{"id":1418,"date":"2008-08-19T18:31:12","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T22:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=1418"},"modified":"2008-08-19T18:31:12","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T22:31:12","slug":"the-project-method-zombie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=1418","title":{"rendered":"The Project Method zombie"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NCTAF blog<\/a> calls it “a 21st century education system.” Steve Lohr admires it<\/a> as “the drive for technology-enabled reform of education.” The New Technology Foundation<\/a> calls it “a fully proven model.” While I have some hopes for how technology might be used to change instruction, calling project-based learning new<\/i> is something that raises alarms in my internal History Warning System(tm). I suppose I could point back a few years to Ted Hasselbring<\/a> et al.’s Jasper Project, but let’s nail this puppy to the wall. If you just read a bit of William Heard Kilpatrick’s The Project Method<\/a> (published in Teachers College Record<\/i> in 1918), I think you’ll discover that project-based learning isn’t new. <\/p>\n

Kilpatrick’s version of project-based learning was torn apart in the Progressive Era by John Dewey and Boyd Bode, among others, as vapid, content-free pablum. That’s not necessarily<\/i> the case with well-designed anchored instruction, but the devil’s in the details. From my own experience, there is an enormous<\/i> amount of work that goes into designing anchored instruction that works. Neither technology nor the existence of an interesting case guarantees valuable instruction, and I hope we stop believing in education panaceas, whether you call them project-based learning<\/i>, vouchers<\/i>, or anything else. <\/p>\n

Again: the existence of anchored instruction isn’t bad. It’s the idea<\/i> of any panacea that we need to watch for, else the zombies of long-dead promised panaceas will rise and eat your brains. Or they’ll eat our children’s brains. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NCTAF blog calls it “a 21st century education system.” Steve Lohr admires it as “the drive for technology-enabled reform of education.” The New Technology Foundation calls it “a fully proven model.” While I have some hopes for how technology might be used to change instruction, calling project-based learning new is something that raises alarms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy","category-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-mS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}