50 years of PBL: policy, politics and practice

Project-based learning (PBL) is a current topic of interest amongst educationalists and researchers seeking a broader approach to delivery and assessment in English schools. A new generation of teachers, educated in and now delivering an exam-based curriculum, is being introduced to the concept of PBL in the classroom. Programmes such as Ford New Generation Learning, an approach that has embedded PBL in school districts across the United States, have been influential in the UK (Barnard, 2019). However, practitioners who are in a position to reflect on past decades can often point to examples of successful PBL much closer to home, and this paper considers the waxing and waning of PBL in classrooms in England over a period of 50 years.

This report authored by Susan McGrath and Maia Madhvani from UP2UNI focuses on the history of project based learning (PBL). In this paper we have focussed on how policy, politics and practice can either facilitate or impede PBL, culminating in a model that draws upon Bronfenbrenner’s ecosystems approach. This model shows how PBL is best encouraged by an environment in which qualifications, funding, teaching styles and modes of assessment are aligned to support its delivery, but it also shows how personal agency can bring PBL into the classroom despite an unhelpful environment.

The format of the paper is structured by the five decades that have passed since the 1970s. The content of each section gives an overview of some of the key policy decisions of that decade, with examples of qualifications from that time that included a PBL element. Illustrative comments in each of the sections provide a sense of perspective from the lived experience of people who studied, or taught, or managed the featured courses.