Why Project-Based Learning is the Best Pedagogy to Thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Over the last 20 years, there has been increasing reform and activism against the current models of mainstream schooling around the world. Mainstream schools are criticized primarily for their dependence on rote learning, teacher-led authoritative pedagogy, confinement to the classroom, and preference for standardization over personalization of learning and assessment. Mainstream schooling is also seen as the primary culprit in making the schooling experience irrelevant and distant to real-life – alienating millions of children from a learning experience. Many alternative education reform movements view such schooling models as didactic, ineffective in building deeper understanding, and, more importantly, building relevance to real life. Mainstream schooling was a product of the times which needed a large-scale education process to create a workforce for the industrial revolution. This resulted in preference of certain subjects over others (math and science over arts) and certain forms of intelligence (deductive, logical, reasoning over empathy, social, design, aesthetics, etc.) resulting in alienation or exclusion of many students who lacked ‘academic skills such as memorization, written reproduction, attention, etc. But the loudest criticism of mainstream schooling has been its inability to build pertinent skills and capacities in children from the 21st century. And the intensity of this criticism has recently been driven by the onset of some fundamental societal shifts such as artificial intelligence, automation, et al. The impact of these Fourth Industrial Revolution developments is still to be understood fully. 

Click here to read the full blog- https://www.heritagexperiential.org/project-based-learning/