Project-based learning

The philosophical roots extend to John Dewey, who argued in Democracy and Education (1916) that learning is most effective when rooted in experience and connected to real problems. Dewey's laboratory school at the University of Chicago, founded in 1896, organized curriculum around activities rather than subjects. William Heard Kilpatrick, a student of Dewey's at Columbia University's Teachers College, formalized the concept in his 1918 essay "The Project Method," which became one of the most widely read articles in the history of American education.

The model fell out of mainstream favor during the mid-twentieth century as standardized testing, age-graded curricula, and industrial-era school structures emphasized content coverage over inquiry. The Carnegie Unit, adopted in 1906, measured education in hours of seat time rather than demonstrated competency. Compliance and uniformity, not curiosity and initiative, became the primary outputs of the system.

Project-based learning experienced a revival in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. High Tech High, a network of charter schools founded in San Diego in 2000 by Larry Rosenstock, organized its entire curriculum around interdisciplinary projects and made student work the primary evidence of learning. The Buck Institute for Education, now PBLWorks, developed frameworks and professional development programs that supported implementation in thousands of schools worldwide.

A 2021 study published by Lucas Education Research found that students in project-based learning classrooms in AP U.S. Government and AP Environmental Science scored as well as or better than comparison students on AP exams while reporting higher engagement and deeper understanding of content. Finland's national curriculum, revised in 2016, requires schools to include at least one extended period of phenomenon-based learning each year, reflecting a similar philosophy.