Foreign languages faculty

Psychologizing the Project Method by Kilpatrick
The project method attracted more adherents as the years passed, but it triggered little attention beyond manual training and industrial arts until Rufus W. Stimson of the Massachusetts Board of Education began his campaign for the popularization of the "home project plan" in agriculture around 1910. According to this plan, pupils were first presented with theoretical knowledge (about vegetables, for instance) independently at school, before subsequently applying it by cultivating beans, peas, or carrots on their parents' farms. Thousands of copies of Stimson's pamphlets were distributed by the U.S. Bureau of Education. Through these efforts, teachers of academic subjects became familiar with the project idea for the first time. Suddenly, the project method was perceived to be the procedure of progressive education. It was highly regarded as an exemplary mechanism of realizing the demands of a new educational psychology according where children were not to be passively stuffed full of knowledge but rather engaged in applied learning designed to develop initiative, creativity, and judgment. To be applied more generally, however, the term "project" first had to be redefined. This task was taken on, in particular, by William H. Kilpatrick, philosopher of education and colleague of Richards and Dewey at Teachers College of Columbia University, through his essay, "The Project Method," in the fall of 1918.
Kilpatrick based his project concept on Dewey's theory of experience. Children were to acquire experience and knowledge by solving practical problems in social situations. It should be noted that Kilpatrick was heavily influenced by Edward L. Thorndike's psychology of learning, even more than by Dewey's theory of experience. According to Thorndike's "laws of learning," an action for which there existed an "inclination" procured "satisfaction" and was more likely to be repeated than an action that "annoyed" and took place under "compulsion." From this, Kilpatrick concluded that the "psychology of the child" was the crucial element in the learning process. Children had to be able to decide freely what they wanted to do; the belief was that their motivation and learning success would increase to the extent to which they pursued their own "purposes."
Using these insights, Kilpatrick (1925) defined the project as a "hearty purposeful act" (not as a "hearty planned act" as the German translation has it; Kilpatrick 1918, p. 320, Kilpatrick 1935, p. 162). "Purpose" presupposed freedom of action and could not be dictated. If, however, "the purpose dies and the teacher still requires the completion of what was begun, then it [the project] becomes a task"-mere work and drudgery (Kilpatrick, 1925, p. 348). Thus, Kilpatrick established student motivation as the crucial feature of the project method. Whatever the child undertook, as long as it was done "purposefully," was a project. No aspect of valuable life was excluded. Kilpatrick (1918) drew up a typology of projects ranging from constructing a machine via solving a mathematical problem and learning French vocabulary, to watching a sunset and listening to a sonata of Beethoven. In contrast to his predecessors, Kilpatrick did not link the project to specific subjects and areas of learning such as manual training or constructive occupations; the project did not even require active doing and participating. Children who presented a play executed a project, as did those children sitting in the audience, heartily enjoying it. In Kilpatrick's view, projects had four phases: purposing, planning, executing, and judging. The ideal progression was when all four phases were initiated and completed by the pupils and not by the teacher (1925). Only when the pupils exercised "freedom of action" were they able to acquire independence, power of judgment, and the ability to act-the virtues that Kilpatrick believed were indispensable for the maintenance and further development of democracy.
Kilpatrick's concept is usually illustrated through the "typhoid project," a world-renowned undertaking reported by Ellsworth Collings, (a doctoral student of Kilpatrick) in 1923. When 11 pupils from the third and fourth grades discovered that two of their classmates had fallen ill with typhoid, they decided to explore how the infectious disease was caused, spread, and combated (1923). The children worked on their own, without help and interference from their teacher or direction from a formal lesson plan. Thanks to their research and activities, the sick classmates recovered quickly and the community was never again plagued by typhoid fever. While Collings' account is engaging, it is not borne out by the facts. According to reconstructions from the newspaper articles and essays Collings published at the time, the work never took place as described (i.e., the sick children did not exist and the students determined neither the project's content nor its direction). The teacher prepared the lessons by selecting the subject matter and material and giving thought to what questions were to be asked, what discussions would be pursued, and what activities would be proposed. There was little of the free and spontaneous learning that educators have admired and tried to duplicate in their own schools for more than half a century.