Project Teaching: Pupils Planning Practical Activities. I

Abstract

Divisions of the discussion.-The following discussion of project teaching will be divided into seven sections: I. Definition; II. Recent examples; III. Historical development; IV. Values; V. Limitations; VI. Technique; VII. Conclusions. I. DEFINITION OF PROJECT TEACHINGPupils planning practical activities.-The central element in project teaching is the planning by pupils of some practical activity, something to be done. Hence, a pupil-project is any unit of activity that makes the pupils responsible for such practical planning. It gives them practice in devising ways and means and in selecting and rejecting methods of achieving some definite practical end. This conception conforms with the dictionary definition of a project as "something of a practical nature thrown out for the consideration of its being done" and with the dictionary statement that "to project" means "to contrive, to devise, to scheme." Furthermore, it describes with considerable precision a specific kind of improved teaching that has become common in progressive experimental schools since 1900.2 I The word "practical" is here used as the opposite of "theoretical" according to the following definitions from Webster's Dictionary: "Practical. i. Of or pertaining to practice or action. 2. Capable of being turned to use or account; useful in distinction from ideal or theoretical; as practical chemistry." "Theoretical. Pertaining to theory; depending on, or confined to, theory or speculation; speculative; terminating in theory or speculation; not practical; as theoretical learning; theoretic sciences." 2 Perhaps the briefest definition of a project for our purposes would read as follows: A pupil-project is a unit of practical activity planned by the pupils. The author has revised the use of the term "project" in his General Methods of Teaching in Elementary Schools (Ginn & Co.) to conform to this more precise meaning and has added in the revised edition (1922) a brief chapter on project teaching along the lines of this article. 335 All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c 336 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL II. RECENT EXAMPLES OF PROJECT TEACHING Historical construction projects. Variations in pupils' planning.-We may illustrate project teaching, as well as the pertinency of our definition, by three similar pictures of projects in medieval history. In these cases three different fifth-grade classes of the University of Chicago Elementary School all had the same practical problem of illustrating certain phases of medieval life; yet the outcomes varied greatly owing to the variations in the pupils' planning. The nature of the pupil-activities in developing such a project is suggested by the following description: The castle and fortified town shown in [Fig. I] were constructed out of cardboard by a fifth-grade class which was studying the Feudal Age in European history. The children had read the stories of King Arthur and other knights, as well as descriptions of life in town and castle....

Sleep and perform, exploring the relationship between lucid dreaming and creative performance: a PBL proposal

“…54 This aroused the interest of a student of Dewey, who baptized the idea at this time as The Project Method. 55 This idea was here to stay and, in part, it was also thanks to the work of Francis W. Parker, 56 who contributed to its dissemination with several practical works.…”

“…In this case, it is the McMaster Medical School in Canadathe one that houses the new concept. 56 Although similar in the active part of the student, making him the center of the class, the background of the problembased methodology is not to integrate life in school, but to learn in a practical way. And it is that, this is born from an educational response to the problem of seeing how many of the students with a high degree of knowledge in their professions, do not know how to apply it in a practical way.…”