Barriers to 21st Century
School Development
There are two main barriers to 21st Century School Development. First, PBL is hard to do well. Second, effective schoolwide PBL needs a collaborative learning platform to support students and teachers. Some theorists argue that PBL and other constructivist approaches do not work well (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006; Mayer, 2004). These are legitimate concerns, since PBL has indeed been implemented poorly in many countries over the past 30 years. New Tech’s approach to PBL is much more charac- teristic of “guided discovery,” however, than the pure or minimally guided discovery approach that has been criticized.