#394 – Building Strong Foundations: How Instructional Innovation and PBL Transform Teaching, with Dr. Jorge Valenzuela

In this episode of Unpacking Education, we sit down with education coach, author, and researcher Dr. Jorge Valenzuela to explore how instructional innovation and project-based learning (PBL) can transform the learning experience and empower both students and educators. Jorge introduces the updated second edition of his book, Project-Based Learning+: Enhancing Academic Learning and Essential Life Skills, and shares how combining academic learning with essential life skills—like emotional intelligence, career readiness, and self-knowledge—creates powerful outcomes.

Tune in to hear about how action research, personalized learning, and timely feedback can help educators meet students where they are. You’ll also discover practical tools, strategies for integrating AI in the classroom, and ways to foster student agency through relevant, real-world learning experiences. Whether you’re new to PBL or looking to deepen your practice, this episode is packed with inspiration and actionable insights.

Project-based learning PLUS essential life skills equals student and educator success.

Dr. Jorge Valenzuela, in the second edition of Project-Based Learning+: Enhancing Academic Learning and Essential Life Skills

Resources

The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:

• Strategies for Youth to Align Passion to Purpose and Education, with Jorge Valenzuela (podcast episode)
• AI in the K–12 Classroom (article collection)
• Empower Students Through Creativity and Choice (article collection)
• Inspire Students With Project-Based Learning (article collection)
• Project-Based Learning, with A.J. Juliani (podcast episode)

Pathways to Success

When we talk about pathways to success, it’s not just about career readiness—it’s about giving students the tools to understand who they are, what drives them, and how they can contribute meaningfully to the world around them. Jorge Valenzuela emphasizes that success begins with knowledge of self, and his PBL+ framework is rooted in this understanding. By layering life skills—like emotional intelligence and purpose-driven goal setting—into PBL, educators can design learning experiences that go beyond academics to foster lifelong growth.

Jorge’s approach is grounded in research and tested in diverse classrooms across the country. He points out, “Knowledge of students is knowing them as people and as learners—and making informed instructional decisions from that understanding.” With this knowledge, he notes that educators can guide students through impactful learning experiences while also helping them discover their passions and build resilience. With practical tools, which include empathy mapping, single-point rubrics, and intentional AI integration, this episode underscores the transformative potential of learner-centered instruction that meets both academic and personal development needs. The following are a few highlights from this episode:

• About Our Guest: Dr. Jorge Valenzuela is a performance and education coach, author, university instructor at Old Dominion University, and speaker at Lifelong Learning Defined. Jorge empowers educators to lead with confidence and teach more effectively through training in instructional innovation, action research, PBL, STEM pathways, entrepreneurship, and life skills. In partnership with Corwin, Jorge supports schools in strengthening core instruction through instructional innovation and project-based learning, helping educators adopt student-centered and impactful strategies. A published researcher, he also hosts the Lifelong Learning Defined podcast, where he shares practical insights to inspire and support educators everywhere.
• Starting With a Need: Jorge identifies a need and then sets out to find solutions that meet those needs. He recalls how a previous team that he was on used instructional rounds to observe classrooms, gather data, and identify areas that could benefit from professional learning. He says, “We developed our PD—our professional development—based on what we saw. Once we identified a need, then we would identify a solution.” That solution drove the professional learning to follow. This process is outlined in his new book, Instructional Innovation+: Cultivating Teaching Teams Through Action Research.
• Student Needs: Both recent research and past experience have led Jorge to realize “that not every kid needs the same essential life skills.” He points out that essential life skills for some students might be emotional intelligence. Other students may need more self-knowledge, where they start to understand why they do what they do. Others might need career readiness. These needs are woven into the second edition of his book, Project-Based Learning+: Enhancing Academic Learning and Essential Life Skills.
• Project-Based Learning: Jorge has built his PBL model based on the research of others. In that light, he says, “So there’s PBL, and then there’s a plus at the end. So it’s still traditional PBL. . . . Project-based learning is the foundation of PBL+.” The plus includes elements that he has added into the learning equation, such as essential life skills for students.
• Measurable Impact: Jorge leans on the work of John Hattie to illustrate the impact that PBL can have on learning. He summarizes, saying, “The effect size of PBL is 0.78. . . . 0.2 equals a small effect; there’s no impact there. 0.4 is the average effect, or the hinge point. 0.6 is a large effect. So 0.78 is a very high impact. So when PBL is done correctly, it’s got the potential to really accelerate learning.”
• Element One: This includes a high-quality PBL framework. Jorge says, “Project-based learning is a research-based instructional approach. It’s a teaching methodology. It’s a way to teach. It’s built on constructivist learning, where learning happens along a continuum—not in one day, not in two days. Projects are a process.” The core elements of PBL include intellectual challenge and accomplishment, authenticity, public product, collaboration, project management, and reflection. Jorge’s model also integrates essential life skills into the equation.
• Essential Life Skills: These are the skills that all people need to succeed in life. They include self-awareness and understanding, emotional intelligence, social awareness, and responsible decision-making. To help students identify areas in which they need to grow, Jorge has developed an inventory activity to survey students.
• Personal Interests: Jorge says, “My entire life, I basically did what everyone told me to do. As a kid, I was very compliant. I went to school. I went to college. I got married. I had children. . . . As I’ve gotten older, I realized that I never got to really explore my interests and my passions until I was in my mid-thirties.” He wants to make sure that students get started on that journey much earlier than he did, so he has integrated this into his PBL+ model.
• Knowing Students: Jorge embodies John Hattie’s mantra that teachers must see learning through the eyes of students. Jorge explains what this means to him: “We have to know them both as people and learners. Knowing them as people is knowing their interests, their goals, and their assets. Knowing them as learners are their academic needs, their career needs, and their life-skills needs.”
• Empathy Mapping: An empathy map is a tool for helping us get to know students. Jorge says that this can help us “make informed instructional decisions as a teacher.”
• Happiness and Stress: As we prepare students to explore their own interests, Jorge feels that it’s important to begin by helping them understand the causes of happiness and stress. He works with schools to have “kids assess, individually for themselves, what makes them happy,” and then they encourage those students to do more of those things. He says, “As teachers, we can help them by personalizing projects” based on those personal discoveries. Jorge includes an interest inventory in his new book that teachers can use to facilitate this learning.
• Feedback: Jorge shares, “Feedback helps all people, not just kids.” To build this into PBL, he intentionally weaves feedback loops into the content creation process. He says, “So whether young people are working on a performance task or a full-blown project, they’re going to learn how to create and design what they’re doing in drafts: draft one, two, and three, and so on. At each draft interval, they’re going to get feedback from either their peers, from experts, or from their teachers. It all depends on where they are in the project. That way, they learn the value of improving and building knowledge as they go along. It’s knowledge construction, instead of the attitude of one-and-done.”
• Single-Point Rubric: Jorge is a proponent of the single-point rubric to assist in evaluation and feedback processes. This involves taking the learning goals from the project and putting that statement—or a corresponding “I can” statement—into the rubric, while leaving the other columns of emerging and exceeds expectations blank. Jorge says that this allows students to “write in why they’re emerging or why they’re exceeding the target.”
• Using AI: Jorge talks about AI, saying, “Bottom line: It’s here to stay, and we can either be upset about it, or we can use it in ethical and important ways. Young people need to see it modeled. They need to start using it for their research as a thought partner as they’re designing, and they need to start using tools that are going to help them in that content creation—in that design—so that they can compete with what’s happening out there today.”
• Two New Books: Jorge is releasing two new books in 2025. Instructional Innovation+: Cultivating Teaching Teams Through Action Research is a new title that was released on May 13. Project-Based Learning+: Enhancing Academic Learning and Essential Life Skills is an updated second edition that will publish on Tuesday, July 15.
• Jorge’s One Thing: “If trying something in your classroom intimidates you, like giving kids more leeway or more autonomy, do the things that scare you, but before you do them, just research the best way to do it.”