Over the past decade, as the United Arab Emirates transition to a knowledge-

based country, UAE has prioritized efforts to support education as the backbone
upon which a modern economy is built. Preparing the students of today with a
world-class education will provide them with the skills necessary to fully
participate in future development. So the United Arab Emirates launched Agenda,
and a number of these national agenda targets focused on education, and one of
these is set for the future performance of the UAE in PISA, as the UAE will be
ranked among the 20 highest-performing countries in PISA. The Knowledge and
Human Development Authority (KHDA), the Dubai School Inspection Bureau
(DSIB), and the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK)
brought together leaders and teachers to work alongside prominent
educationalists to share the very best practices that the schools have to offer and
to explore innovation in education to ensure all students achieve at high levels
through effective instructional delivery methodologies that meet the national
agenda goals.
According to the results of the Program for International Student Assessment in
2018, students in the United Arab Emirates scored lower than the OECD average
in reading, mathematics, and science so,one of the challenges that impedes
meeting these national goals is a lack of student high level thinking skills that
need to solve problems, as simply knowing information to support the
government is not enough in the 21st century. Citizens should be able to think
through problems, not just think in basic terms (citation).There has been a recent
push to implement the next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) into the
curriculum science in UAE whereas, at the high school level students are expected
to engage with major global issues at the interface of science, technology, society
and the environment, and to bring to bear the kinds of analytical and strategic
thinking that prior training and increased maturity make possible. As in prior
levels, these capabilities can be thought of in three stages—defining the problem,
developing possible solutions, and improving designs so the tradinitonal
instructional method could not able to achieve these required capabilities.To
meet the changing demands of the economy and workforce, educators must
continue to experiment to find the most efficacious instructional methods to
ensure a well-educated society. However, different instructional delivery
methods, such as those found in project- and problem-based learning, may
provide the necessary levels of skills for students to meet varying levels of
achievement potential.Classroom geared toward student-centered lessons and
skills-based standards are more suited to prepare students to be informed
citizens(citation).Project based learning is one teaching method that allows for
students to become self-driven critical thinkers.PBL requires students to interact
in inquiry-based learning because they must become self-driven to produce a final
product for PBL assignments(Citation).For core subjects as Chemistry ,Lent(2015)
says that inquiry –based learning,seen in curriculum structured around pedagogy
like PBL, is one of the better instructional methods when it comes to learning
complex concepts.I implemented PBL Chemistry to provide students with more
inquiry-based,self-directed learning as part of this action research
study.Numerous theoretical and empirical studies have claimed that project-
based learning exerts a positive impact on student development, so this study will
help to close this opportunity gap in UAE as this research determine what
competencies do high school chemistry students demonstrate both cognitive (e.g,
understanding of core ideas, use of scientific practices, problem solving and
creativity) and non-cognitive competencies (e.g; motivation to learn chemistry,
collaboration, environmental awareness and perseverance) and how these
competencies changed during the unit of the atomic structure.