I NTRODUCTION

Rapid technological and social developments put high demands on individuals.

Individuals are required to garner new knowledge all the time, to collaborate with colleagues at work, and to apply their knowledge to solve everyday problems. Despite the fact that the whole world is changing at a rapid pace, education systems, unfortunately, have not been able to catch up. Therefore, the high demands of the world impose necessary pressure on educational systems to improve to be more effective.

Educational systems have received many criticisms in the past. One of the often raised concerns is the fact that most schools teach students to be passive knowledge seekers. In the current school model with teachers being the givers of information and textbooks being the primary course structure guide (Uden & Beaumon, 2006), individual learning and performance are not emphasized and students are judged on unassisted performances on assignments and tests (Kozma & Schank, 1998). In addition, information is spread out by subjects and grade levels, resulting in fragmented pieces of knowledge (Uden & Beaumon, 2006). Also, subject knowledge is often taught outside of the context of real-world use. Therefore, students are instructed on the knowledge that is neither relevant nor linked to their previous knowledge. As a result, students are unable to make the connection between school learning and how it will serve them later in life (Kozma & Schank, 1988; Ward & Lee, 2002). Though students gain knowledge in school, they do not know what this knowledge is for or how to use it.

They also lack the necessary skills to help them decide where and how to find and use resources. This has resulted in students’ passive learning and always waiting for someone to help them. Moreover, they learn superficially, lack motivation, and most

importantly are unable to adapt themselves to rapid changes of the society in terms of both knowledge and skills with respect to the above worrisome drawbacks.

There is a common concern among parents, educators, business leaders, and politicians that students are not being educated in a manner that allows them to make connections between their knowledge and the real world and that school reform is no doubt an urgent need to prepare students to meet the requirements of the 21st century (Kozma & Schank, 1998; Ward & Lee, 2002; Samuel, Tse, & Ken, 2011). In other words, to guarantee success in the workplace, students must be able to understand and incorporate new ideas, adapt to change, cope with uncertainty, and use higher order thinking skills to address conventional issues.

The effectiveness of the conventional models of pedagogy has been a focus of research over the years (Chai & Tan, 2009; Savery & Duffy, 1995; Solomon, 2003).

Passive learning by students has motivated educators to continually seek innovative ways to motivate students and improve learning outcomes (Finn, 1991; Hafner & Ellis, 2004;

Lewis, Alacaci, & O’Brien, 2002; Marina, 2009). For this reason, educators are now looking for new applications that develop such abilities to meet the demands of the changing world. Among them, educators have looked at constructivist pedagogical designs that are based on cognitive and social interactions in project-centered environments (Belland, et al., 2006; Brush & Saye, 2008; John F. & Rebecca T. 2013).

Project-based learning goes beyond generating student interest. Well-designed projects encourage active inquiry and higher-level thinking (Thomas, 1998).

Project-based learning offers a wide range of benefits to both students and teachers. A growing body of academic research supports the use of project-based learning in school to engage students, cut absenteeism, boost cooperative learning skills, and improve academic performance (George Lucas Educational Foundation, 2001).

Project-based learning (PBL) was introduced in the early twentieth century to

motivate students’ self-directed learning (Kilpatrick, 1918). It involves creating an environment in which individuals actively participate in the learning process, take responsibility for their own learning, become better learners in terms of time management skills, fostering the ability to identify learning topics, the ability to find resources and the ability to evaluate the validity of these resources. To nurture these abilities, the PBL method calls for learners to acquire and develop core learning concepts through doing collaborative projects that require the learning and the application of contextual knowledge. Literature has already shown that PBL is able to turn students into interactive learners (Blumentfeld et al., 1991; Lin & Hsieh, 2001; Synteta & Schneider, 2002) and to construct knowledge through exploration (Edward, 1995; Jang, 2006a; Johnson & Aragon, 2003; Prince & Felder, 2007).

Recent studies also explore the feasibility of integrating PBL and technology. PBL has proven particularly effective when combined with computer technology (Barron et al., 1998; Edelson, Gordin, & Pea, 1999; Solomon, 2003; Stites, 1998). Given the growing pervasiveness of the Internet, such technology is now a major tool in PBL (Land &

Greene, 2000). The use of technology to facilitate PBL implementation can be categorized as technology-supported PBL and production-oriented PBL. In technology-supported PBL, the technologies are often used as communication tools (Hafner & Ellis, 2004), research tools (Land & Greene, 2000), scaffolding tools (Synteta

& Schneider, 2002, Intel TwT, 2011), project management tools (Denis et al., 2005;

Rooij, 2009), and telecollaboration tools (Harris, 1998; Anderson, 2002). In production-oriented PBL, however, technologies are often used as production tools that enable students to organize and present their research work through multimedia.

Cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1988, 1994; Penney, 1989) and the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Mayer, 1997) indicate that when learners process multimedia data

simultaneously, they integrate numerous types of information and form mental models based on their understanding of the learning material.

Production-oriented PBL thus offers students opportunities to simulate authentic learning and to increase their knowledge and self-efficacy in the subject matter. However, some possible barriers to production-oriented PBL projects include such technical difficulties as software, hardware, and networks, as well as time constraints, and the need for teacher training in particular (Steelman, 2005). Some factors are found to be contributing to teachers’ difficulty in implementing PBL projects in class (Hew & Brush, 2007; Demirci, 2009). For example, a lack of prompt technical support may cause anxiety for teachers. Teachers must also customize instruction to prevailing knowledge levels and learning goals (Seo et al., 2008). An even greater challenge for a subject teacher is to address the technical needs of students who may have varying proficiency and interest in the use of computers. Therefore, an important challenge for educators and policymakers is to train teachers not only in PBL pedagogy but also in the technology needed to implement PBL successfully in the classroom (Barab & Luehmann, 2002; Barak & Dori, 2004; Hickey et al., 2010).

In addition to the technical issues, there are also contextual issues that hinder the practice of PBL in class. In many Asian countries, Taiwan in particular, the educational environment is still very much test-driven. The National Subject-Competency Test (NSCT) score is still the major indicator of students’ academic achievement and is the predominant factor in determining which college or university high school graduates may attend. Thus, changing the pedagogical practices of subject teachers is extremely difficult.

Any alternative teaching methods that do not sound ―robust‖ to the public’s ear are expected to bring about strong parental objections. Therefore, even if a subject teacher is willing to try new teaching practices and to learn the necessary technology, teaching students in this alternative approach with novel teaching aids are still a daunting task.

In the light of the aforementioned difficulties, we have been experimenting with disparate ways for high school subject teachers to practice PBL in their classrooms, in which team-teaching is proved to be a feasible way to overcome both the technical and contextual problems mentioned above. Team-teaching is one variation of co-teaching (Cook & Friend, 1996), which involves two or more teachers sharing teaching expertise in the classroom and engaging in reflective dialogue with each other (Eick & Dias, 2005;

Jang, 2006b; Sandholtz, 2000; Welch & Sheridan, 1995). Team-teaching offers several advantages over the traditional single-teacher teaching method, including the provision of multiple learning perspectives (Smith, Hornsby, & Kite, 2000), reduction of teaching redundancy (Hartenian, Schellenger, & Frederickson, 2001), and the promotion of teamwork and communication between teachers (Andrews & Wooten, 2005).

In this study, we propose a team-teaching strategy that involves collaboration between the computer teacher and subject teachers to implement PBL in class. A quasi-experimental study with a mixed-method design was conducted to facilitate students’ interest and confidence in learning subjects as well as the development of proper learning achievement. The rest of this thesis presents the team-teaching PBL approach, experimental setup, research findings, discussion of implications and conclusions.