Caught in the middle: A case study of 21st-century Project Based Learning in a Georgia middle school in an era of standardization

The researcher conducted a qualitative case study with multiple participants. The purpose of the study was to examine the experiences of middle school teachers who use a 21st-century approach to curricula. The study featured teacher participants who were part of an instructional team at their North Georgia middle school. Teacher participants used a 21st-century Project Based Learning (PBL) approach to guide their instruction in the content areas of language arts, social studies, and science. The researcher sought to examine ways in which middle school PBL teachers engage and challenge students and merge elements of authentic PBL with standardized curricula Additionally, the researcher sought to identify any conflicts between the teachers' instructional framework and instructional setting.;The researcher initially administered a questionnaire, and participants wrote a brief written teacher philosophy. The researcher followed up with interviews and gathered additional artifacts such as teacher lesson plans and observational notes. To analyze data and draw conclusions, the researcher relied upon Creswell's (2013) recommendations for coding narratives. The researcher sought to formulate themes as they emerged through an analysis of the data.;The researcher concluded that all teacher participants in the study shared a sense of purpose primarily in their roles as classroom teachers and secondarily in their roles as PBL-21 teachers. Additionally, study participants seemed to believe that they were constructing a community of learners with the common goal of helping to globally transform an instructional system that had not been effectively serving the needs of 21st century learners. The researcher concluded that teacher participants experienced levels of frustration with the systemic challenges of time and standardized instructional pacing that created barriers to the implementation of their PBL instructional processes. The researcher also concluded that teacher participants ultimately indicated a sense of success as a possible outcome of the task of implementing a 21st century approach to instruction even within a system of standardized frameworks.;Areas for further study include extending the research to preservice teachers of different preservice PBL experience levels and replicating the study in elementary or high school settings.