National economic development is shifting from industrial sectors such as mining, and agriculture, amongst others, to prioritizing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) en route to building new jobs, creating growth, and driving innovation. Different nations have made significant moves to invest in STEM education primarily driven by the need to foster human resources, henceforth creating specialized schools focused on STEM fields. These schools need to couple academic learning with its application to real-world contexts and problems through project-based learning (PBL). However, while implementation and evaluation have been the subject of many studies, there is still a dearth of studies that involve evaluating the implementation of PBL as a pedagogical approach in teaching research curricula in STEM schools.

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