What Is Project Based Learning

The short answer

Project based learning is extended enquiry driven by a question nobody in the room can yet answer, producing something real for somebody outside the classroom.

The four conditions

An open question. If the teacher knows the answer and the children are assembling it, this is a project rather than project based learning.

A real audience or decision. Somebody outside the class receives the work and can act on it.

Student control of method. If the steps were specified, they are following a recipe.

A finished artefact. The work itself, not a presentation about the work.

The common counterfeit

A normal unit taught normally, with a poster, model or presentation at the end. This is the most frequent thing called project based learning and it is not.

The tell is that every child produces roughly the same thing.

Why it is worth the difficulty

It produces the capabilities that are hardest to teach directly. Managing time without supervision, deciding what to do next, handling a result that was not expected, and finishing something.

Why it often fails

Scope. A question answerable in an afternoon stretched over a term produces filler.

Steering. Adults find open questions uncomfortable and quietly narrow them. Children notice immediately and stop investigating.

Assessment. Trying to grade a project against a rubric designed for essays kills it.

Related

What Project Based Learning Actually Is and the ten worked projects in the Project Based Learning collection.