UC Irvine

The separation of disciplines in secondary education is an inherent obstacle to project-based learning (PBL): educators go years without meaningful collaboration, critical feedback, or self-reflection (Jacobs, 2010). As a result, many inhabit an isolated bubble where no space is given to interdisciplinary collaboration; this isolation limits the authenticity of the projects students can produce. Compounding the dilemma is neoliberal logic, which disseminates the model of the market to all domains and activities (Brown, 2017). The curriculum is depoliticized; students are motivated to excel academically so they can compete in the market rather than work towards more societal equity. Additionally, marginalized groups are tracked into vocational pathways that focus only on basic skills training and give no space to critical thinking, which hurts the worker’s ability to confront and transform inequitable neoliberal policies (Darder, 2017). While PBL in STEM and vocational pathways have positive impacts on teaching and learning outcomes, implemented without a critical pedagogy framework, PBL has not been shown to increase critical consciousness (Montoya et al., 2018). This research aims to discover how PBL and an interdisciplinary curriculum (Montoya et al., 2020) implemented through a framework of critical pedagogy can impact the critical consciousness of students and teachers.