Project Management and Project-Based Teaching in Vocational Education and Training

An empirically founded project didactics, understood as a theory of learning with projects under school conditions and based on an empirical investigation of the prerequisites, effects and limits of this form of teaching, has been increasingly called for since the 1990s; however, corresponding studies are so far available only for individual aspects (e.g. the teacher’s personality in project-based teaching, self-organised learning). Descriptive case descriptions largely determine the approach to the topic.

The project method owes its continuing popularity to a variety of uncertain hopes: according to these, project-based teaching is particularly suited to enabling higher-order learning objectives such as independence, self-responsibility, self-organisation, social competence and problem-solving skills. Project-based teaching also owes its special position to the variety of learning paradigms that, as it were, “merge” in it: learning is socially and cooperatively embedded, the (complex) problems are situationally oriented towards occupational tasks, and discovery-based as well as self-directed learning is stimulated. The extent to which these assumptions are correct has not yet been sufficiently tested empirically.

A further field of research follows: learning field orientation and cross-curricular teaching are central features of the “new forms of learning” in vocational education. In the course of the school development discussion (including ChangeMan, Q2E, ReBIZ), increased cooperation among teachers is called for. While learning is in the foreground in project-based teaching, in project management it is securing cooperation for the production of results and the achievement of goals. Both methods are based on the idea of context steering. Their synthesis seems promising.

Services

The aim of the project was to gain empirical data on classroom events in project-based teaching in all phases (preparation, planning, implementation and conclusion), in order to be able to make statements on the decision fields of a project didactics (including content, time, participation, process and condition structure) on this basis, and to develop such a didactics. The data are collected in various Fachoberschulen (vocational upper secondary schools) in the state of Bremen as well as in a further type of school. This approach makes it possible to capture different framework conditions. A further focus is the validation of the macro-didactic possibilities of the project management method for coordinating cross-curricular teaching. The aim here is to determine what effect this systematic approach has on the quality of project-based teaching, in order to be able to derive recommendations for initial and continuing teacher education where appropriate. The objectives of the project are:

The data collected provided information on the state of project-based teaching and project management in vocational education, in order to determine the forms, effects and limits of this form of teaching.

To improve teaching practice, recommendations for project-based teaching were developed on the basis of the data and the effect of these recommendations was examined.

Data, recommendations and the developed school practice finally formed the basis for establishing an empirically founded project didactics.

Result

Among other things, a guide for use in project management teaching was produced.

The 6th edition from 2015 is available as open access on ResearchGate

The project was the starting point of the initiative and expert group “Projektmanagement macht Schule” (Project management goes to school) of the German Association for Project Management (GPM).