I. 1. An outline of the history of project pedagogy

It was the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century that project pedagogy started. According to specialist literature it is John Dewey (1859 – 1952) who can be considered its founder. John Dewey elaborated the project method with the aim of criticizing traditional teaching and he tried his method out in 1886 in a Chicago school in the United States. Problems of traditional teaching (by John Dewey)

In traditional schools knowledge and skills and their application are separated from one another; it is unclear how exactly learners can use the knowledge, gained in certain subject lessons. This disadvantage of traditional learning can be explained by the fact that curricula and teaching materials are related to academic disciplines instead of real-life problems. Thus knowledge gets separated from those tasks and problems which it is supposed to deal with, and, in traditional teaching  knowledge is placed into the system of disciplinary logic.

In order to solve the previously described shortcomings of the traditional school system, John Dewey elaborated several principles (1938), which, in this teaching material we have supplemented with new, modern methodologies and with our experience of several decades working on project-based learning.

The principles of project-based learning are as follows

• The principle of interdisciplinarity: Project-based learning is based on interdisciplinarity, that is, it combines two or more academic disciplines (subjects) into one activity (project).
• The principle of active learning: Learning is based on the personal experience of learners.
• The principle of practicality: The theme of the project is closely related to practical problems taken from the learners’ life.
• The principle of personal development: The teacher (facilitator) in all situations considers learners’ needs and interests.  
• The principle of self-regulating learning: Learners actively participatein formulating their own learning process.
• The principle of responsible citizenship: Learners need to be educated to actively work for their own community and be responsible for community affairs.
• The principle of gradualness: First the techniques of cooperative learning need to be implemented, then, in the second phase, the projects themselves can be introduced.
• The principle of regularity: Learners actively participate in all phases of project work from setting the goals through project activities to evaluation.

John Dewey’s student, later colleague, William H. Kilpatrick summarized the most important aspects of project-based learning in a scholarly work, which was published in 1918. In his opinion the most important aspect of John Dewey’s educational philosophy was that the children’s own experiences and interests were the main factors of the learning process. J. Dewey considered projects on the one hand as sources of the learning process, and, on the other hand, he considered them as areas where formerly gained knowledge could be put into use. Experience, in his opinion, can only be gained from actions, thus children should also learn by doing various activities. It can be concluded from the above, that the learners’ activities should have aims and goals.  In the end pedagogical projects came into existence following the above logic. (Dewey, 1938; Kilpatrick, 1952).

In Hungary first it was the period between the two world wars when reform pedagogies used those projects in school work, which were based on the concept of active learning. From the early 1990s onward the project method became popular once again in teaching methodology.  More recently competence-based education gained popularity, a form of education, which emphasizes cooperative learning. Originally it was Spencer Kagan (2001) who elaborated the principles of cooperative learning, then there were many researchers who developed those principles further.  Cooperative learning has been widely used in the Hungarian public education system. (For further details see the Bibliography section).  Cooperative learning strategies serve as foundations for project-based learning.