Thomas Markham (2011) describes project-based learning (PBL) thus:
PBL integrates knowing and doing. Students learn knowledge and elements of the core curriculum, but also apply what they know to solve authentic problems and produce results that matter. PBL students take advantage of digital tools to produce high quality, collaborative products.PBL refocuses education on the student, not the curriculum—a shift mandated by the global world, which rewards intangible assets such as drive, passion, creativity, empathy, and resiliency. These cannot be taught out of a textbook, but must be activated through experience.
James G. Greeno (2006) has associated project-based learning with the "situated learning" perspective and with the constructivist theories of Jean Piaget.
Blumenfeld et al. elaborate on the processes of PBL:
Project-based learning is a comprehensive perspective focused on teaching by engaging students in investigation.Within this framework, students pursue solutions to nontrivial problems by asking and refining questions, debating ideas, making predictions, designing plans and/or experiments, collecting and analyzing data, drawing conclusions, communicating their ideas and findings to others, asking new questions, and creating artifacts.
Blumenfeld, et al., 1991
John Dewey at the University of Chicago in 1902.
- wikimedia
John Dewey initially promoted the idea of "learning by doing". In My Pedagogical Creed (1897) Dewey enumerated his beliefs regarding education:
The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these.......I believe, therefore, in the so-called expressive or constructive activities as the centre of correlation.