The project method of teaching

Front matter

Class _L^J_,Q^ Book .^7.5

]0

CDEffilGHT DEPOSm

Preface

This book is devoted mainly to a critical discussion of the proj ect method of teaching. The term '^ proj ect " has only recently made its appearance in educational terminology, but the idea back of the project is not new. It is quite probable that skillful teachers have always used the essential features of the project method.

A survey of modern teaching methods in engineering, law, medicine, agriculture, as well as in the prescribed subjects of the school curriculum, shows that much effort is being expended to bridge the chasm between school tasks and activities outside the school. In other words, the project idea, as defined by the author, is attempted to some extent in all these fields.

The project idea aims to present problems in situations not essentially different from those of life and to develop the technique of carrying the solution of these problems to completion.

While the primary purpose of this study is to define the project and to discuss the project method from a critical point of view, it has seemed advisable, since method is so closely tied up with curriculum organization, to discuss the reorganization of the curriculum on the project basis. Also, the history of the project has been considered in some detail, since a knowledge

vii

VUl PREFACE

of the historical background is essential to a proper understanding of the term.

The first seven chapters deal with the theory of the project method. In chapter eight, projects which have been successfully worked out in elementary and high schools ar^^utlined in order to show the application of this method of teaching. No attempt has been made, however, to organize any one subject completely on the project basis.

The author realizes the difficulty of organizing a course completely on the project basis. But, wherever it is possible to substitute units of work on the project basis for work on a subject basis, results will show the effectiveness of the project method.

The author recognizes his very great indebtedness to his former teacher and colleague. Professor W. W. Charters, who was responsible for his interest in this subject. The idea of the "project," as defined in this study, was proposed by Professor Charters, and his suggestions have served as a guide in the working out of the "project method."

J. A. S.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August, 1920

Chapter I. General Statement Of Problem And Method Of Investigation Page

I. Inteoduction 1

11. The Elements in the Problem 2

III. Standards of Judgment 3

(a) Memory of Information vs. Reasoning . . . 4

(6) Conduct vs. Information for Its Own Sake . . 9

(c) Natural Setting vs. Artificial Setting ... 14

(d) The Priority of the Problem vs. the Priority of Principles 17

IV. The Problem Restated 19

CHAPTER 11. AN EXAMINATION OF TYPES OF TEACHING NOW IN COMMON USE

I. The Types and the Method of Selection ... 22

(a) Questions 23

(1) Detailed and 1 ,, „ , ,

(3) Topical Questions 25

(4) Thought Questions .27

(6) The Topic . 28

(c) The Problem, Example, Originals, and Exercises . 29

(d) Drills, Tests, and Reviews 32

(e) Applications, Illustrations, Demonstrations, and

Practicums 33

II. Summary 37

ix

X CONTENTS

Chapter III. Definition Of The Project Page

I. The Need for the Term ''Project" .... 40

II. An Historical Statement of the Project ... 41

III. The Justification and Definition of the Term

"Project" 43

IV. Criticism of Current Definitions 54

(a) Dejfinitions Proposed by Teachers Interested in

General Educational Theory .... 55

(6) Definitions Proposed by Men Interested in Agricultural Education 69

(c) Definitions Proposed by Teachers of Science . . 76

(d) The Use of the Project in Industrial Education . . 81

(e) Use of the Project in the Field of English Instruction 84 (/) Use of the Project in Elementary School Instruction 86

Chapter IV. Problems And Projects

I. The Need for Making a Distinction between Project

AND Problem 91

II. Definitions of Problem and Project .... 94

III. Types of Problems and Projects 97

(a) The Manual Problem and the Manual Project . . 97

(b) The Intellectual Problem and the Intellectual Project 98

(c) Illustrations 99

IV. Classification of Problems and Projects Based upon

Degree of Complexity 102

(a) Simple and Multi-problems 102

(1) Simple Problems and Illustrations . . . 102

(2) Multi-problems and Illustrations . . . 103 (6) Simple and Complex Projects 107

(1) Simple Projects and Illustrations . . . 108

(2) Complex Projects and Illustrations . . . 109 V. Summary 114

CONTENTS XI

Chapter V. Implications Of The Project Method Of Teaching Pages

I. The Project and Motivation 116

II. The Project and Thinking 120

III. The Project and Habit-formation .... 128

IV. The Project and Action 131-

Chapter VI. The Project And The Curriculum

I. The Need for Scientific Methods in Curriculum

Organization 137

II. Principles and Illustrations of Curriculum Making 138

(a) A Curriculum in Woodworking Based on Projects 139

(6) Illustrations of Curricula Based on Projects . . 142 (c) Two Plans for the Organization of Subject Matter in

the Curriculum 147

III. Projects Need not Cut across Subjects of the Curriculum 152

IV. Obsolete Material in School Curricula . . . 152 V. The Project as the Basis for Curriculum Organization 153

VI. Summary 156

Chapter VII. Application Of The Project Idea

I. Engineering 158

II. The Legal and Medical Clinics 168

III. Journalism 181

IV. Modern Language 183

V. Insurance Salesmanship 186

VI. Summary 191 xii CONTENTS

Chapter VIII. Application Of The Project Method To Subjects In The Elementary And High Schools Page

Projects in English 197

Projects in Civics . 205

Projects in Hygiene 215

Projects in Geography 227

Projects in History . . 239

Projects in Manual Training 243

Projects in Mathematics , • • 252

A Project in Biology . . 258

Projects in Home Economics 261^

Projects in Physics 263

Projects in Foreign Languages 267

Projects Cutting across Several Fields of Subject Matter 268

Summary • • • 277

EDITOR^S INTRODUCTION

Teachees of educational theory are frequentlyasked whether the ^^ project method '^ is something new or whether it is merely a new name for a type of teaching that has long been known and practiced.

It may seem paradoxical to say that both these apparent alternatives are true. There is, I am confident, something essentially new in the project method as it has been formulated by such men as Charters, 'Stevenson, Snedden, and Kilpatrick. This new something, however, is itself a product of an evolution, and it should go without saying that the method was practiced and even described long before it was christened. To go no farther back than the second quarter of the nineteenth century, one may find in Thoreau's Walden si, criticism of traditional educational practices which expresses very clearly some of the ideals that the project method strives to realize :

'^ . . , ' But,^ says one, ' you do not mean that the students should go to work with their hands instead of their heads ? ^ I do not mean that exactly. ... I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, . . . but earnestly live it. . . . How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living ? ^ Methinks this WQuld exercise their

xiii xiv EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where everything is professed and practiced but the art of life ; — to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned ; to discover new satellites in Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite ; or to be devoured by the monsters all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of the month, — the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this, — or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rogers penknife from his father ? . . . To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation ! — why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. . . .'^ ^

Certainly there is no problem more fundamental or more perplexing than that which is involved in the effort to link what we call knowledge with the larger

^ This interesting commentary on teaching will be found in "Economy," the first essay in Walden.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION XV

complex that we call life. To bring knowledge to the learner in the "natural setting" of a problem that the knowledge will help to solve ought to effect this end if any educational procedure can effect it. That the project method as thus conceived has its limitations is obvious enough. Even Thoreau might have found himself hard put to it to provide all the "natural settings" needed to impel the boy to make his own jackknife "from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this"; and it is tolerably clear, too, that Thoreau in his student days could have taken more than " one turn down the harbor" without learning even the little about navigation that his college course in that subject taught him. The layman^s easy solutions for educational problems frequently involve a quite innocent disregard of practical obstacles. If some of our educational problems were so easy to dispose of as they may seem to be on the surface, it is safe to assume that they would not have remained so long unsolved.

Dr. Stevenson's treatment of the project method recognizes the difficulties which an effort to reorganize educational practice on the basis of "real problems" must meet and overcome. If it is true that the author has an abundant faith in the method, it is also true that he recognizes its limitations and its possible dangers. His attitude is that of the student who accepts a theory as inherently valid and then asks how the theory may be so applied that its virtues will be re-

XVi EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

fleeted in the practice. It avails us little to say of a proposal; " It is all right in theory, but it won't work/' If a proposal is theoretically right it will "work/' else the validity of the theory is questionable. The project method as defined by Dr. Stevenson represents a clear-cut theory of teaching. It merits careful study and a thoroughgoing test. Even if it does not prove to be a universal solvent for the great problem of bringing knowledge close to life, it is altogether probable that its formulation is a step forward — perhaps a longer and a more important step than has heretofore been taken in the development of educational method.

William C. Bagley.

Chapter I General Statement Of Problem And Method Of Investigation

I. Introduction

A SURVEY of the literature dealing particularly with agricultural education, the teaching of home economics and of the trades and industries, and, more recently, with the administration of the Smith-Hughes Act, is sufficient to show that the term '^ project '^ has a wide use. Nor has the term been confined to the subjects cited, although it appears more frequently there than elsewhere.

Coincident with its use in these fields has appeared a considerable and somewhat critical discussion of its meaning and implications, a discussion which has revealed a disconcerting variety of opinion. There are in existence approximately twenty definitions or descriptions of the project, discussed by fifteen writers. The results have indicated widespread interest, but have not suggested any striking agreement or uniformity of view.

This lack of uniformity, typical of project literature, has been commented upon by writers on the project method. Four years ago, H. P. Barrows, among others, pointed out the fact that "in many sections where teachers talk of projects there seems to be a lack of understanding of the plan and a lack of unity in the definition of the term. According to some teachers any effort toward giving their work a practical turn is termed a project. Others have used the word in lieu of ^practicum,' so that simple laboratory exercises are spoken of as projects.'^ ^

This vague use of the term, together with the diverse attempts to define or enumerate its essential characteristics, and the well-known tendency of educational writers to invent unnecessary terms, may properly give rise to the question as to whether the project really implies the introduction of a new concept. A critic objecting to the introduction of new terms might very pertinently ask whether the different meanings attached to the word might not be forms of other concepts now in use which would serve just as well as a new coinage.

II. The Elements in the Problem

A solution of the problem just stated will be

attempted in this book. There are many incidental

inquiries which will demand solution, but the present

1 Barrows, H. P., "Home Projects in Secondary Courses in Agriculture," U. S. Department of Agriculture, States Relations Service Bulletin No. 346, p. 4, Feb, 21, 1916.

study will be devoted mainly to the investigation and solution of the following general divisions of the problem :

A. The determination of certain elements that make a certain teaching situation a project. These will be treated as four pairs of contrasted aims in learning.

B. An examination of concepts now in use and more or less closely related to the project for the purpose of estimating their availability for describing the teaching situation indicated in the first investigation.

C. A statement and explanation of the term ^^ project."

D. A critical examination 'of all extant definitions of the term.

E. A consideration of the significance of the project in relation to problem, motive, reasoning, drill, and the curriculum.

F. An examination of the ideas contained in the term, but under different names, in the teaching of law, medicine, engineering, journalism, and the foreign languages.

III. Standards of Judgment

The most lucid method of showing what is essential to the project as a method of teaching is found in an analysis of four characteristics that seem to be involved in the idea. As a device to aid in the analysis it has been found convenient to set forth four pairs of aims in teaching and to demonstrate, on the one hand, that the project includes one item from each of these pairs, and on the other, that no other concept in common use, such as problem, exercise, practicum, precisely covers this situation. These four pairs of aims are :

(a) Reasoning vs. memory of information.

(6) Conduct vs. information for its own sake.

(c) Natural setting for learning vs. artificial setting for learning.

{d) The priority of the problem vs. the priority of principles.

It will be shown that the project, as herein defined, involves one item from each of these pairs, viz. : reasoning, conduct, natural setting, and priority of the problem. It will be further shown that all other terms in common use include less or more than these four items.

(a) Memory of Information vs. Reasoning

Two widely different methods of learning have been and are still used in educational practice.

The first measures its worth by the learner's success in absorbing the material in the textbook so as to make a letter-perfect recitation when called upon by the teacher. This method may be termed the acquisition of information by memory. The material in the lessons consists in a great measure of dogmatic statements, and the mental activity demanded of the pupil is reduced largely to reproductive memory. The mental act demanded of pupils in such exercises does not constitute reasoning, but is little more than the assimilation of statements outlined and organized by the author. This fact is clearly shown by the survey of textbooks used by children in the grades and in the high school, from one of which the following illustration is taken :

"Surface and Industry. Paraguay is a rich but undeveloped country largely occupied by Indian negro races. The surface is made up of plains and low mountains covered by forests. The plains are chiefly devoted to grazing and the production of Paraguay tea, or mate.

" Trade. Paraguay tea is cheaper than Asiatic tea and its use in South America is constantly increasing. Lumber is the principal forest product, and is sent to the Argentine Republic and Uruguay, both of which lack timber. These products, together with hides and tobacco, are the chief exports. The leading imports are textiles, provisions, hardware, and drugs.

" Asuncion, the capital, from its position on the Paraguay River, is the most flourishing town and commercial port.

Questions and Exercises

" (l) What is the chief article of trade between Paraguay and the neighboring countries ?

" (2) What does Paraguay import from the Argentine Republic?

" (3) Give the chief advantages of the location of Asuncion." ^

1 Dodge, R. E., "Advanced Geography," pp. 210-21 L Rand, McNally and Company, Chicago, 1914.

The activity which the learner uses in answering these questions is largely confined to memory. The answers to questions (l) and (3) are found in the descriptive paragraph ; the answer to question (2) is found in the preceding paragraph describing the Argentine Republic and not quoted here.

The recognition of the inadequacy of memorizing information is not recent. Seventy years ago, Horace Mann, in his annual report for 1845, pointed out what earlier writers had sensed, that verbal memory received too much attention : " The teacher may appear to do a vast deal more by stimulating the verbal memory of the child, and by giving him the show instead of the substance of knowledge, than if he could strive to reanimate the apparently dead powers of acquisition and of thought. Yet the latter should be done, at whatever seeming delay ; and the faithful teacher will do it irrespective of the consequences of it to his own reputation." ^ And again he asserts that " a habit, too, is . . . formed of reciting, without thinking. At length the most glib recitation becomes the best ; and the less the scholars are delayed by thought, the faster they can prate, as a mill clacks quicker when there is no grist in the hopper." ^

Another statement from Mann, quoted because of

1 "Life and Works of Horace Mann," Vol. 4, p. 81, Reports and Addresses. Lee and Shepard, Publishers.

2 Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 69, Lectures and Reports. Lee and Shepard, Publishers.

its humor, illustrates an extreme case of memoriter teaching :

" It recently happened, in a school within my own knowledge, that a class of small scholars in geography, on being examined respecting the natural divisions of the earth, its continents, oceans, islands, gulfs, etc., answered all the questions with admirable precision and promptness. They were then asked, by a visitor, some general questions respecting their lesson, amongst others, whether they had ever seen the earth about which they had been reading ; and they unanimously declared in good faith that they never had.'' ^

As the quotations indicate, the defect of the memory exercises in developing reasoning was noted early, and out of the correctives, suggested by Mann and others, for developing the reasoning, have grown the concepts of the rational method, thought questions, and later the more elaborate form now known as the problem method.

The problem method, as described by John Dewey and others, has found its psychological justification in the functional character of thinking. The origin of thinking, in Dewey's judgment, lies in a problem to be solved :

" To say that thinking occurs with reference to situations which are still going on, and incomplete, is to say that thinking occurs when things are uncertain

1 ''Life and Works of Horace Mann," Vol. 2, p. 68, Lectures and Reports.

or doubtful or problematic. Only what is finished, completed, is wholly assured. Where there is reflection there is suspense. The object of thinking is to help reach a conclusion, to project a possible termination on the basis of what is already given. Certain other facts about thinking accompany this feature. Since the situation in which thinking occurs is a doubtful one, thinking is a process of inquiry, of looking into things, of investigating." ^

In other words, "It is the problematic situation in which thinking or reasoning has its rise."

The importance of the problem in developing reason is also indicated by E. N. Henderson :

" The use of the problem as the form of educating the reason has been especially characteristic of education in modern time. It may be said to be the largest outcome of educational reform in the direction of method, and its advent means the conscious endeavor to give the child not merely the fixed adjustments of recapitulatory education, but also the capacity to readjust that springs from reason and its culture. In general, the educational principle that has been put forward as representing the issue is that learning should stir up the self-activity of the child, that the child should learn from his own experience and efforts, not from those of the teacher; in other words, that the most effective teaching is self-teaching." ^

^ Dewey, John, "Democracy and Education," p. 173. The Macmillan Company, 1916.

2 Henderson, E. N., "The Principles of Education," p. 273. The Macmillan Company, 1910.

The most important advantages claimed for the problem method are that it gives a better hold on subject matter and develops a technique of reasoning.

For our purposes, an analysis of concepts now in use which may be more or less related to the project, must be made in order to distinguish between these two educational tendencies, viz. : the mastery of information through mere memory and its acquisition through reasoning. The kind of teaching that includes provisions and opportunities for reasoning, that makes use of the problem and lays particular emphasis on it, as against the kind of teaching that emphasizes merely memorized information, is worthy of consideration as a standard by which to evaluate commonly used concepts more or less related to the project.

(b) Conduct vs. Information for Its Own Sake

It is also necessary to distinguish between the completion of an act (conduct) as contrasted with reading about and learning the plan of an act (information).

Conduct as characterized by John Dewey is "a general term for the spirit and tenor of all the overt acts that constitute the behavior of an agent. As contrasted with the term ^behavior,' the word ^ conduct ' is usually limited to acts that have an end consciously in view and that are preceded by more or less dehberation — in short, to such acts as have moral quality, actual or potential.'' ^

^ Dewey, John, " Conduct." Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education.

The implied question which it is necessary to consider in the discussion of these two contrasted aims of learning is the character of the end of education. Is it the accumulation of information or the modification of conduct ?

Educational writers agree that information for its own sake is not a satisfactory end of education. For example, F. M. McMurry says :

" Much has been said in times past about art for art's sake, science for the sake of science, and knowledge for the sake of knowledge ; but these are vague expressions that will excite little interest so long as the worth of a man is determined by what comes out of him, by the service he renders, rather than by what enters in. Other branches of knowledge used for educative purposes, therefore, resemble the useful arts in the recognition of their bearings on man, their actual use as the goal in their study." ^

Other educational writers agree that conduct is a worthy or satisfactory end of education. For instance, Dewey says : " It [education] is that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience." And Bagley adds : " Education may be tentatively defined, then, as the process by means of which the individual acquires experiences that will function in rendering more efficient his future action." ^

1 McMurry, F. M., "How to Study," p. 198. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909.

2 Bagley, W. C, "The Educative Process, p. 22. The Macmillan Company, 1905.

The following quotation from E. C. Moore is also significant :

" Learning to use one's own mind, however, in such ways that he will go on using it to advantage as long as he lives is the one, great, supreme object of education. Now that psychology has defined itself as the study of behavior, education must follow suit by conceiving its mission as that of training the student to profitable behavior, that is, to do the things that the situations which he will meet in life call for. Our contention is that these social doings are definite responses to concrete situations, and that the learning which will fit us to make them must be the learning of definite doings, not that vague thing which is called general training." ^

Classroom teachers and textbook writers, when faced by the direct question as to the end of education, agree so unanimously with the statement that the end of education should be the modification of conduct, that no notice would need to be taken of any divergent view, were it not for the fact that actual classroom procedure through questions, recitations, reviews, and examinations is frequently dominated by the other ideal, that the mastery of information, and not its applications to problems of conduct, is the important end of education. In fact, this conflict is so real that many of the commonly used concepts enumerated below ^ have been invented for the specific purpose

1 Moore, E. C, "What is Education?" pp. 235-236. Ginn and Company, 1915. 2 gge p. 22.

12 THE PROJECT METHOD OP TEACHING

of insuring mastery of information rather than improvement of conduct.

It must be recognized, of course, that information does tend to modify conduct. This modification, however, is not automatic ; it is to a very considerable degree both voluntary and conscious. It requires thought to apply information to conduct, and this apphcation has so subtle a technique that instruction in the applications of information is necessary, as is very clearly brought out by E. C. Moore in the following serio-comic paragraph :

" Should verbal study be allowed to take the place of doing? Suppose the master workman in the shop, which is the world, should say to his apprentices : * It is true that you have come here to learn how to use the best of these tools in the working of iron, but that is a tedious and illiberal process. It will be more profitable to you if I should tell you some of the more important facts about them, and then we will spend the remainder of the time that you are to be here in analyzing the language which I shall have been compelled to employ in describing them to you. After all, language is the most important of human concerns. Some say it is a tool just like all these others here, but I think it is so much more than that that I am convinced that if you will only take the trouble, not indeed to learn to use it — for that is the least important thing about it — but to learn all the curious facts and distinctions that subtle minds have found out about it, and to recognize them when you meet instances of them, you will be better prepared to use both it and all these other tools than any amount of working with them under my direction could make you.' " ^

From the foregoing quotations it seems evident that the modification of conduct is a worthy end of education, at least, a more worthy end than that of information for its own sake. How, then, may provision be made for this essential element, the modification of conduct ?

An act carried to completion guarantees that the solutions will be understood and will become the property of the individual who carries them out. Information will then be measured by the extent to which it can be made over into the experience of the individual using it to solve his problem. If the act is carried to completion a maximum modification of conduct will result. To the extent that the act remains incomplete, to that extent the individual has failed to exhaust the range of possible solutions and to remake more experience ; and, by the same token, the less will conduct be affected. Conduct is modified by memoriter information but within very narrow limits, for the range of possible applications is reduced. Conduct is modified in proportion as the act is carried to completion.

A concept which includes provisions and opportunities for conduct, that is, for the carrying of acts to completion, and which lays particular emphasis on this feature, is worth consideration as a standard by

1 Moore, E. C, "What is Education?" pp. 181-182.

which to evaluate commonly used concepts related to the project.

(c) Natural Setting vs. Artificial Setting

An attempt to answer the question, Is the problem in its natural or artificial setting ? constitutes the basis for the discussion of the third pair of contrasted aims of teaching. Is the problem presented for solution by schoolroom practice essentially different from that found in Hfe outside the school? If the solution is carried on in essentially the same way in school as outside of school then the problem has a " natural setting."