Effectiveness of Problem-Based Learning on Secondary Students’ Achievement in Science : A Meta-Analysis

Preparing students for the real challenges in life is one of the most important goalsin education. Constructivism is an approach that uses real-life experiences toconstruct knowledge. Problem-Based Learning (PBL), for almost five decadesnow, has been the most innovative constructivist pedagogy used worldwide.However, with the rising popularity, there is a need to revisit empirical studiesregarding PBL to serve as a guide and basis for designing new studies, makinginstitutional policies, and evaluating educational curricula. This need has led theresearchers to do a meta-analysis to analyse the effectiveness of PBL on secondarystudents’ achievement in different scientific disciplines. Following the set ofinclusion and exclusion criteria, 11 studies in Eurasia, Africa, and Americaconducted from 2016 to 2020 have qualified for this study. Six of which focusedon JHS (n = 1047) and five on SHS (n = 375). Studies were obtained from variousmeta-search engines including Google, ERIC, and JSTOR. Further, the researchersused Harzing’s Publish and Perish software to exhaust the search process. Samplesize, mean, and standard deviation were analysed using the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis version 3 to determine the effect sizes (Hedge’s g) and the results ofmoderator analysis, forest plot, funnel plot, and Begg-Mazumdar test. Findingshave shown that PBL, as an approach to teaching science, had a large and positiveeffect (ES = .871) on the achievement of secondary students. However, gradelevels and various scientific disciplines did not influence students’ learningachievement. The conduct of more studies on the different factors affecting PBLimplementation and specific effects of PBL on various student domains isrecommended to facilitate comparative educational research in the future