’s
colleagues were interviewed as well.
4. E-mail correspondence. E-mails between the
teacher and his colleagues at other universi-
ties as well as Lawrence Livermore Labora-
tories were utilized in the analysis.
5. Field notes of classroom observations. A crit-
ical aspect of understanding what teachers
know about teaching and learning, in general
and for specific subjects, and the role of tech-
nology in this process is to evaluate the na-
ture of the learning environments. Such an
evaluation must be framed in terms of the
multiple features of powerful learning envi-
ronments defined by the How People Learn
framework. The class was observed 15 times
over the last 5 weeks of the academic school
year. Field notes documented teacher actions,
student actions, classroom dialogue, and in-
formal and formal assessments.
6. HOU curriculum. The HOU high school cur-
riculum allows teachers and students at all
ability levels to use high-quality astronom-
ical images to explore science, math, and
technology concepts. By analyzing genuine
astronomical images, students become more
excited about math and science. Tools pro-
vided include workbooks and a Teachers’
Guide, used in tandem with the HOU Image-
Processing Software CD. The specific unit for
this case study centered on photometry—the
measurement of light from a celestial object.
Petrosino
Students calculated stellar magnitudes using
advanced mathematics (logarithms).
7. Classroom artifacts. Classroom artifacts in-
cluded the teacher’s lecture and teaching
notes, handouts, computer programs, and
class projects.
Data Analysis
Data analysis for this case study involved a mod-
ified version of a method described by Cobb and
Whitenack (1996) for analyzing large sets of class-
room data (see also Glaser and Strauss, 1967). This
method is known as retrospective analysis. In the first
phase of the analysis, each classroom episode was
structured by themes related to photometry. These
included instances where the teacher and students re-
ferred to photometry or used the HOU software. I
noted which words were used to refer to photometry
and how these words were used. These themes lim-
ited my analysis of the data. For example, I did not
examine how students learned mathematical ideas
that they encountered within the photometry unit.
Direct quotes (and actions) related to photometry
were accounted for separately in tables. The quotes
were considered to be a set of analytic items and part
of the context of the particular classroom in which
they were noted.
To improve the explanatory power of the analy-
sis, I undertook an episode-by-episode analysis. Then
I performed a meta-analysis of the chains of infer-
ences and conjectures identified during the initial
phase of the analysis. These categories were refined
by re-examining the field notes, artifacts, and inter-
view transcripts via triangulation.
The Teacher
The teacher who initiated the astronomy course,
Mr Bill San Jancito (a pseudonym), has taught at the
present school for the past 20 years. Mr San Jancito
received a BS in Math/Science Education as well
as an MEd in the Natural Sciences. In addition, he
has presented at conferences and workshops on such
topics as particle physics, World Wide Web usage,
and the HOU project. He is an accomplished pro-
grammer and belongs to the National Science Teach-
ers Association, the American Association of Physics
Teachers, the Barnard-Seyfert Astronomical Society,
and the International Amateur-Professional Photo-
electric Photometry Society.
Integrating Curriculum
The Students
The students involved in the case-study astron-
omy class ranged from Grades 9 to 12 at a southern
independent school (formally a lab school for the lo-
cal university). Astronomy is an elective course at the
school and does not satisfy the school’s science re-
quirement for graduation. The two astronomy classes
contained 31 high school students (5 girls). All the
students had plans to attend college, and most were
planning to pursue interests in computers, science,
and the arts.
The Course
The astronomy course originated after Mr San
Jancito returned from a summer workshop in Macon,
Georgia. At the conference, Mr San Jancito ob-
tained the HOU image-processing software used by
astronomers and, with interest from six students, ini-
tiated the class. The software allowed for analysis of
variable stars using digital “counting” of pixels. In ad-
dition, the software also provided brightness vs. time
of observation representation. The initial idea of the
course was to focus on using authentic scientific tools,
instruments, and procedures to answer questions re-
lated to astronomy, computers, and physics educa-
tion via a project-based pedagogy.
The school had access to a 30"" telescope at
Leuschner Observatory equipped with a 512 ×
512 pixel Charged-Coupling Device (CCD)3
camera and Berkeley-developed HOU image-
processing software. The school had three 8""
Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes, one 8"" Newtonian
reflector, two 60 mm refractors, one 4.5"" rich field
reflector, and the CCD camera. In terms of com-
putational power, the class used three 486DX CPU
computers with 1024 × 768 resolution color moni-
tors. Direct ISDN connection to the Internet was
provided through the Tennessee Board of Regents.
HOU enables students to request specific ob-
servations from professional observatories. Students
download telescope images to their classroom com-
puters and use the HOU image-processing software
3A CCD acts like an electronic retina. It transforms focused im-
ages into a digital array of information that a computer can read
and store electronically. The CCD records light with a semicon-
ductor chip divided into a checkerboard array of tiny indepen-
dent light-sensitive picture elements, or pixels. These CCD chips
are commonly found in video cameras and digital cameras.
451
to visualize and analyze their data. For example, Mr
San Jancito’s students could submit coordinates to
the Berkeley robotics telescope, take images, and
process data to make sense of the information con-
tained in the images. Through Tennessee State Uni-
versity, the class could acquire photometric data (star
brightness) from the 10"" and 16"" robotics telescopes
on Mt. Hopkins in Arizona.
Curriculum Implementation: The Photometry Unit
As a collaborator in the HOU project, TERC,
through funding by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory,
has developed curriculum units that support an inter-
disciplinary approach to student investigations in as-
tronomy. Telecommunications link high school class-
rooms to remote telescopes and an image database.
By using an image-processing program, students can
modify and analyze the images they access. Project
staff prepare teacher-training materials to support
dissemination of the curriculum and develop activi-
ties and materials for use in science classrooms. With
HOU Photometry, teachers and students at all abil-
ity levels use high-quality astronomical images to ex-
plore science, math, and technology concepts. In ad-
dition, by analyzing genuine astronomical images and
sharing results with a boarder community, students
engage in mathematics and science as a means of par-
ticipating in the activities of practicing professionals
and amateur astronomers. HOU Photometry is one
of four “measuring” modules which support national
standards for high school science and mathematics as
outlined in the AAAS Benchmarks and the National
Research Council National Science Education Stan-
dards. Figure 1 presents a typical activity in the HOU
Photometry unit.
FINDINGS
The purpose of this work was to observe the
connection between knowledge, learner, assessment,
and community frames of reference and to illustrate
the interconnection between these frames and the
classroom-learning environment into existing class-
room practices centered on scientific inquiry and
how this impacts curriculum, instruction, and assess-
ment practices. As delineated in the introduction,
the desired effect of this type of pedagogy is to give
students opportunities for developing connected un-
derstandings as they engage in authentic tasks with
sophisticated equipment in collaboration with other
452
Fig. 1. A typical activity in the HOU Photometry unit, in this case, observing the changing brightness of a star. This fluctuating
brightness of a variable star (classified as a Myra of the M6 type) in this series of photographs shows the changes in magnitude over
a period of days. Day 0 was June 22, 1995.
students and practicing scientists. These findings de-
scribe the classroom norms for curriculum, instruc-
tion, and assessment that led to the successful execu-
tion of project-based instruction.
Classroom Norms: Curriculum
All students worked on the HOU curriculum en-
titled “Introduction to Photometry.” Mr San Jancito
supported this curriculum package by adding con-
tent based on students’ “need to know,” which pro-
vided explanatory and/or conceptual frameworks of
the photometry unit, had wide applicability within
the course curriculum, and was World Wide Web
situated. In other words, although HOU provided a
curriculum package, Mr San Jancito was the final cur-
riculum designer as he negotiated the hurdles com-
mon to project-based instruction. In one of the HOU
teacher meetings, he warned the creators of the pro-
gram, “We will kill the [HOU] program if we make
it cookbook; a cookbook approach will not work.”
San Jancito further characterized his practice, “I ba-
sically dissect the units and then drop them into the
course as the experiment or project needs to occur.
So these students have actually done three quarters
of the HOU units in pieces, but they would probably
not recognize the title if you asked them.”
Mr San Jancito delivered content to meet the
needs of his students. For example, he identified the
problem inherent in measuring the amount of light
received by telescopes from celestial objects: nightly
or hourly fluctuations or instrumentation differences.
Following these preparatory comments, the students,
“primed” to understand the need for brightness stan-
dards, were ready to hear his explanation of stan-
Petrosino
dard stars. In other words, Mr San Jancito provided
explanatory or conceptual frameworks for the con-
tent of the HOU curriculum. Another example came
in his unit introduction to photometry. He first de-
scribed the nature of light’s travel through space and
then asked the class to consider what happens when it
travels to earth-bound observers. The students were
easily able to describe phenomena that would alter
the travel of light through the atmosphere to the sur-
face of the earth, such as weather, smog, carbon diox-
ide, oxygen, and clouds. With this “big picture” as the
tether, Mr San Jancito began on the specific unit top-
ics of “counts” and the CCD. The unit centered on
ways of mathematizing the size of the variable stars
(see Fig. 1) using software that counted how many
pixels were brightened on the computer screen (the
more counts, the brighter the star).
Mr San Jancito arranged the course so his
students undertook a series of individual projects
throughout the academic year. In this way, Mr San
Jancito’s class had many of the characteristics consis-
tent with case-based (Kolodner, 1993) and project-
based (Krajcik et al., 2002) instruction. According to
Mr San Jancito’s own words,
The reason why I choose individual projects is that
I hate “busy” work; I don’t want to grade it, I don’t
want them (the students) to do it. So instead of hav-
ing them do hundreds of little questions . . . let’s see
if they can’t come up with a topic that can relate
to all of this in which they will work through . . . .
I’m topically orientated when I teach astronomy and
physics.
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Mr San
Jancito’s astronomy curriculum was his active use of
the World Wide Web for astronomical investigation.
The class used the Web as an instructional tool, with
Integrating Curriculum
Web pages written by the teacher and the students.
Writing their own text allowed the students to build
a personalized text based on the topics they had cho-
sen to study in creating their independent projects.
They wrote these sections as they acquired new and
useful information. Links were then created to the
student-generated, project-specific passages, so that
a person browsing on the Internet could see not only
the general topics discussed in class, but also the spe-
cific topics studied by the students.
Students not only used the Web to post cur-
riculum but also to create their own curriculum for
learning. For example, they used a connection to
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories to find the missing
details in their research of the universe. Addition-
ally, the students corresponded electronically with
the Berkeley scientists as well as others nationwide
via the “Ask A Scientist”4 electronic bulletin board.
Thus, an important consideration when choosing top-
ics for projects was the ability to span the course
content.
In summary, one of the criticisms of project-
based instruction is the amount of time it takes to
complete a single project (Polman, 2000). However,
when mapped across the curriculum for an entire
year, project-based science instruction incorporates
multiple learning objectives, even during a single
project. By having multiple concurrent projects, Mr
San Jancito satisfied course content coverage as well
as student engagement for his astronomy class.
Classroom Norms: Instruction
Class often began with an introduction of the
topic. After presenting the conceptual lesson, Mr San
Jancito introduced a fundamental computational ac-
tivity with complex word problems. The class was
then ready to plunge into the intended HOU cur-
ricular activities to relate the lesson to the initial
class topic introduction. However, this routine did
not become hackneyed over time but was rather a
suitable way to present necessary content. These lec-
tures or “benchmarks” (deSessa and Minstrell, 1998)
were designed to give the proper context for the
students’ activities throughout the remainder of the
unit and the course. These benchmarks became com-
4 Ask A Scientist is a project funded by the National Science Foun-
dation to bring experts into classroom settings, either in person
or via electronic hookups between schools and universities (see
http://newton.dep.anl.gov/archive.htm).
453
mon ground on which the classroom discourse was
raised to a higher level (Schwartz and Bransford,
1998). Throughout the time of the case study, stu-
dent use of the terminology of the HOU curriculum
(“hits,” CCD, Autoaverager, variable star) became
commonplace. The impetus of such vocabulary could
be traced to these initial benchmark lessons.
The aforementioned conceptual lesson–activi-
ties–contextualization cycle was only one of the in-
structional strategies Mr San Jancito used to im-
plement project-based instruction. He also used
explanation, discussion, and collaboration, punctu-
ated throughout with humor. In the unit introduc-
tion to photometry, Mr San Jancito explained that
light travels vast distances across the universe, essen-
tially unaffected by anything in space until it passes
through the earth’s atmosphere and suddenly be-
comes distorted “just when someone finally wants
to see it!” After the laughter, Mr San Jancito fo-
cused student attention on new ground by talking
about the equipment and methods astronomers use
for photometric measurements of this light from dis-
tant objects.
Mr San Jancito also employed collaborative
learning. However, he expanded on traditional
notions of collaborative learning implementation:
through HOU, he nurtured student participation in
a community of scientists, teachers, and students
that communicated via e-mail (Barab et al., 2001).
This electronic community exchanged ideas and data,
working collaboratively on significant research top-
ics with scientists at the University of California
at Berkeley. Evidence of this electronic community
abounded in Mr San Jancito’s class. For example, at
one point Mr San Jancito turned to Ravi, a student
with above-average computer skills who recently im-
migrated to the United States, and said, “Make sure
you get that e-mail off to Greg [a university profes-
sor] and let him know we found the period to that
variable star. He’ll want to know as soon as we figure
it out.” Students were working with university pro-
fessors in a collaboratory manner not for these pro-
fessors in some patronizing manner or simply going
through the motions of inquiry. Greg, the professor
at the university, was not only interested in the re-
sults of the students data on the variable star but was
including it in a database that he was creating. It also
was not uncommon to hear the students discuss post-
ing their papers on the Web to share with other in-
terested people. In addition, a student named Isaac
spoke of sending out the coordinates to the scientists
at Berkeley telescope and downloading the data by
454 Petrosino

the end of the week. This awareness of belonging to a
broader research community and the resources they
provide had an impact on the instructional process.
As Mr San Jancito explained,
[The students] realize they are not alone and that
there are other people out there. They know they
have resources they didn’t have before and they re-
alize that there are people out there that they are di-
rectly associated with, wider variety of sources, and
from whom they can learn. The students also feel
like they are part of a bigger plot. Noah felt like he
was part of the supernova search . . . . It gave him a
handle on things that you usually don’t get in other
classes . . . . I don’t know if students can do that in
other classes. We might be very lucky . . . in astron-
omy, amateurs can actually contribute to fundamen-
tal research.
Throughout the time of the case study, a host
of interconnected projects and collaborations took
place between the astronomy class and the outside
world. Promoting awareness of the larger commu-
nity was an important instructional philosophy for
Mr San Jancito. He explained, “If you can’t col-
laborate, you can’t survive, and the one thing this
program has done is force these kids to look be-
yond the classroom and ask, ‘What can we do and
how can we learn beside just in this classroom?”’
The astronomy students helped test the language
used to guide robotics telescopes. Automated Tele-
scope Instruction Set (ATIS) is a language used to
guide robotics telescopes and was developed by the
NASA Ames Research Center and astronomer Greg
Henry at Tennessee State University. Dr Henry was
so impressed and involved with the students that
he often rearranged his schedule to attend Mr San
Jancito’s star parties and to interact personally with
the young scientists. The students in San Jancito’s
class helped these professionals find problems in
their system and, in return, received first-hand data
for their investigations.
We have seen how the curricula and instruc-
tional norms of San Jancito’s class were shaped by
his ideas of project-based instruction and student in-
quiry. We will now discuss that assessment norms
were utilized in his class.
Classroom Norms: Assessment
One of the most difficult aspects of project-
based instruction is assessment (Black and Wiliam,
2000; Polman, 2000). Mr Rodriguez acknowledged
his own difficulty in this area and attempted to use
various evaluation methods but admitted that they
need more work and development. This is not an un-
common occurrence within technology rich inquiry
environments (Pellegrino et al., 2001; Polman, 2001).
At the time of the study, he had not used any forma-
tive assessment (Black and Wiliam, 1998), although
he had planned to develop something during the
following summer. He felt that he needed to de-
velop a more cohesive structure to his goals before
he could work on evaluation methods. Because the
course content changed over the years, he felt as if
he were constantly trying to keep up with both con-
tent changes and assessment modifications.
Consequently, he used seemingly more tradi-
tional types of assessments, such as working through
problems, but situated them within the context of
the unit. For example, during one lesson targeted
toward mathematical understanding, students calcu-
lated the angle subtended by the star Alpha Cen-
tauri from a photo image (see Fig. 2). In a re-
lated activity during the same class period, students

Fig. 2. Aperture photometry on each image and the differential magnitude of VI432 Aql vs. a comparison star (C) as well as a check
star (K) in the same field was performed. In each case the sky background intensity around each aperture was subtracted from the
aperture intensity. Referring to Image-A, VI432 Aql as well as the Comparison star (C) and the Check star (K) are marked. These
images were obtained on the night of June 8/9, 2002. Notice how the brightness of VI432 Aql peaks in image B, diminishes in Image
C, and is faintest in Image D. This corresponds to the graph in Figure 3 (V-C). Line K-C represents a typical, stable star.
Integrating Curriculum
Fig. 3. The graph of the Differential magnitudes vs. Julian Date. The point in the light
curve corresponding to Image-A can be seen. Images B, C, D locations are also marked.
analyzed a down-loaded image using the HOU
image-processing software. The students were able
to estimate the number of counts displayed for each
pixel and, using plots and histograms, could visualize
the distribution of sky-subtracted brightness for spe-
cific sets of pixels that together recorded an image
of Alpha Centauri (Fig. 3). A similar process, used
to plot intensity vs. time for another variable star
(V1432 Aql), is illustrated in Figs. 2 and 3. Figure 2
shows the digital images of the star on a series of dif-
ferent days. The sky-subtracted brightness for the re-
gion of pixels containing the star is plotted vs. time
(Julian Day) in Fig. 3. The position of each of the
four images is indicated on the graph.
Although Mr San Jancito was required to as-
sign grades and the students cared about the grade
they received, there was little evidence of an empha-
sis on grading or assessment throughout the term of
this case. Mr Rodriguez explained his view on grad-
ing and how grade anxiety interferes with learning:
I spent three months running that [grade anxiety]
out of them. I contend that they will be better off
in my class if they do not worry about grades; other
classes [at the school] are not like that. Teachers can
make it [anxiety] worse.
There was a pass–fail sense in the class. Al-
though Mr San Jancito was quick to point out the
need for rigor, the class almost seemed unencum-
bered by the usual anxiety surrounding the whole
process of assessment. As he explained,
The students’ grades are based on skills, specifically,
1) can they run the HOU software, 2) can they nor-
455
malize the image, 3) are they requesting the proper
images, 4) how well can they download images, and
5) how well do they incorporate these skills into their
projects? They check them all. In terms of how their
projects are graded, the students determine the con-
tent and the grading criteria. I sign off on it or we
may negotiate, my one absolute is that I do not al-
low effort as a grade, it’s simply too subjective.
SUMMARY
In summarizing the key components of Mr San
Jancito’s project-based instruction, through the ret-
rospective analysis, I identified five practices that
consistently repeated themselves throughout the
term of the case.
Practice 1. Mr San Jancito visibly tried to bring into
the class the sense of “project.” According to Mr
San Jancito, through this process students develop
deeper understanding of the material:
Hands on is really minds on . . . That’s what you
want. The fact is, the activity should be designed
to stimulate thought, not just to say, “We did
35 experiments this year.” There needs to be
an underlying point, a conceptual foundation, a
project.
Practice 2. Mr San Jancito embodies the dedication
to the advancement of the independent individual.
He establishes an individual relationship with ev-
ery student in his class. One student, Soojin, came
to class with the idea of doing an astrology project.
Rather than dismiss this request out of hand as
456
being inconsistent with an astronomy course, to
say nothing of the surface level nonscientific na-
ture of the topic, San Jancito worked with Soojin
to develop a project that looked at some of the
historical beginning of astrology which drew par-
allels with existing astronomy knowledge of the
time. In another case, Josh, a student with great ap-
titude with computer programming but little inter-
est at the time in astronomy was convinced by San
Jancito that automating some of the “counting”
of pixels in the HOU photometry unit via a pro-
gram would be a worthwhile exercise. Josh was
convinced and after a few weeks of working on
the problem, Josh created a tool to assist students
in analyzing large sets of variable star data. These
encounters with students emphasize that under-
standing happens between people and that the no-
tion of understanding and cognitive growth is in-
herently relational. According to Goldstein (1999)
these meaningful interpersonal interactions could
imply that affective factors play a central role in
intellectual growth and development. While of-
ten overlooked or disregarded, one cannot simply
turn a blind eye to the numerous “caring encoun-
ters” (Noddings, 1984) San Jancito employed in
his classroom. The literature has focused on the
more strictly cognitive aspects of the learning pro-
cess, leaving affect and the examples of teaching–
learning interactions unexplored.
Practice 3. His emphasis on collaboration through
e-mail, the Web, and outside experts expanded
the walls of his classroom into a true global com-
munity. In addition to the regular e-mails with
Dr Greg Henry, and other professors at the univer-
sity, the students were in regular contact with other
high schools using the HOU curriculum as well as
scientists and researchers at the observatory.
Practice 4. The cyclic nature of his instruction allows
for conceptual understanding and procedural use
of mathematics, all placed within a motivating con-
text. San Jancito would start class with an engag-
ing driving question and then pick and choose units
from the HOU curriculum as well as provide math-
ematical tools and analysis to help facilitate the
students inquiry. Each cycle led to further investi-
gations, further articulations of what the problems
were to solve and more mathematical tools to ap-
ply and use in order to engage in the inquiry.
Practice 5. His notion of distributed expertise al-
lows each student to contribute meaningfully to
the overall efforts of his class. Whether it was a
particular student’s computer programming abil-
Petrosino
ity as in the case of Josh, or there interest in art
like Soojin, San Jancito worked within the existing
expertise and interests of his class to formulate a
“lab group” perspective to tackle investigations in
his class. What makes this especially noteworthy is
that not all the students were from the same class
and sometimes students would only have contact
with each other via e-mails or notes left in mail-
boxes. The distributed nature of this expertise ex-
tended to the scientists and professors from HOU
and the local university as well.
The students in the astronomy class acted much
like graduate students in a doctoral program, with
Mr San Jancito in the role of the professor. The stu-
dents were conducting real research on data not pre-
viously analyzed by any other scientists. They collab-
orated with other professionals in the field, including
local professors of astronomy, and made numerous
requests for data from the CCD-equipped telescope
at Berkeley. The students worked at their own pace
on individual projects that Mr San Jancito deemed
worthy of inclusion as extensions of the HOU cur-
riculum. The class resembled an open lab period,
with students working on their individual projects at
any number of locations around the school, includ-
ing Mr San Jancito’s office, the classroom, the library,
or the computer lab. Students would check in with
him, discuss projects, and go about their research. Mr
San Jancito gave perhaps the best summary of what
was observed, “The strength of HOU and Project
Based Instruction is that the students can come up
with original questions and they have the tools to an-
swer such questions. They don’t have to rehash what
others have done and I think that’s a big difference.”
ANALYSIS
I utilized the How People Learn framework
(Bransford et al., 1999) to analyze this case study. The
purpose was to show the connection between knowl-
edge, learner, assessment, and community frames of
reference and to illustrate the interconnection be-
tween these frames and the classroom-learning en-
vironment developed by Mr San Jancito.
The framework provides four different lenses
for interpretation of a learning environment: knowl-
edge, the learner, assessment, and the commu-
nity. A knowledge-based environment helps students
learn key concepts in the subject area. The learner
perspective observes how class activities take into
Integrating Curriculum
account the knowledge, skills, and learning styles of
each student. Assessment provides opportunities for
students to demonstrate their learning, so instruction
can be refined as needed. Finally, community fosters
norms that encourage students to learn from one an-
other, their teacher, and the outside community.
Knowledge Centered
During the photometry unit, a form of dis-
tributed expertise evolved (Brown et al., 1993; Pea,
1993) in which the entire class shared the knowl-
edge base of its participants. Looking over a student-
written program to estimate the brightness variation
period of a star, Mr San Jancito suggested, “Let’s
talk to Isaac about this, I bet he could mock some-
thing up in C [a computer programming language]
in no time.” The students nodded in agreement and
left a note for Isaac in the lab area. Mr San Jancito
acknowledged with delight the expertise of his stu-
dents, some of whose programming skills exceeded
his own. This expertise supported the environment
of actual research. As a student explained, “We don’t
act like scientists, we are scientists.”
Learner Centered
One of the key aspects of this case study was to
gain a sense of how the students felt about the HOU
unit. The students were expected to enjoy the class—
it was offered as an elective rather than a require-
ment. Mr San Jancito showed his learner-centered
sensitivity as he described the students’ reaction to
his astronomy class in some detail:
I think the kids fall into two groups . . . one, the
kids who have not learned to deal with abstract
reasoning yet, hate it. Because they want it black
and white . . . ok, that should change [with HOU]
we hope. The other kids at first think it’s very
scary. Like when they find out that medical re-
search is probabilistic in nature, but they come to
appreciate things like data collection. That’s where
the photometry unit comes in. How good is your
photometric data, subtract the sky, we do all the
normalization things . . . those kinds of things are
really important for kids to see. Because it makes
them better readers when they read Newsweek and
Time . . . to get their science.
One consistent construct emerged from the stu-
dent interviews and discussions. The students viewed
Mr San Jancito’s class as a way of learning any sub-
ject matter rather than simply learning astronomy.
457
One student, Isaac, said, “This class is more impor-
tant than any other because it teaches you how to go
about learning anything . . . for now, it’s astronomy,
but it works in my other classes as well.”
Another theme that emerged from the conversa-
tions with the students was that being an independent
learner increased their ability to enjoy the class. In-
dependent does not mean working alone, of course—
the astronomy class required collaboration between
students. However, the students viewed HOU as a
way of working on their own interests. The class of-
fered something for the computer hackers, for the
astronomy buffs, for the math whizzes, and for the
more artistically inclined.
Assessment Centered
Although Mr San Jancito had a dislike of test-
ing (noting the anxiety it provoked as well as the fo-
cus it took from class), he nonetheless utilized assess-
ment continuously throughout the unit. The class was
about continual assessment—“scientific evidence is
the ultimate assessment of conceptual, procedural,
factual, and transfer understanding and knowledge”
said San Jancito. In part, San Jancito did not have
the high accountability structure that is increasingly
common in schools around the country. His students
were taking this course as an elective and the course
was not a required course for college placement.
Furthermore, the students from the school are pri-
marily college bound and have had fairly successful
school experiences. Nonetheless, even with this pop-
ulation, San Jancito found anxiety over grades to be
both annoying and disruptive to the learning that he
wanted to occur in his classroom. He differentiated
“testing” from “assessment” and while his class did
not have a single traditional test during the entire
time of the case study, he made notes in his book
about each students progress on almost a daily ba-
sis. Thus, he provided students with detailed expla-
nations of their progress and students were able to
use this information in a much more productive man-
ner. This unorthodox approach to assessment is not
intended to be prescriptive but rather to simply high-
light how San Jancito incorporated this into his class-
room practice.
Community Centered
Instructional methods of group work or collabo-
rative learning went beyond what is typically seen in
458
classrooms to include the larger community of prac-
ticing scientists. Students became part of the larger
community rather than peripheral observers. One
can visualize Mr San Jancito’s classroom as a se-
ries of concentric circles. The immediate members
of the class were the inner core. This core was sur-
rounded immediately by members of other classes
that Mr San Jancito taught that academic year. Third,
local university professors from the area were in-
volved with the research projects, communicating via
e-mail, phone calls, and occasional visits. The fourth
circle was the HOU community, hundreds of stu-
dents at dozens of high schools around the county.
The fifth and outermost circle was the broader com-
munity of astronomers and physicists who some stu-
dents aspired to be (as one student said, “We don’t
act like scientists, we are scientists”).
DISCUSSION
Polman (2000) explains the teacher must play
a unique role of guiding and participating in stu-
dent classroom activities without taking away the stu-
dents’ active role in the learning process. This mid-
dle ground between teacher-guided and unguided
student-directed instruction has been referred to by
researchers as guided discovery (Hawkins, 1974). As
Ann Brown (Brown, 1992) explained,
Guided learning is easier to talk about than to do. It
takes clinical judgment to know when to intervene.
Successful teachers must engage continually in on-
line diagnosis of student understanding. They must
be sensitive to overlapping zones of proximal devel-
opment, where students are ripe for new learning.
Guided discovery places a great deal of responsibil-
ity in the hands of teachers, who must model, foster,
and guide the “discovery” process into forms of dis-
ciplined inquiry that would be reached without ex-
pert guidance, (p. 169)
The four aspects of learning environments identified
in How People Learn (Bransford et al., 1999) provide
a foundation for understanding how Mr San Jancinto
was able to successfully implement project-based in-
struction as authentic guided discovery, overcoming
the usual hurdles (Barron et al., 1998).
At the core of Mr San Jancinto’s pedagogy
lies an attention to knowledge centeredness. On
the path to discovering new astronomical knowl-
edge by acting as practicing astronomers, students
also learn the key facts, concepts, and practices
of the discipline. Students not only develop basic
understandings about the field of astronomy, such
Petrosino
as the brightness scale, variable stars, astronomical
units, and measuring techniques but also master the
skills of experts using image-processing software to
determine uniformly the brightness of a particular
star.
Overlying this core of knowledge centeredness
is an attention to the learner. Rather than assuming
what students already know and are interested in
and creating a lock-step curriculum, Mr San Jancinto
creates an open workspace in which students are free
to develop their own area of interest and determine a
way to learn what they want to know. In keeping with
Brown and Campione’s (1994) description of suc-
cessful teaching, he structures the learning situation
through his benchmark lessons and the equipment
and techniques he presents to his students. However,
within the course content framework he establishes,
students are free to acquire the knowledge in the
order and manner which makes the most sense to
them. They work at their own pace and sometimes
in isolation and sometime in small groups. San
Jancito periodically brings the class together for
“debriefmgs” where groups or individuals will ex-
plain their progress, discuss what problems they are
having, and either offer or solicit assistance from the
group.
In keeping with the principles of How People
Learn, Mr San Jancinto’s practice is assessment cen-
tered. Although he acknowledges that he needs to
improve making formal assessments, his students ex-
hibit their knowledge through the actions they take,
the conversations and discussions they have, and the
questions they ask. According to Bransford et al.
(1999), “ongoing assessments [are] designed to make
students’ thinking visible to both teachers and stu-
dents [ . . . and] provide students with opportunities
to revise and improve their thinking” (p. 24). This
was seen as Josh presented multiple attempts at
solving his computer programming problem to San
Jancito, constantly refining the program and working
off of feedback from both San Jancito and the stu-
dents. San Jancito also utilizes assessments through-
out the class and not just at the end of the unit. Thus,
he employs formative as well as summative assess-
ment (Black and Wiliam, 1998). This was evident as
he would give students various variable star pictures
to analyze and measure before working up to the
“big” stuff . . . variable star data not previously ana-
lyzed for sharing with professors at the university. In
this way, assessment was used and feedback given be-
fore students got a chance to “test their mettle” with
practicing scientists.
Integrating Curriculum
Finally, Mr San Jancinto’s practice integrated
community centeredness as students became legit-
imate participants in the field of astronomy. This
occurred via interactions with Dr Greg Henry at the
university, the scientists and researchers at HOU
and Lawrence Livermore Laboratories as well as
students from around the country engaged in HOU
concurrently with their own investigations. The stu-
dents eventually had some of their work presented
at conferences and a number of the techniques they
developed were used in future versions of the HOU
curriculum.
Given these findings, How People Learn is an
appropriate framework for considering how to suc-
cessfully implement project-based instruction in the
classroom. Rather than viewing a project as some-
thing external to regular learning, or the culmination
of learning, attending to the four aspects of learn-
ing environments when teaching through project-
based instruction allows the teacher to meet the cur-
rent vision of science education both in what the
classroom looks and sounds like as well as in stu-
dent outcomes. Students do participate in hands-on
activities, but they do so in authentic science sit-
uations. In the course of these activities they de-
velop connected understandings and take part in
the practice and process of scientific inquiry. These
are notable goals and are attainable but require
changes to existing practice. Mr San Jancito and
his class provide one look into what that kind of
class might look like. Certainly more examples and
further investigations will articulate a more refined
picture.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported in part by Jerry
Foote, the Tennessee Space Grant Consortium
(TSGC), NASA Space Grant College and Fellow-
ship Program, and by the Engineering Research Cen-
ters program of the National Science Foundation
under annual grant EEC-9876363. Many thanks to
the teachers, parents, administration, and most of all
the students for their support and cooperation. Spe-
cial thanks to Dr Alvin M. Strauss, Director, TSGC,
and Saul Rockman, Rockman et al. for their input
and support. Also thanks to Barbara Austin, Brad
Armosky, Jill Marshall, and three anonymous re-
viewers for their comments and feedback. A special
note of gratitude to Jennifer E. Cook for her editing
expertise.
459
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