In: Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy, ed. D.C. Phillips. Thousend Oaks, CA: Sage 2014. Vol. 2. Pp. 665-669.
The project method, also discussed under
headings like project work, project approach, and
project-based learning, is one of the standard
teaching methods. It is a sub-form of action-centered and student-directed learning
and an enterprise in which children engage in practical problem solving for a certain period of time. Projects, for example, may consist of building a
motor boat, designing a playground, or producing a video film. For the most
part, projects are initiated by the teacher but as far as possible they are
planned and executed by the students themselves, individually or in groups. In
project work, the students generate tangible products that frequently transcend
disciplinary boundaries and are typically displayed to the general public on
parents days or at school fairs. Contrary to traditional methods, projects focus
on applying, not imparting, specific knowledge or skills, and more rigorously
than lecture, demonstration, or recitation, they aim at the enhancement of
intrinsic motivation, independent thinking, self-esteem, and social
responsibility.
Origins in Europe
Historically, the project method emerged in 1577 when master
builders founded the Accademia di San Lucca in Rome to advance their social
standing by developing their profession into a science and improve the education
of their apprentices by offering lessons in the theory and history of
architecture, in mathematics, geometry, and perspective. To bridge the gap
between theory and practice, science and reality, the architects subsequently
expanded their repertoire beyond teacher-centered methods and transferred their
daily work of designing buildings from the studio to the academy so that the
students acquired, through learning by doing and simulating
real life situations, already at school the experience and dexterity they later
needed as professionals. These beginnings
indicate that the project method – like the
experiment of the scientist, the case study of the lawyer, and the sand-box
exercise of the staff officer – has its origin in the academization of a
profession and that the concept of teaching by projects is not the result of abstract
philosophical deliberations, for instance, of Rousseau, Froebel, or Dewey but
of practical thinking of vocational education teachers who tried to activate their
students’ minds and make their training interesting, lively, and, as far as
possible, authentic and useful.
It took, however, more than 150 years and the transfer
from Italy to France that the project work evolved from a sporadic and
voluntary event for few people to a recurring and compulsory part of the
curriculum for all students. Indeed, only in 1763 the advanced students of the
Académie Royale d’Architecture in Paris got regularly design problems (now
known as “projets”) to demonstrate that they were fit
to apply the principles of composition and construction they had previously learned.
From the start, the project method served two functions: first, to supplement
the bookish and theoretical training of the students, and second, to test their
artistic and practical capabilities. In fact, the most difficult, and most cherished,
part of the final examination the French students of architecture and, since
1829, of engineering (at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufacture) had to cope
with was the imaginative design of fountains, churches, and palaces, of turbines,
cranes, and bridges.
Three Basic Models
Studying
the best European practices, William B. Rogers, the founder of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), discovered the “project” at Karlsruhe
and Zürich and, in 1865, was the first to adopt it as a new method of
instruction in the U.S.. In 1876, his successor as president of the MIT, John
D. Runkle, noticed a disturbing absence of manual skills among his engineering students
and established a school of mechanical arts to remedy the defect. More
importantly, he propagated the introduction of manual training as a vital branch
of the common school curriculum and thus, at the same time, paved the way for
the dissemination of the project method top down from the college to the school
and, eventually, the kindergarten. During the four decades that followed, notable
educators established three distinct types of project work which have retained
their appeal and importance until today.
The linear model, developed in 1879 by Calvin
M. Woodward, professor of mechanical engineering at Washington University and
founder of the first Manual Training School in St. Louis, complied with the main
didactic principle that teaching to be successful has to progress from the easy,
simple, and known to the difficult, complex, and unknown. At the Manual
Training High School the classes in handicraft and mechanical drawing were therefore
conducted in two steps. Following the “Russian system,” the students initially
learned the alphabet of tools and techniques by passing through a series of
basic exercises, then they got time to carry out “projects.” Woodward regarded
the projects as synthetic exercises. The skills the students had earlier
learned in isolation and under direction of the teacher, they now applied in
context and on their own, for example, by designing and making book racks, fire
tools, or steam engines. In this way, the training advanced systematically from
principles to applications, or – in Woodward’s words – from “instruction” to
“construction.” At the close of the fourth year, the manual training course was
completed by what he called the “project for graduation.”
The holistic model, put forward around 1900
by Charles R. Richards, professor of Manual training at Teachers College,
Columbia University, New York, and influenced by Froebel and Dewey’s concept of
active occupations, replaced Woodward’s consecutive system of instruction and
construction by an integrative system of “natural wholes” so that the students
could work together and participate in the planning and executing of the
project right away. Proposed by the teacher, pupils of the Horace Mann
Elementary School decided, for example, to reconstruct a Greek temple. Having planned
the project and acquired the necessary skills, each child made a column, a
capital, and a gable out of clay, as well as a segment for the foundations, the
wall, and the roof. Evaluating the results, the students picked the best pieces
of work, cast them in plaster, and put them together in a temple three yards
long. According to Richards, the pupils were motivated by the fact that they
cooperated in a meaningful way and obtained at the appropriate moment that
knowledge and skill they needed to achieve their goal. Consequently,
“instruction” did not – as with Woodward – precede the project, but was an
integral part of “construction.”
The universal model, propagated by William
H. Kilpatrick of Columbia’s Teachers College in his world famous article “The
Project Method” of 1918, defined the project broadly calling it a “hearty
purposeful act.” Whatever children
undertook, as long as they did it with purpose, it was a project. No aspect of
valuable life should be excluded. For Kilpatrick, the project was not a
specific method restricted to manual training and certain stages of teaching but
was a general method that could be used all the time, in all subjects, and
comprise all forms of behaving and learning, from making a dress, solving a
mathematical problem, and writing a letter to memorizing a poem, watching a
sunset, and listening to a sonata. Apart from reading, writing, and arithmetic,
there was no prescribed curriculum, and the project work did not even require
active doing. Children who presented a drama realized a project, as did those
children who sat in the audience and enjoyed the play. Ideally, the project was
proposed and carried through by the students themselves, i.e. without any help from
the teacher; for only if the students got “freedom for practice” and exercised “practice
with satisfaction,” could they increase their self-confidence, self-reliance, self-efficacy
and improve their ability to initiate, plan, execute, and judge – abilities Kilpatrick
believed were essential for the preservation and advancement of democracy.
Kilpatrick's Failure and America's Democratic Mission
From the outset, the third model – unlike the first two – has been
heatedly disputed among conservative as well as progressive educators. Even the
two colleagues at Teachers College whose psychologies of learning Kilpatrick used
to buttress his position raised their voices and objected to his broad
definition and his child-centered concept. Edward L. Thorndike and John Dewey, commonly
characterized as proponents of opposing educational philosophies, unanimously warned
of employing Kilpatrick’s project method as the only or even major teaching
device since learning limited to incidental and instrumental actions was likely
to be too disjointed, scattered, and haphazard to provide the children with the
continuous development they needed for a thorough mastery of the fundamentals and
a deeper understanding of the issues and subjects involved in the project.
Generally speaking, and summarizing
the criticism put forward by educators such as Ernest Horn, W.W. Charters, Boyd
H. Bode, Ernest E. Bayles, Philip W. Jackson, and Ellen C. Lagemann, Kilpatrick’s
project method had four serious shortcomings:
(1) it accepted as valid only the
momentary interests of the children,
and claimed that high intrinsic motivation would guarantee best results in
learning; (2) it offered no practical solutions for the everyday business of
the teacher pertaining to subject matter, classroom management, and student
performance; (3) it propagated a concept of freedom which encouraged the
development of selfish and individualistic attitudes rather than the – intended – formation of democratic and social
virtues; and (4) it was a philosophy of education while pretending to be a
method of teaching, promising help, advice, and guidance.
In the late
1920’s, Kilpatrick recognized that he had made a mistake by extending the
project beyond its traditional sphere and quietly refrained from using the term
for his educational program. Despite scathing criticism by Dewey and all important
American educators of the past and present, and despite the fact that Kilpatrick’s
concept has never successfully been implemented, his article of 1918 is still world-wide
regarded as the classic text of the project approach and as the best statement of
putting Dewey’s educational theory into practice.
In the U.S., the call for practical
learning was part of the national creed. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Americans
considered learning by book and rote as “aristocratic,” whereas they regarded
learning by training and doing as “democratic” because it utilized the
experiences of the productive classes, facilitated the advancement of
practically inclined children, and promoted the formation of socially
responsible citizens. Like laboratory and field work, the project method seemed
to fulfill perfectly the public desire for life activity and equal opportunity for
all.
No wonder that the project once
again crossed the Atlantic and was fiercely debated especially in countries
struggling to overcome their autocratic or fascist past. In the 1920’s, Soviet educators
appreciated the project as the ideal approach to accelerate the transition from
Czarist feudalism to democratic socialism, but in 1931 they were silenced when the
Central Committee of the Communist Party intervened and forbade the
implementation of project curricula, declaring that project work would disagree
with the party’s notion of systematic teaching and dogmatic indoctrination. Nearly
50 years later, in connection with the student rebellion, a powerful movement
emerged in West Germany and, by explicitly mentioning Dewey’s “Democracy and
Education” and Kilpatrick’s “Project Method,” identified the project taken in
its wide sense as the one and only means to vitalize learning, humanize teaching,
democratize school, and transform society. The movement rapidly spread to Denmark,
the Netherlands, and Great Britain. In the late 1980’s, the project broadly
defined experienced a revival in the U.S. where the method narrowly defined had
outlasted the crisis provoked by Kilpatrick in technical, agricultural, and
science education.
Current Concepts and Empirical Findings
Today, the project method is being discussed primarily under two
headings. As project approach, propagated by Lillian G. Katz and Sylvia C.
Chard, the method refers to any “in-depth
investigation of a real-world topic worthy
of a student’s attention and effort,” that is taken up and carried
through rather independently by a class, a group, or
an individual student (Chard's Project Approach website provides an overview of the approach and the resources for implementing it.) In preschool and kindergarten, the project could
be used as the only method, but in elementary school, high school and college, it
has to be supplemented by systematic instruction. Without knowing it, Katz and Chard
follow in the footsteps of Woodward and his linear model. While systematic
instruction addresses the deficiencies of students and ensures the acquisition
of skills, they say, project work builds on the proficiency of students and
stands for the unaided application of skills acquired earlier. But unlike
Woodward, Katz and Chard do not confine the project to manual work and construction,
i.e. the students are allowed to grapple with any
real phenomenon they cannot explore and attend to through internet and library
research alone.
Developed in particular by teams
around Phyllis C. Blumenfeld and John R. Mergendoller, project-based learning differs
from the project approach in that it follows Richards’ and Dewey’s holistic
model and integrates both phases, i.e. the acquisition of skills and their application,
into one single process. Frequently, the phrase project-based learning is
interchangeably used with problem-based learning, but – in accordance with
Dewey – one should clearly distinguish between both concepts. Whereas problem-based
learning is inquiry-centered and restricted to abstract problem solving, project-based
learning is production-centered and requires the use of theoretical as well as
practical problem solving strategies. There are still educators who adhere to Kilpatrick’s
child-centered project method, yet in most cases they advocate projects that –
although “allowing for some degree of student ‘voice and choice’” – are “carefully
planned, managed, and assessed to help students learn key academic content,
practice 21st Century Skills (such as collaboration, communication &
critical thinking), and create high-quality, authentic products &
presentations,” according to the website of the Buck Institute for Education, whose work focuses on project-based learning.
Referring
specifically to Dewey, Vygotsky, and Jerome Bruner, all modern educators
situate the project method within a constructivist-based theoretical framework.
They regard students as active agents engaged in authentic tasks, solving real
problems, and generating knowledge and skills in dynamic interaction with their
physical and social environment, thus creating meaning of themselves and the surrounding
world. They acknowledge, however, that the constructivist approach must be
balanced by a concept of structured teaching and direct, strong instructional
guidance.
According
to recent research, project work meets, to some degree, the expectations of its
proponents in that the method improves – besides factual learning – the
students’ motivation, self-confidence, and critical thinking as well as their problem
solving, decision making, investigative, collaborative skills. But there is
evidence, too, that there exist barriers hindering the achievement of the
objectives intended and striven for since neither students nor teachers always fulfill
the necessary premises and qualifications completely. Teachers, for example, have
difficulties to suggest and design challenging projects, monitor progress, give feedback and
support when and where is needed, to create and
maintain an atmosphere of study and work, and lastly develop tools for assessing
the results. Correspondingly, students often feel ill prepared and overwhelmed
by the complexity of the tasks at hand, i.e. they have not a clue how to define
the problem, choose the proper methodology, find the necessary resources, revise
plans and procedures if appropriate, keep deadlines and present the results fittingly. After
all, projects can fail since few students are constantly disposed to self-directed,
creative, innovative learning. In principle, they enjoy the freedom of action the
project method offers them but, as in traditional settings, they frequently employ
strategies of bargaining, shirking, and playing dumb in order to lessen, avoid or
even resist the additional time, energy, and imagination required by project
work.
Further Readings
Bleeke, M. H.
(1968). The project: From a device for teaching to a principle of curriculum.
Diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Buck Institute
for Education (2012). Project-based learning for the 21st century.
Retrieved November 30, 2012, from http://www.bie.org/about/what_is_pbl.
