THE TRANSNATIONAL AND NATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF PEDAGOGICAL
IDEAS: THE CASE OF THE PROJECT METHOD (1918-1939)
María del Mar del Pozo Andrés
University of Alcalá
THE TRANSNATIONAL AND NATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF PEDAGOGICAL
IDEAS: THE CASE OF THE PROJECT METHOD (1918-1939)
DIE
TRANSNATIONALEN
UND
NATIONALEN
DIMENSIONEN
PÄDAGOGISCHER IDEEN: DER FALL DER PROJEKTMETHODE (19181939)
Dieser Artikel versucht, die verschiedenen und manchmal sogar widersprüchlichen
Interpretationen zu analysieren, die den Ideen und Methoden der Reformpädagogik in
verschiedenen sozialen und räumlichen Kontexten zugeschrieben wurden. Die Studie
konzentriert sich speziell auf die Projektmethode, ein pädagogisches Konstrukt, das
anscheinend gut definiert und allgemein bekannt war, und das ein bestimmtes Ausmaß
an Einfluss in der Schulpraxis des 20. Jahrhunderts genoss. Zuerst werde ich eine
Analyse des Ursprungs des Konzepts in den Vereinigten Staaten vornehmen, sowie
seiner Aneignung von Pädagogen der University of Columbia und der darauffolgenden
Debatte, die von dem undifferenzierten und missbräuchlichen Gebrauch des Begriffs
ausgelöst wurde. Der zweite Teil der Studie untersucht die transnationale Präsenz
dieser Methode und ihren Platz in der weltweiten Reformpädagogikbewegung. Dabei
wird deutlich werden, wie die verschiedenen Interpretationen der Projektmethode
klarer im Licht des weitergehenden Konflikts zwischen den paidozentrischen und den
sozialisierenden Ansätzen innerhalb der pädagogischen Bewegung verstanden werden
können. Zuletzt wird der Fall Spanien untersucht, wo die Methode in den 1930er Jahren
sehr populär war, und das nicht nur aus pädagogischen Gründen; auf eine mehr oder
weniger okkulte Art und Weise wurde sie mit einer demokratischen Schulform und der
Sehnsucht nach einem Leben in einer Demokratie identifiziert.
1
The Transnational Approach to the History of Education: An Approximation
Through the Project Method
The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed a growing interest on the part
of historians in replacing their conventional framework of investigation – national
histories – with new disciplines which make the world their reference point. This
process implies formulating a new concept not only of the nation, but of history as
well.1 The term ‘transnational’ has come to designate this new conceptual perspective
‘for understanding the conduct of social life in a globalising world.’2 Therefore,
‘transnational history may be defined as the study of movements and forces that cut
across national boundaries’,3 or, in other words, as a history of globalisation, seen
through the groups and the organizations which have made it possible.
This new investigative perspective poses several challenges. The first of these is
‘to attend the inescapable gap between theorizing and the object of analysis’, requiring
a very careful selection of the subjects to be studied as well as an in-depth consideration
of the true meaning of transnational. The second challenge is ‘to recognize empirical
reality as itself contradictory,4 that is to say, we must be aware of the discovery of the
contradictions that exist in the concept of transnationalism itself. One of these
contradictions – one commonly remarked upon by a variety of authors – is the attention
that transnationalism gives precisely to that which it negates: the persistence of the
national. ‘Transnationalist discourse insists on the continuing significance of borders,
state policies, and national identities even as these are often transgressed by
transnational communication circuits and social practices.’5
On the other hand, adopting a transnational perspective implies assuming an
agency-oriented approach, that is to say, we must consider the roles played by the
variety of actors involved in the transnational activities, be they individuals, groups,
organizations or movements. This viewpoint requires introducing another new concept,
that of the network, recently defined as ‘communicative and mostly horizontal links
between interdependent agents – individual, corporate or collective actors − that are
relatively equal, trust each other and share similar interests or values.’ 6 Transnational
networks should be understood to include specifically those ‘that have the potential to
transform both domestic political systems and international politics, especially by
creating issues, mobilizing new constituencies, altering understandings of interests and
identities, and sometimes changing state practices.’7 The usefulness of this networksapproach for historical-educational investigation lies in its offering new perspectives for
interpreting phenomena of influence, communication, diffusion, circulation, reception
and appropriation of pedagogical ideas and practice, while at the same time discovering
novel paths and connections within traditional historiography.
Transnational exchange does not come about as a result of the diffuse
influence of one national model in another, but rather, ‘ideas are circulated by various
different channels: the distribution networks of books and periodicals; academics
travelling to foreign institutions; migration of international students; the increasing
number of international conferences and world congresses; and the production and
dissemination of knowledge by distinctively international (governmental and nongovernmental) organizations.’8 An analysis of all of these networks and movements
reveals strategies for the circulation of pedagogical ideas that cut across national
boundaries, show the emergence and strength of the international scientific community
or of networks that have become dominant points of reference, and ultimately make
evident ‘the tension between indigenization and internationalization.’9
The goal of this article is to asses the national and transnational forms of the
spread and reception of pedagogical ideas through a very concrete example, namely, the
2
study of the project method. There are several good reasons for choosing this subject. In
the first place, it was quite important that the theoretical construct of the New School
chosen for study should exhibit a genealogy that could be traced and documented, that it
should be well defined a priori, that it be universally known, that it should have
circulated visibly on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and that it should have exerted a
clear influence in schoolroom practices during the twentieth century.
Considering the fact that pedagogical principles and concepts quite often have
uncertain origins and vague expressions, these prerequisite conditions are only met with
absolute certainty by a handful of educational institutions, psycho-pedagogical
techniques and innovative methods. The appropriateness of choosing these methods is
confirmed by the way in which they were spread and propagated as well as by the
explicit credit they received – as innovative methodologies – by the international
movement of the New School, through conventions and publications.
Among these innovations, the project method in particular offered a clear
example of indigenization, or appropriation by a national pedagogical culture – the
Spanish one. This made it possible to study the tensions between the national identity
and international communication that so typically arise as a result of transnational
discourse. Finally, for a variety of reasons that will be detailed in the course of the text,
the project method, notwithstanding its apparent unity, was not disseminated in any
clear or unequivocal way in the global pedagogical universe. Rather, it was interpreted
in different and even contradictory ways within the vast, rich transnational network of
the New Education Fellowship, offering us a glimpse of some of the personal and
pedagogical peculiarities that help us to understand this movement’s internal
functioning. This lack of definition or of a clear orientation gave rise as well to national
discourses that were different and even dissident; the exposition of these views in the
movement’s international conferences further enriched the play of tensions between the
local and the global trends that so characterized transnational phenomena.
The ultimate aim of this article is to demonstrate the precarious balance between
the national and the global tendencies by means of an analysis of some of the different
pedagogical scenarios in which the project method was built and propagated. The first
part of the article analyses the origin of the concept in one national community, the
United States, and the different interpretations given to it by its initial promoters before
its final formulation by pedagogues of the University of Columbia, who in a way
‘appropriated’ for themselves the definitive version of the method. The second part of
the article takes a look at the transnational nature of the method and of its presence and
its propagation throughout the global pedagogical movement of the New Education
Fellowship. This is achieved through the study of the network’s more emblematic
publications and international conferences, which serve to illustrate the contradictory
interpretations that the project method received. All of these interpretations are best
comprehended within the framework of the debate between the paidocentric and the
socializing schools of thought that so many sectors of the movement engaged in during
the 1920’s and 1930’s. The third part of the article provides an in-depth analysis of a
specific national scenario, that of Spain, where the project method gained considerable
popularity in the 1930’s for reasons that were political and ideological as much as they
were pedagogical. The interpretation and realization of the method in this case owed
much to the original North American conception, while the subsequent Columbian
contributions were for the most part ignored.
3
The Construction of the Project Method as an Icon of the New School Practices in
the Progressive Education Movement
In 1922 the North American pedagogue Walter Barnes posed the question: ‘what
essentially is the new education?’, asserting in response that it was a common
movement built upon seven clearly distinguishable elements. The first six of these were:
scientific psychology, which had proven through experiment that ‘each child is the
centre of his universe; the ‘scientific spirit in education’; ‘a new philosophy of
education’, which interpreted education not as a preparation for life, but as life itself;
‘the new sociology’, with its growing yearning for democracy and its firm conviction
that ‘the only way in which we can make a democratic society practicable is by
universal education’; a scholastic system that was undergoing change; and ‘a new
school curriculum’, which included those subjects and activities that proved interesting
and valuable to children. The last pillar was ‘the new methods of teaching’. All of these
methods were inspired in new didactic concepts such as ‘motivation’, ‘socialization’
and the ‘project method’, which integrated these two concepts and put them into
practice by means of ‘a task or sequence of tasks of some magnitude, resulting in a
substantial, objective group result’. This rather vague definition was culminated with a
cry of victory: ‘Never in the history of the world since the first school was established
have we had a theory and art of teaching, a system of education as effective, as nearly
perfect, as that founded and fostered by the new education’.10
This article could be a model of the privileged position that the project method
held in the pedagogical universe of Progressive Education in the early 1920’s: it was
seen as an example of innovative ideals put into practice, of obsolete educational
activities being illuminated by the light of progress, of new pedagogical theories whose
efficiency could be justified now that they could be proved and studied through
experimentation, of an ideal vehicle for introducing the science of education in schools,
and of a technique for demonstrating and giving a real sense to the new Deweyan
philosophy. The broad and somewhat diffuse educational innovations espoused by the
Progressive Education movement were consciously given the term ‘project method’,
which was familiar in the scientific-pedagogical vocabulary of the time.
Michael Knoll has described in some detail the remote origins of the term
‘project’ as an ‘educational and learning device’.11 We could further circumscribe its
use to the field of pedagogy in the 1890’s; at the same time that manual crafts were
being introduced in kindergartens and grade schools in the United States, certain
reformist educators were beginning to stress the importance of basing these activities
around the children’s interests and experiences. The appearance of the Deweyan
concept of ‘constructive occupations’ and its application in the School Laboratory of the
University of Chicago inspired other innovators such as Charles R. Richards. From his
position as docent at the Teachers College of Columbia University (New York),
Richards affirmed in 1900 the important role that these projects played in social
learning: ‘where the project is a common end that inspires all with a unity of thought
and effort, such work is perhaps the most natural and effective means of bringing the
community spirit and conditions into the school’.12
During the first decade of the twentieth century the term ‘project’ became
popular among teachers in the fields of agriculture, manual training, industrial arts and
domestic science. One of these teachers, R.W. Stimson, used the expression ‘home
project plan’ in 1908 to mean an educational practice consisting of secondary school
students applying their theoretical knowledge on farms or croplands similar to those that
they would later encounter in the ‘real world’. A 1911 publication by Stimson and his
group was the first to use the concept of ‘project method’ to define an efficient teaching
4
system in the agricultural schools of Massachusetts.13 This marked the beginning of a
veritable competition between teachers of the most varied fields to delimit the term
from the perspective of scientific and manual education. John Alford Stevenson,
Professor of Education at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh,14 published in
1921 one of the most influential works in the field, in which he compiled no less than
twenty different definitions for the term ‘project’, with practically all of them coming
from experts in professional agricultural and technical formation. The element common
to all of these different uses is the consideration of the project as a problematic activity
or act, one that should lead to a positive achievement, a concrete result or a solution
through constructive processes, one that is of a practical and often exclusively manual
nature, and one whose resolution implies the application of previously acquired
knowledge, making it a unit of educative work. Some authors specified explicitly that
the result of the project should be the production of an object, giving form to a product
of manual labour and applying a scientific method of the laboratory to teaching. Few,
however, specified the realm in which these problematic activities should be carried out.
It was Stevenson himself, with his well-known definition ‘a project is a problematic act
carried to completion in its natural setting’, who introduced the idea, with these last two
words, that the problems to be resolved should be similar to those of the real world; they
should have their origin in the reality outside of the school and be associated with the
interests of the students.15
The ‘project’ concept was adopted immediately and broadly in primary and
secondary education, although generally it referred to the ‘practical turn’ that had taken
hold in classrooms in recent years.16 It was also used extensively by those teachers
inspired by the Deweyan philosophy. The definition of education as a ‘reconstruction of
experiences’ was understood in the following manner: ‘The teacher of pioneer history
found that the best way to teach how the pioneers made soap was to have the pupils
make soap. The teacher of geography found that the best way to get a clear idea of the
fundamental processes in paper-making was to have the pupils make paper’.17 Many of
the projects that were tried also included the representation of a period of universal
history which the students experienced as if it were their own, thus giving form in a
practical way to the culture epoch theory, or theory of recapitulation. As is well known,
this theory is based on the idea that a human being’s stages of development have a
marked similarity to the phases that humans have gone through in the long course of
evolutionary history. As a child grows and reaches maturity he ‘reconstructs’ this
history, living thorough similar processes in a recapitulated manner. Projects of a
historical nature were seen as the perfect vehicle for applying this theory in a school
context; not only would they allow for a more efficient learning, but they would also
encourage infant growth and maturity. Many of the projects carried out initially in the
progressive schools may well have used this idea as their theoretical foundation. One of
the most well-known of these projects was the ‘Indian Project’, put into practice in 1900
in the Horace Mann School of the Teachers’ College of the University of Columbia.
It was this institution, famous for having pioneered the introduction of
‘industrial arts’ as a ‘general-education subject’ of a social and cultural nature,18 that
most contributed to the formulation of a new concept of the ‘project method’. Its most
eminent professors – William Heard Kilpatrick, James Fleming Hosic and Frederick
Gordon Bonser – seem to have shared an idea that Kilpatrick expressed in his famous
definition of project published in 1918: ‘whole-hearted purposeful activity proceeding
in a social environment, or more briefly, in the unit element of such activity, the hearty
purposeful act’. Kilpatrick himself recognized that the term had already become a part
of the pedagogical vocabulary and that he had not invented it; but simply ‘consciously
5
appropriated’ it in order to delimit the unifying idea in modern educational thought.19
Bonser defended the idea that the ‘project method’ was the practical expression of the
new science of education, as it was derived from ‘an educational philosophy, a
fundamental psychology and a dynamic sociology’. He defined it in terms similar to
those used by Kilpatrick: ‘by the project method, one would have the learner animated
by a definite purpose by which his activity, whatever its form, is evoked’. 20 It was
Hosic, Kilpatrick’s disciple, who coined the concept of a ‘complete unit of purposeful
experience’. This author of various treatises21 and founder of the publication The
Journal of Educational Method – dedicated to the study and promotion of ‘the project
approach’,22 offered up a harsh criticism of Stevenson’s work, pointing out how
Stevenson had passed over two of the most fundamental questions: ‘the project method
is founded upon the psychology of purpose and it gives play to the ideal of socialized
group activity’.23
This group of professors from the University of Columbia made up the central
network of the ‘project method’ in the United States. They shared the conviction that
any activity could become a project as long as the child could live it as an experience
carried out with a clear purpose. They based their model on the modern psychological
doctrines of interest and were well aware of its links with the Deweyan concept of the
school as a democratic community. But they also took great care to assure its scientific
nature as well as its practical dimension.
While the project method received some criticism for the absence of
experimental studies regarding its efficiency and pedagogical value,24 Bonser and
Kilpatrick undertook a line of investigation that attempted to show its advantages and
offer examples of a new curricular organization based entirely on projects. After the
pioneering work of Alice Krackowizer, who took the notion of ‘purposeful activity’ to
the elementary grades and defined projects as all of those activities that formed part of
the child’s daily life and should be introduced into the school,25 came the work of
Margaret Elizabeth Wells. In her doctoral thesis, Wells proposed a practical model
– already applied – of organization of an entire curriculum for the first three years based
on projects, in substitution of traditional subjects.26 Hosic, together with his students,
designed a series of specifically directed projects, both for rural and urban schools. 27
But the most famous investigation was without doubt that contained in the doctoral
thesis of Ellsworth Collings, directed by Kilpatrick and published in 1923.28 Collings
details a comparative study between two rural schools, an experimental one and a
control one, providing a thorough final evaluation that clearly demonstrates the
superiority of the project method over the traditional educational system. And in what
would become a symbol of the ‘Columbian’ conception of the project and a veritable
hallmark of progressive education, Collings gives an exhaustive description of the
‘typhoid project’. In a narrative reminiscent of a fairy tale – with happy ending included
– we are shown how a group of children, working purely out of their own interest and
with no help or interference from a teacher, work diligently at investigating the cause
and treatment for typhoid fever that is endemic to their village, eradicating it
permanently. It is a pity that the reconstruction carried out by Knoll showed that the
project never really took place in the manner described by Collings; the teacher actually
planned and directed every step of the activity and there was precious little of the
childhood spontaneity that progressive educators were so anxious to observe and find
examples of.29
In 1924, the Progressive Education Association dedicated the second issue of its
publication exclusively to the ‘project method’, which it hailed not only as an
‘educational instrument’, but as the most appropriate technique for taking the new
6
philosophy of education and applying it in the classroom. Yet in reading between lines
it is not hard to perceive the enormous confusion that existed within the United States
with regard to the nature and the application of this instrument. A number of educators
did not hesitate in denouncing the ‘many crimes’30 and ‘many pedagogical sins’31
committed in the name of this method. The first of these faults derived from the
controversy surrounding the name itself; it seemed that the variety of interpretations that
were included under this label was huge, ranging from the most obsolete educational
practices to truly innovative experiments. As Gertrude Hartman put it, ‘even a cursory
glance through current educational literature will reveal the numerous interpretations
given to it, ranging all the way from the old-fashioned subject-matter dressed up in new
garb, to the application of the fundamental philosophy of Professor Dewey’.32 As a
result of this there was a rather generalized opinion that the project method did not
really have anything new to offer in the field of pedagogical innovation.33 Many
authors pointed to another perversion of the project concept, i.e., that which identified it
with ‘mere construction work’, or a physical, visible product devoid of any objective or
subjective meaning.34 Others called attention to the fact that many teachers had inserted
the projects into a traditional schooling structure as simply another activity to be worked
on in free time or for homework.
The second pedagogical sin attributed to the project method had its origin in the
definition given by Kilpatrick and his cohorts, who many considered to be the
maximum exponents of child-centred pedagogy. The same project that before had been
considered so valuable because it had sprung from the community and had a social
usefulness was now disdained and considered irrelevant from an educational point of
view if it was born of children’s initiative as a ‘wholehearted, purposeful act projected
by children’.35 Among other criticism directed at the method, it was accused of leading
to lack of discipline, inefficiency, waste of time, poor knowledge, lack of study habits,
and infantilization of the learning process. It is well known that even Dewey, whose
name is so often cited as being the inspiration for this curricular reform, understood the
project as a ‘common enterprise’ of students and teachers; he believed that a continued
focus on the infants’ interests could result in something ‘too trivial to be educative’, and
he defended the role of the teacher in transforming spontaneous impulses into a ordered
plan of action that would lead to a firm grasp of the basic principles of each subject.36
Kilpatrick produced some extensive writings in order to justify the idea that the project
method was more ‘a point of view’ than ‘a specific device’, that its use satisfied ‘the
demands of democratic self-direction and self-control’, ultimately preparing students in
the classroom for life in the democratic experience.37 He maintained that the difficulties
and problems inherent to the method could be overcome if the teachers would only
guide the infants’ interests towards the world of universal culture.
The third pedagogical sin of the ‘project method’ had to do with its orientation
towards a ‘curriculum activity’, in other words, its attempt to substitute a curricular
organization based on subjects with one based on activities, with the implication that all
important instructional content could be acquired in this manner.38 To counter this
affirmation, the market was flooded with publications detailing hundreds of pedagogical
experiences in which the protagonists remarked on the advantages of these curricular
adaptations. Of the five experiences chosen as models for the magazine Progressive
Education one can draw certain conclusions. The Lincoln School of the Teachers
College of the University of Columbia offered an example of one of its ‘units of work’,
that was the ‘core of the elementary school curriculum’.39 The project consisted of
constructing a city with boxes, and as it is told, it truly seems to have been an initiative
that sprung from the students, ‘it was one of their important centres of interest and much
7
of the valuable subject-matter of the grade was interrelated with it’.40 But this was the
more radical model, and even Kilpatrick himself ‘had some reservations about such
large units of work, suggesting that the smaller units employed by Collings were
preferable’.41 All of the other experiences identified the idea of a ‘purposeful activity’
with the need to clearly express the goals at the start of the project. A goal such as ‘to
make a contribution to the cause of elementary education’42 could hardly be considered
to form part of the infants’ experience and was most probably expressed and written by
the teachers; in other cases we see a description of ‘the animating purpose [...] of the
builders of the school’.43 One article relates how teachers and students thought at the
same time about the same projects, very community orientated ones which required an
evaluation parallel to the academic work. The conception and planning of these
activities leaves plenty of room for doubt about the actual role played here by ‘the
dynamic forces of a child’s interest’, for however much this is appealed to.44 In short,
the five experiences related in the publication Progressive Education show that even in
the most advanced experimental schools, in practice the teachers remained as the
guiding force behind the projects which, with very few exceptions, were integrated as
simply another element in a previously existing academic curriculum.
The term ‘project’ fell into disuse in the late 1920’s and its popularity waned. It
offered little to those in seek of pedagogical novelties, and for those in the practice of
education its application was problematic – especially in public schools – for the
difficulties in reconciling efficiency with infants’ interests. An investigation carried out
in 1935 in the Whitney School of Chicago appeared to be an attempt to repeat Collings’
experiment and to re-evaluate the efficiency of the project method. Experiment and
control groups were organized in different grades and an educational procedure was
strictly defined with fourteen very child-orientated items in the truest ‘Colombian’
tradition. Tests were given to gauge the progress of each group, and the results left no
room for doubt: ‘the conventional method of teaching [...] is superior to the project
method insofar as academic outcomes are concerned’, owing to the fact that ‘project
teaching is fairly effective in producing achievement but ineffective in causing retention
of achievement’.45 It would seem that the American professionals of scientific pedagogy
had exhausted every possibility of the project formula.
Transnational Influences of the Project Method: Some Considerations Concerning
the Transatlantic Paths of the Pedagogical Ideas
My initial analysis of the genealogy of the project method allows me to detect
several of its original features. The appropriation and propaganda perpetrated in the
name of this term may well have been motivated by the need to introduce it as quickly
as possible in the methodological market, which was brimming with experiences in the
first decades of the twentieth century. But there was a fundamental difference between
this procedure and others, in that it was an ‘orphan method’; there was no pedagogical
father behind it and in fact many of its promoters even seemed reticent to recognize the
hand they had in its implementation. There was also the fact that, with no one really
taking credit or responsibility for the model or its characteristics, all sorts of
interpretations were made of it. It seemed able to include the most varied and disparate
theoretical principles and educational practices, although thorough all of these ran the
common thread was innovation. It was presented as the quintessential example of
educational technique as well as the practical application of every single one of the
principles of Progressive Education, and yet many of the experiences did not meet up to
the expectation that had been created. And finally there was the fact that it was an
unequivocally American system starting from its very name, and many of the examples
8
and scenarios – from the representation of the pioneers’ life to the building of Indian
huts – had their origins in a cultural imaginarium peculiar to the United States and were
presented with the specific purpose, at times of ‘Americanizing’ immigrants.
Many of these initial observations help to explain the route that the ‘project
method’ followed on the way to becoming a transnational pedagogical term and
practice. Given the vagueness of the term ‘project’, I’ve carried out this study taking
into consideration only the instances in which the specific concept of the project method
is explicitly referred to. The concept of transnationality is, as has been noted above, tied
to the idea of ‘borderless education’, understood as the ‘ways in which the traditional
borders of education are ... transversed by new developments which cross geographical
or conceptual borders’.46 I have defined the transnationality of the project method as the
process by which it became an element of global pedagogical culture in the 1920’s and
1930’s. To this end I have analysed its introduction, reception and acceptance in the
main circles of the New Education movement, with a focus on three specific indicators:
a detailed study of The New Era and Pour l’Ère Nouvelle, the two most influential
magazines of the New Education Fellowship in those territories in which French and
English were spoken as the mother tongue or the ‘cultured’ language; a tracing of the
movement’s presence in international conferences, from that of Calais (1921) to the one
held in Cheltenham (1936); the opinions and critiques offered by certain members of the
J.J. Rousseau Institute – especially Bovet and Ferrière, as their opinions carried
considerable weight among educators in Southern Europe and Latin America.
The internationalist–oriented publication The New Era47 made no mention of the
project method until 1926,48 when its first reflections on the subject were written by
Beatrice Ensor upon her return from the United States. Clearly influenced by her stay in
the U.S., Ensor’s writings evidence three interwoven ideas: the consideration of the
New Education as a science, its rootedness in a ‘definite philosophy’ that is directly
identified with that of Dewey, and Kilpatrick’s interpretation of this philosophy, which
had given a practical expression to the ‘project’. ‘The focal point of the Project is the
child’s own life and interests’, she affirmed. Ensor made a special point of emphasizing
two issues that she knew would be crucial if the model was to gain acceptance: in some
schools – although they were quite few – the projects were planned by the teachers, and
their efficiency in terms of academic and intellectual achievement was demonstrated
with the publication of Collings’ work. Her observations point in two directions:
in the first place she points out how subtle the suggestion of ‘infant interest’ could be, as
this often was more a projection of the teacher’s intentions; secondly, she is struck by
the abundance of projects dealing with past civilizations. Ensor was one of the few
European educators who fully understood the practical application that these projects
made of the theory of recapitulation: ‘Certain Projects – the study of the lives of
primitive peoples – have a special psychological value in that they enable the child to
re-live the early life of the race and satisfy a deep psychological need arising from the
fact that the child recapitulates in his own growth the stages in the development of the
race’.49
This was the last time that the English magazine of the New Education
Fellowship published theoretical studies regarding the project method, although after
1930 several practical examples of the project’s application in United States schools
were published. These samples were a mixture of many models, ranging from the
typical representations of historical civilizations to those in which an entire school
worked around the concept of an ‘activity curriculum’, to others which were simply
very elaborate manual crafts.50 There are examples as well of experiences from British
schools. The first to introduce the projects were those who, following the
9
recommendations of Helen Parkhurst, followed the Dalton Plan.51 Subsequent to these
experiences52 we can see the way in which British teachers had managed to integrate
this activity into scholastic life. These teachers allotted specific periods of time to its
development, generally outside of class hours, and included detailed explanations of its
ties to the traditional academic curriculum. Despite the constant appeals to the
children’s freedom, it is quite clear that the teacher maintained a firm control over the
direction of the experiences, much as seems to have been the case in the United States.
Of the many assertions that corroborate this affirmation, perhaps the harshest one is that
offered by C.W. Kimmins, Chief Inspector of the Education Department of the London
County Council, who wrote that ‘in America he has seen schemes working that were
obviously inspired by the teacher and too much under his control, the children being out
of their depth and following and interpreting the teacher’s ambitious ideas blindly,
instead of finding and using their own’.53
The publication of the New Education Fellowship for French speaking countries,
Pour l’Ère Nouvelle, took a very different posture from its English counterpart in its
treatment of the project method; not a single article was published about this
educational procedure, although marginal references to it appeared occasionally and
commentaries in other magazines were quite frequent. This fact – which was rather
exceptional in the context of the movement and did not extend to any other institutions
and methodologies considered as innovative – can only be explained by the attitude of
the editor-in-chief of the publication, Adolphe Ferrière. The editor’s indifference,
ignorance and lack of empathy with the method were in all likelihood a result of his
inability to communicate with pedagogues from the United States. His bitterness
became apparent after his attempt in 1923 to organize a World Conference on Education
together with the American National Education Association, whose members apparently
could not be bothered to respond to his letters and appeals. Ferrière sensed on their part
a disdain and lack of interest for anything coming from Europe, even though Europe
boasted ‘des centres où l’on travaille modestement, mais efficacement. Notre ami M.
Carleton W. Washburne le sait bien’.54 This lack of rapport conditioned Ferrière’s
whole view of American pedagogy, which was heavily influenced, at least in the
1920’s, by the perception transmitted to him by the Winnetka thinker, with whom he
shared friendship as well as long conversations on education. It is well known that
Winnetka had introduced the project method into his methodological model, and this
may well have been the source of Ferrière’s first contact with the procedure.
It seems that Ferrière insisted on identifying the project method as an element of
the Winnetka system, and much of the information that was published about it in French
magazines came from Washburne’s works. Two years later Ferrière identified the
project method with European pedagogical models. In 1924, at the inauguration of
l’École Internationale – of which he was a technical advisor – he explained the
institution’s organization as a mixture of Decroly and Winnetka methods. The
afternoons were spent with the children doing ‘activités collectives ou individuelles
libres selon l’inspiration de John Dewey’,55 activities which included dramatizations,
excursions and exhibits.56 Ferrière referred to this system, almost in passing, as the
project method, although it actually had a specific name in French, ‘travail collectif
libre’. The methodology had been developed by Cousinet and its objectives and
methods were quite reminiscent of the American system.57 Ferrière himself went on to
publish a lengthy article a short while later about l’École Internationale in the Spanish
magazine Revista de Pedagogía. Curiously, he wrote as if he had just discovered the
project method and its specific characteristics. Besides attributing to Dewey the honour
of being its ‘illustrious inventor’, he praised the method’s universal success: ‘This
10
method could stand on its own with no need for other pedagogical procedures, because
the greatest encouragement that we can give to a child’s work and effort is allowing his
dominant interests to come through.’58 The only possible explanation for Ferrière’s
sudden enthusiasm is that he had just recently become informed of the project method’s
basic aspects through an in-depth critique that Pierre Bovet had written of Ellsworth
Collings’ work. Bovet had classified this method as one which had as its principal
objective children’s freedom and the spiritual power of infancy.59
Other groups and networks of European pedagogues also tended to identify the
project method with systems that were already known and recognized. Of these the
most obvious were the Decrolyan ‘centres of interest’. In 1922 this Belgian pedagogue
visited the Park School of Buffalo and the Country School of New York, where the
teacher from l’Ermitage J. Delgoffe would visit the following year. Both of these
schools were known for their Deweyan inspiration and for having translated this
philosophy into practical experiences using easily identifiable projects that integrated
‘child-centred pedagogy with an embryonic community within the school.’60 Decroly
and Delgoffe both published articles praising the model experiences of the project
method although neither of them used the term, writing instead that ‘c’est une
application de la méthode active des centres d’intérêt’.61 Should we interpret this as an
unconscious wish of Decroly’s to be identified with his American source of inspiration?
Or did the parallels stem from the fact that the Decrolyan theoretical framework of
‘eclectic complex of educational principles’62 resembled the inspiration behind the
project method? To my view this second explanation seems to be more on target since
not only Decroly but other European pedagogues had also pointed out these similarities.
The Russians, for instance, in offering their particular invention – the method of
complexes – had identified it with centres of interest and with the ‘project method’,
most likely as a way to give it greater pedagogic legitimacy. 63 And Marie Butts, General
Secretary of the Bureau Internationale d’Éducation, affirmed in a conference that she
gave in 1928 during the Week of New Education in Paris (organized by the J.J.
Rousseau Institute64) that ‘in the United States they’ve given the name Project Method
to the centres of interest.’ Butts was the only pedagogue who recognized the importance
of Kilpatrick’s role in building the concept and who truly understood his ideas,
especially the emphasis on the social nature of the method that Kilpatrick deemed so
crucial; this is what would make the class a ‘true children’s community’ and the ‘basis
for a school life of future citizens of a democracy’.65
One of the principal world forums for the exchange of pedagogical ideas was
that of the conferences of the New Education Fellowship, where exposure and prestige
were also sought for the latest methodologies. The presence of the ‘project method’ in
these gatherings was discreet to say the least, whether measured by the number and
quality of papers given or by the coverage that it received in publications, which was
never more than a passing mention. We have only found the existence of information
about the project method in three conferences, Heidelberg (1925), Locarno (1927) and
Elsinore (1929), which precisely happened to be conferences that focused on infant
individuality. In the Heidelberg conference very tangential references are made – with
Dewey’s philosophy as a starting point – to the application in experimental schools of
the project method as a way of encouraging ‘l’esprit d’initiative et de coopération’, 66 or
of assuring that ‘the native interests of the child are used as incentive to work’.67 At the
Locarno conference Ferrière alluded to the ‘almost total freedom’ of the project method
according to Dewey,68 while the Spaniard Lorenzo Luzuriaga, director of the magazine
Revista de Pedagogía (the Spanish publication affiliated to the New Education
Fellowship), claimed that it was the most complete method for achieving the ‘team
11
pedagogy’ necessary for the task of socialization.69 In the Elsinore conference special
courses were organized around each of the methods of the New Education, and it was
Burton P. Fowler who presented a paper on the ‘project method’. Apparently it was
quite successful and led to Ferrière praising (in English, no less) its ‘purposeful
activity’, or ‘activité intentionnelle et créatrice de l’enfant’, which he identified directly
with the concept of the ‘école active’ which was so dear to him. For the first time,
Ferrière himself wrote the French translation of the procedure, ‘la méthode des projets’,
symbolizing the final appropriation of the term and its meaning.70
What conclusions can we come to regarding the transnational paths followed by
the project method? Evidently a need was felt to give pedagogic legitimacy to each one
of the methods of the New School, and much more so in the case of a method with no
founding father. It is curious how Dewey wound up – unconsciously – playing this role
despite his reticence to do so and his reservations regarding the system, while Collings
held the position of experimenter and tester of its practical advantages. Kilpatrick on the
other hand, although he was the middle figure between those two and the veritable
architect of the ‘project method’ theory, was systematically excluded and forgotten. Nor
do we find reference to the debate that was going on at the time in the United States
regarding the child centred orientation that seemed to be taking root in many of the
projects. This orientation, attributed to Dewey, would be incorporated as a given into
the worldwide pedagogical universe. Also, the obsession with cataloguing and
classifying new educational innovations led to an attempt to find European
methodological references with which to identify these movements. This was partly a
result of the unclear origin of the project method and partly due to the ignorance that
prevailed in most pedagogic networks with regard to the method. And to be sure there
were many methods with similarities, possibly because it was a synthesis of the
practical expression of the entire philosophy of the New Education. And it was likely
the eclecticism of the project method that made it another pawn in the battle between
the paidocentric and the socializing approaches that went on in the twenties and which
was finally resolved in favour of the ‘socializers’ in the Nice conference of 1932.71 The
tidbits of information that the Pour l’Ère Nouvelle published sporadically on the project
method clearly show a movement towards the principles of infant freedom and growth,
whereas the use of the method as a powerful tool for socialization was hardly perceived
and much less studied.72 In response to this socializing orientation in the New Education
Fellowship, the magazine The New Era adapted to the change, publishing experiences
of projects carried out in German and English schools. Cooperation together with the
teacher’s influence were vital elements in the success of these experiences.73 And yet,
Pour l’Ère Nouvelle did not publish another single word about the project method.
The Spanish Case: A Model of National Implementation of the Project Method
Despite its relatively discreet transnational presence, the project method did gain
general favour in some countries while in others it went practically unnoticed, that is,
until the spectacular revival that it saw in the 1960’s. Spain was one of the first
European countries in which it became well known, and it was clearly the preferred
among those methods of Anglo-Saxon origin. It is quite possible that, had the Civil War
not come to pass, its importance would have surpassed that of the centres of interest.
In recent years educational historians have been searching for models to help in
the study of the way in which new ideas are received and incorporated in different
countries. De Coster, Depaepe, Simon and Van Gorp propose using the categories of
‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pedagogy to comprehend the construction of a pedagogical
mentality.74 As attractive as this concept may be as a way of establishing general
12
guidelines, it is very difficult to apply to concrete cases and practically impossible to
study as a lineal, hierarchical process.75 This is because it is constantly being modified
by collateral factors that make the educational landscape a kind of melting pot – to cite
the graphic metaphor used by the authors – in which all influences are mediatized and
affected by unexpected circumstances, ones that may not even be related to the realm of
pedagogy. If we limit ourselves to the project method, for example – understood in a
clear well-defined way – our first question could be: what do we consider to be the
‘higher pedagogy’ here, the work of Kilpatrick and his circle at the University of
Columbia, which was hardly even known in Spain, or the ‘second-string’ authors such
as Stevenson, who were widely read? And what should we take to be ‘lower pedagogy’,
that of the Spanish pedagogical networks that adapted the American ideas for projects,
or that of the teachers, who managed to build practical theories as a result of their
experience in the schools that had a far greater influence and dissemination among their
colleagues than any theories handed down from the educational hierarchy?
The most reliable and objective source for studying the presence, spread and
appropriation of New Education ideas is generally to be found in pedagogical
publications. I have made an exhaustive search of the bibliographic production
dedicated specifically to the project method in the ten most influential publications of
the Spanish educational panorama. The factors for choosing these publications were
their history, their affiliation with the New Education Fellowship, their territorial
relevance and their acceptance among different teachers’ collectives.76 A thorough
study of these publications has turned up a total of 91 works – 9 books, 6 chapters and
76 articles – which form the basis for my reflections on the project method.
In order to comprehend the spread and appropriation of the project method in
Spanish pedagogical culture, I have resorted to the image of concentric circles with
connections amongst each other. The outside ring would represent the work of foreign
pedagogues who provide information about the process. The middle ring would be the
intermediaries; these are the Spanish pedagogues who translate, in a literal and
figurative sense, the foreign works, in order to adapt them to the mentality of the
Spanish teachers but also with the purpose of building a new, national pedagogic body
of thought. The innermost ring consists of the teachers who experiment with and adapt
the method in their classrooms. They will be combining processes similar to those that
Tyack and Cuban called the ‘grammar of schooling’ 77 with other initiatives stemming
from organizational and curricular changes. These three circles are connected because
at times the teachers could actually bypass the middle ring in order to contact directly
with original sources. These encounters and jumps would play in important part in
course that the project method followed in Spain.
One way of getting a close view of a pedagogical innovation is by direct
observation in those institutions where it is first tested in its original form. As far as I
know, this is how the first contact with the project method was made by a Spaniard. In
the summer of 1921, the teacher of Secondary Education Science, Juana Moreno de
Sosa, spent time at the Teachers College of the University of Columbia. The
unpublished report of her experience shows the firm grasp that she had of Kilpatrick’s
work, which she followed faithfully in her exposition. She saw the method applied in
the Lincoln School and was truly impressed: ‘To achieve something like this in our
schools, I believe we Spaniards would have to change our temperament.’78 But this first
contact was never repeated nor did it have any repercussion, leading one to ask what
role these ‘pedagogical explorers’ played in the dissemination of new ideas.
The first articles dealing with the subject of the ‘project method’ to appear in
Spain were based exclusively on three sources of information: the books of the
13
Americans Stevenson and Wells and the chapter published in 1922 by the English
professor John Adams, who used the same bibliographical references. It was Adams
who established the guidelines for the hegemonic pedagogical discourse in Spain
regarding the project method: the only accepted definition was Stevenson’, whose
concept of ‘natural setting’ was translated in various ways, but always with an emphasis
on the social environment; the activities could be introduced into the school curriculum
as support for existing subjects, whereas the Wells model, which organized the whole
grade school curriculum around big projects, was considered inapplicable.79 There was
an identification with known curricular models – concentrations and centres of interest –
present from the first publications and encouraged by an example published by
Stevenson that was widely reproduced.80 Although it received scant attention, the most
original article in terms of its pedagogical discourse was that of the Cuban professor
Alfredo M. Aguayo. In addition to the three habitual sources, Aguayo based his work on
the publications of the University of Columbia group, including Kilpatrick and Bonser.
He portrayed them as a group tightly bonded around the idea of infant intentionality –
‘in teaching with projects the child conceives, prepares and executes his own work,
while the teacher’s job is to discreetly guide the student’. Aguayo dismissed and even
disdained those who would emphasize the socializing aspects of the method − ‘there are
those for whom the outstanding feature of a school project is the cooperative work and
the socializing activity of the student.’81
Of the thirty three foreign publications reflected in Spanish magazines,
seventeen of them were simply parts of Stevenson’s book, generally with no
acknowledgement of the author behind the writing. This crime can only be understood
in the context of Spanish pedagogy of the time, where several educational groups were
vying for national control of New Education. The struggle was carried out on two
fronts: dominating the publishing market on the one hand and being the first to publish
in Spanish what would become the iconic, innovative work on the other.82 This
behaviour was repeated insistently with each of the movement’s methodological
advances, leading to considerable unease among the teachers and educators who were
not a part of these networks. These independent teachers accused the ‘new pedagogues’,
and ‘our super-pedagogues’ of only being interested in ‘the latest word in Pedagogy’, in
other words, in those methods that were neither tested nor even known in Spain.83
In 1925 the project method received its ‘stamp of approval’ in the transnational
pedagogical market of the New Education with its presence in the congress of
Heidelberg and the praises it received from Ferrière and Bovet. Spanish publishers
could not publish the work fast enough after this. The only work known was that of
Stevenson and Wells, the latter being considered too radical although her work was
finally translated and published in 1929.84 The publishers needed to come up with a
book bearing the magic label ‘método de proyectos’ (project method) and they went
about it in the following manner: the first chapter was a literal translation of John
Adams, but with no acknowledgement of the author, the fourth chapter came from a
translation of Stevenson’ eighth chapter and included a passing mention of the author;
the second and third chapters consisted of extensive plagiary of this same book together
with opinions of an assortment of other authors. Needless to say, the result was quite
varied.85 The title mentions neither Adams nor Stevenson nor the compiler of the book,
although speculation was that it was most likely Fernando Sáinz.86 Sáinz was an school
inspector, and although he went on to write considerably about the project method, he
always maintained a certain distance from this first publication. Despite everything, the
work was an editorial success, with three editions published between 1925 and 1928.
This success was probably due to the fact that the great variety of practical examples for
14
projects as well as the rich collection of definitions provided the chance for each
educator to find their own path of methodological experimentation.
An analysis of the other foreign translations leads us to three conclusions: first,
very little of the American work was translated to Spanish. It does not seem that
anybody even worked directly with Collings’ book, although Bovet’s critique of it was
frequently cited.87 Secondly, it seems that these articles came to the Spanish magazines
after their previous publication in Latin American magazines that were generally left
unmentioned.88 Finally, one can notice a change in the orientation of some of these
publications starting in 1927. At this time the two main pedagogical reviews in Spain,
Revista de Pedagogía and Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza, coincided in a
more nuanced editorial line; while still emphasizing the definition of the project as a
‘purposeful activity’ and the importance of attending to the spontaneous interests of the
children, they also stressed the importance of the teachers’ guidance as well as the view
of the project as a curricular project based on community collaboration. ‘The purpose’ –
they went on to say – ‘means nothing less than the process by which one becomes a
person and, done collectively, this becomes a democratic process.’89 The article written
by Marie Butts, which had pointed in this same direction, was published on three
occasions.90
It does indeed seem that in 1927 something was moving in certain pedagogical
networks and circles; one can detect a movement intent on converting the project
method in to a ‘national’ method that would help in forming character and in turning the
younger generations into good democrats through school practices in which social
values took a front seat. Although this objective was never expressed in such terms,
there are numerous signs that allow me to formulate this hypothesis. The Spanish
section of the New Education Fellowship was formed in 1927 with the Revista de
Pedagogía as its voice, and three of its outstanding members and directors were
precisely three of the maximum champions of the ‘método de proyectos’, Lorenzo
Luzuriaga, Fernando Sáinz and Margarita Comas. Luzuriaga was known for stressing
the importance of stimulating the spirit of solidarity and cooperation in school, as a way
of countering the so-called ‘Hispanic individuality’ which could lead to aggressiveness
and violence.91 Not coincidentally, that same year Luzuriaga intervened for the first
time in the congress of Locarno, choosing the theme of ‘team pedagogy’ and presenting
the ‘project method’ as the ideal means for achieving it goals. All of this was influenced
by the particular social and political atmosphere of the time; although Spain was under
the rule of a military dictatorship, many intellectual groups already had in their minds a
republican project, one that became a reality in 1931 and which considered the school
one of the central focuses for achieving social transformation.
Fernando Sáinz, inspector from Granada and Margarita Comas, teacher at
Teachers Training College of Tarragona, took it upon themselves to divulge the project
method, even offering already-prepared practical models for implementing in Spanish
schools. With the occasional assistance of others, these two educators constituted the
‘intermediaries’, in charge of building an idea of a project method in Spain that would
not only be accessible to teachers but would generate enthusiasm and make them want
to use it in the classroom. Both of them relied on the work of Stevenson, Krackowizer
and Wells for bibliographical support, although they made an effort to not follow them
too closely, probably to avoid criticism from the teachers regarding the new
pedagogues’ ‘obsession’ with their foreign colleagues.
Sáinz makes abundantly clear in his writing that he wishes to be considered an
exponent of ‘lower pedagogy’. To begin with, he hardly even mentions Dewey, briefly
bringing him up as a practitioner of projects in the School Laboratory of the University
15
of Chicago. He then leaves out the scientific basis of the method, presumably because
the method does not offer any new ideas, and then proceeds to invent a model of project
classification that is more suited to the Spanish scholastic reality than those of
Stevenson or Kilpatrick. He also describes ways of rehearsing the projects in schools,
adapting them to existing schedules and curriculas and emphasizing short projects
where the initiative and control are in the teacher’s hands, as well as the forming of
work groups within the classroom – an idea stressed by Luzuriaga. Besides offering
numerous suggestions for activities, Sáinz defines what he considers to be the method’s
greatest advantage: ‘The project method, with its underlying idea of common work and
its emphasis on the personality of the group rather than the individual – who
nonetheless is still present – corrects the egotistical individuality of the child, his
egocentrism, which aspires to give nothing and to get everything in return.’92 Comas
agreed with Sáinz on the fundamental aspects of the method and justified the use of a
potentially overwhelming new procedure before the teachers, assuring them that ‘the
project method is not just another teaching method’.93 Both of these educators fashioned
two series of projects that were reminiscent of those designed by Hosic in that they were
conceived for implementation in rural and urban classrooms. The first of these series
was meant to organize all of the educational activity around a camp or a farm removed
from the school,94 while the second one involved many projects, some of them adapted
from American experiences and others designed by Comas and intended to be adaptable
to each subject.95
Sáinz and Comas, as intermediaries, were building a new concept of the project
method which effectively nullified any child-centred approach while stressing a
socializing orientation. But the project method was just one part of a more complex
machinery which considered the school as an ‘embryonic community’ and which
‘responds to a democratic vision of life’.96 Dewey appears as the sole inventor and
promoter of the method, which was seen as a reliable guarantee that this was the correct
path on the way to true social democracy. Sáinz and Comas were well known,
frequently cited and exercised a considerable influence on teachers who worked with
the system, most of whom practiced the method with examples provided by these two
authors. As a pre-requisite, these teachers would form work groups97 and stress the
resulting values of solidarity as a means of ‘helping to correct the egocentrism of the
child’.98 Affirmations such as this one brought out the modest paidocentrism of the
majority of Spanish docents, who made sure in their reflections on the project method to
caution against the idea of elevating the ‘respect for the child’s personality’ to a
mythical status.99
These works were also influential as critical references that stimulated teachers
to discuss their own personal contributions. There were those who were opposed to
‘team pedagogy’, seeing it as a way of imposing a kind of corporate state in the
classroom or as a very undemocratic way of dissolving the individual in the group.100
David Bayón, the teacher who in 1929 carried out a pioneering application of the
project method in a school in Segovia, even outlined a model for the reception of
pedagogical ideas. Bayón was of the opinion that the New Education was replete with
innovative methods that were given the status of pedagogical theory after a few practice
runs. ‘Afterwards, between the authors of the new ideas and the practical applications
carried out by the teachers there is a group of intermediaries who basically write
pedagogical literature’ leading to ‘erroneous interpretations or disturbing deviations’. In
order to avoid this, Bayón appealed to the teachers to document and share the results of
their projects and thus help to create a scientific consensus around the method.101
16
Of the 58 Spanish works dealing with the ‘project method’, 47 were written by
schoolteachers, who described in a positive, uplifting way their practical experiences.
There are several explanations for this enthusiasm. One is that the pedagogical literature
offered many solutions and suggestions for incorporating the projects into existing
scholastic structures, making it a relatively easy matter to integrate these projects into
existing curricula and programs as complementary or additional activities and to allot
specific class time or free time to them. Another reason is the flexibility and vagueness
of the project, which allowed for numerous, varied interpretations. It could thus be
applied to activities as diverse as manual projects or excursions, which in their time had
been novel and could now be reformulated and given a new orientation, a ‘renovation of
the innovation’. Yet another reason was that the project was the result of a natural
evolution of well – tried methodologies such as the centres of interest,102 and offered
advantages such as allowing for more initiative and creativity on the teacher’s part to
choose those activities deemed most motivating. And, last but not least, the project
allowed a small group of docents to get a taste of the ‘higher pedagogy’, that is to say, it
offered them the opportunity to produce and compile pedagogical knowledge. The
teachers were creating ‘the pedagogy of the primary school’. 103 The philosophical basis
present in Bayón’s work is rather surprising. He cites and compiles writings by Dewey
which, in his opinion, give scientific legitimacy to the project method, while criticizing
the introduction into the classroom of democratic life experiences, even though this was
also perceived as a Deweyan idea. He also brings to bear some absolutely personal
reflections on the difficulties involved in implementing the work groups. Félix Martí
Alpera, another enthusiastic supporter of the projects, insisted on finding a
psychological basis for all didactic methodology in order to give a solid scientific
groundwork to the teacher’s activity.104 There were others who, besides using a novel
pedagogical vocabulary, sought out their own ways of ‘creating pedagogy.’ This could
mean anything from making a critical analysis of the various mantras of the New
Education to presenting organisational models of educational practice that integrated
every recent innovation in a personal way.
In September 1936 a Catalunyan magazine published a survey about the project
method, not only to know how it was being applied, but to gauge its results in terms of
knowledge acquired by the students.105 The questionnaire evidenced strong concern
about the efficiency and results, the same concerns expressed in the American article
published at about the same time. Beyond any borders, the world’s community of
educators got a view of themselves in their place – a place where traditions thrived and
were shared and where any innovation ended up a victim of the academy.
Conclusions
The project method possesses a characteristic that distinguishes it from other
proven didactic procedures of the New Education Fellowship. Unlike the Plan Dalton,
Winnetka, Decroly or María Montessori, the project method was “fatherless”; its origins
cannot be traced clearly to any one author. This condition was made especially apparent
at times owing to the reluctance of a number of North American pedagogues – Dewey
in particular − to claim paternity. There were other periods during which diverse
putative ‘fathers’ appeared on the scene, ready to take responsibility for the
development of this new methodological creature. However, none of them went as far
as to lend their name to this novel method, a method whose fame ultimately rested in
part on the ambiguity of its denomination.
It was precisely this feature – the lack of an established author in charge of
defining and overseeing this new methodological corpus – that played such an
17
important role in the subsequent development of the project method and of its
circulation in the transnational networks. The abundant literature produced at the
University of Columbia and in particular the article published by Kilpatrick in 1918
became known around the world, at least in their basic themes. But there continued to
be, at least until 1939, no references which would explain the pedagogical and
conceptual framework upon which the project method was based. Rather than the
dissemination of a scientific foundation, which had been solidly established by
Kilpatrick, what circulated was a diversity of practical experiences. The great variety of
experiments, opinions and definitions resulted in the project method’s acquiring a
marked indefinition. I would venture that this lack of a clear definition was one of the
keys to the contradictions to which it gave rise in the transnational realm and to the
success that it enjoyed at a national level.
Although there were libraries and pedagogical museums in Europe where the
latest North American literature and points of view could be consulted, there was
nothing in European circles even approaching the widespread debate going on in the
United States during the 1920’s and 30’s regarding the project method. Within the New
Education Fellowship, the language in which the network’s different groups and sectors
expressed themselves acted as a kind of border or dividing line between the differing
schools of pedagogical theory growing up around the project method. On the one hand,
the publications in English fell more under the influence of the North American debate.
Mention was generally made of Kilpatrick, and his definition of the project was
commonly accepted, with special emphasis being put on the concept of the intentional
activity that is developed by the child in a context of freedom. The publications in
French on the other hand reveal a palpable ignorance of the project method until the late
1920’s. They also tend to want to identify it with other existing methodologies that
already have their place in the realm of innovative pedagogy; the satisfaction expressed
by Ferrière is notable when he is finally able to attribute – more or less arbitrarily – the
founding of the method to an authority as well known as Dewey. The individualizing
aspect that was associated with the project method in some European countries (and that
was attributed to Dewey) was precisely the thing against which this pedagogue was
clamouring so emphatically in the United States at the same time.
In narrowing our view to one particular case – that of Spain – we will see that
while transnational influences were indeed felt, they were also conveniently
transformed and applied so as to be better adapted to the political and educational
policies and goals of the time. The official Spanish pedagogical view held Dewey to be
the sole, unequivocal father of the project method, even when much behind-the-scenes
copying of Stevenson’s work was going on. Dewey was being considered in this case as
the founding father of the democratic school, one whose implantation through the use of
the project method would place particular importance on its socializing and cooperative
aspects. Many texts forged a direct link between deweyan ideas on democracy and
education and the projects being carried out. Although it was never stated explicitly,
Spanish pedagogues of the time were carrying on a tradition that dated back to the
beginning of the 19th century: the search for a ‘national method’. Such a method was
supposed to provide a kind of national, common identity to the Spanish populace, and in
the 1930’s there was no shortage of idealistic pedagogues who believed that this
character would be marked by a strong sense of solidarity, cooperation and team spirit.
The ingenuousness of these pedagogues, who saw the project as a path that would
lead to a better, more equal and more democratic society, was made tragically evident in
1936 when the Civil War and the triumph of Franco did away with the word
‘democracy’ in the classroom and in the collective memory of Spain.
18
Notes
Iriye, Akira. “Transnational History.” Contemporary European History 13, no. 2 (2004): 211.
Yeoh, Brenda S.A., Karen P.Y. Lai, Michael W. Charney and Tong Chee Kiong. “Approaching
Transnationalisms.” In Approaching Transnationalisms. Studies on Transnational Societies, Multicultural
Contacts, and Imaginings of Home, edited by Brenda S.A. Yeoh, Michael W. Charney and Tong Chee
Kiong. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003: 1-2.
3
Iriye, “Transnational History,” 213.
4
Dasgupta, Sudeep. “Cultural Constellations, Critique and Modernity: An Introduction”. In
Constellations of the Transnational: Modernity, Culture, Critique, edited by Sudeep Dasgupta.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007: 13.
5
Smith, Michael P. Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001: 3.
6
Fuchs, Eckhardt. “Networks and the History of Education.” Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 2 (2007):
187.
7
Khagram, Sanjeev, James V. Riker and Kathryn Sikkink (Eds.). Restructuring World Politics.
Transnational Social Movements, Networks and Norms. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2002: VII.
8
Charle, Christophe, Jürgen Schriewer and Peter Wagner (Eds.). Transnational Intellectual Networks.
Forms of Academic Knowledge and the Search for Cultural Identities. Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag,
2004: 13.
9
Ibid., 13.
10
Barnes, Walter. “The New Education: An interpretation.” Educational Review LXIV (1922): 124-134.
11
Knoll, Michael. “The Project Method: Its Vocational Education Origin and International
Development.” Journal of Industrial Teacher Education 34, no. 3 (1997): 59-80.
12
Cited in ibid., 65.
13
Snedden, D.S., C.A. Prosser, and R.W. Stimson. “The part-time and project method necessary to an
effective system of agricultural schools for Massachusetts.” In Report of the Board of Education of
Massachusetts on agricultural education. Boston: Weight and Potter, 1911: 41-61. Cited in Schäfer,
Ulrich. Internationale Bibliographie zur Projektmethode in der Erziehung 1895-1982. Teil 1:
Systematischer Katalog. Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 1988: 579.
14
Stevenson was also professor at the Universities of Wisconsin and Illinois, primarily in the field of life
insurance education. “A Memorial: John Alford Stevenson.” Journal of the American Association of
University Teachers of Insurance 17, no. 1 (1950): 126-127.
15
Stevenson, John Alford. The project method of teaching. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1922:
43 and 119.
16
Ibid., 2.
17
Horn, Ernest. “Criteria for judging the Project Method.” Educational Review LXIII (1922): 94.
18
Foster, Patrick N. “Industrial Arts/Technology Education as a Social Study: The Original Intent?”
Journal of Technology Education 6, no. 2 (1995): 4.
19
Kilpatrick, William H. “The Project Method.” Teachers College Record 19 (1918): 319-334. In
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4954 [cited 6 March 2007].
20
Bonser, Frederick Gordon. “The fundamental character of the Project Method.” Progressive Education
I, no. 2 (1924): 62.
21
Hosic, James F. and S. E. Chase. Brief Guide to the Project Method. New York: World Book, 1924.
22
Levine, David. “The Project Method and the Stubborn Grammar of Schooling: A Milwaukee Story.”
Educational Foundations 15, no. 1 (2001): 5-24.
23
Educational Review LXIII (1922): 364.
24
Watras, Joseph. “Boyd Bode, Jerome Bruner, and engaging student’s interests.” Philosophical Studies
in Education 34 (2003): 152.
25
Krackowizer, Alice M. Projects in the primary grades. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1919: 8-10.
26
Wells, Margaret Elizabeth. A project curriculum. Dealing with the project as a means of organizing the
curriculum of the elementary school. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1921.
27
Hosic, James F. Sample Projects. First Series. New York, 1920.
28
Collings, Ellsworth. An Experiment with the project curriculum. New York: Macmillan, 1923.
29
Knoll, Michael. “Faking a dissertation: Ellsworth Collings, William H. Kilpatrick, and the «Project
Curriculum».” Journal of Curriculum Studies 28 (1996): 193-222.
30
Bonser, “The fundamental character of the Project Method,” 62.
31
Educational Review LXII (1921): 263.
32
Hartman, Gertrude. “The changing conception of the curriculum.” Progressive Education I, no. 2
(1924): 61.
1
2
19
Noble, Stuart Gratson. “The progressive teacher’s attitude toward new theory and practice.”
Educational Review LXV (1923): 292.
34
Ruediger, William C. “Project Tangentials.” Educational Review LXV (1923): 243-246.
35
Horn, “Criteria for judging the Project Method,” 95.
36
Knoll, Michael. “John Dewey und die Projektmethode: Zur Aufklärung eines Mißverständnisses.“
Bildung und Erziehung 45 (1992): 89-108.
37
Kilpatrick, William H. “The Project Method in college courses in education.” Educational Review
LXIV (1922): 207-209.
38
Bode, Boyd Henry. “The project method.” In Modern educational theories. New York: Macmillan,
1927: 141-167.
39
Heffron, John M. “The Lincoln School of Teachers College: Elitism and educational democracy.” In
“Schools of Tomorrow”, Schools of Today. What Happened to Progressive Education, edited by Susan F.
Semel and Alan R. Sadovnik. New York: Peter Lang, 1999: 154.
40
Keetor, Katharine L. “Making a play city.” Progressive Education I, no. 2 (1924): 78.
41
Kliebard, Herbert M. The struggle for the American Curriculum. 1891-1958. Boston: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1986: 168.
42
Yeomans, Edward. “The Ojai Valley School.” Progressive Education I, no. 2 (1924): 64.
43
Morse, Lucia Burton. “Living as education.” Progressive Education I, no. 2 (1924): 68.
44
Zavitz, Edwin C. “Projects in the Moraine Park School.” Progressive Education I, no. 2 (1924): 88-91.
45
Tate, Harry L. “An evaluation of the Project Method.” The Elementary School Journal 37, no. 2
(1936): 131.
46
Lawn, Martin. “Borderless Education: Imagining a European Education Space in a Time of Brands and
Networks.” In Fabricating Europe: The Making of an Educational Space, edited by António Nóvoa and
Martin Lawn. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002: 20. Quoted in Goodman, Joyce. “Working for Change Across
International Borders: the Association of Headmistresses and Education for International Citizenship.”
Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 1 (2007): 167-168.
47
Brehony, Kevin J. “A New Education for a New Era: The Contribution of the Conferences of the New
Education Fellowship to the Disciplinary Field of Education 1921-1938.” Paedagogica Historica 40, nos.
5 & 6 (2004): 737.
48
Unless there was a reference in the first ten issues, which I was not able to consult.
49
“The outlook tower.” The New Era 7, no. 27 (1926): 91-93.
50
Davis, Mary C. “Projects in Greek Life.” The New Era in Home and School (1930): 77-79; Lane,
Robert H. “Progressive Education in a Large City System.” Ibid.: 80-82; Curtis, Nell. “Jungle Beasts – A
Project for Eight-Year-Olds.” Ibid.: 85-86; Walker, Harriet B. “A Bible Project in a Secondary School.”
Ibid.: 87-88; Ballow, Marion L. “Projects in World Literature.” Ibid.: 89; Barker, Hazel M. “The
Romance of Exploration – A School Project.” The New Era in Home and School 14, no. 2 (1933): 52-56.
51
Snodgrass, N.S. “Three Years of the Dalton Plan in a Scottish School.” The New Era 7, no. 28 (1926):
169.
52
Ingram, Elizabeth. “A Spring Project.” The New Era in Home and School (1930): 83-84; Davies, E.D.
“A Project in a Rural School.” Ibid. (1931): 27-30; Gull, H.R.F. “First Steps to Freedom. Dairy Project.”
Ibid. 13, no. 5 (1932): 159; Daniell, K. “Build and Learn! An Account of an Experiment Carried Out in a
Liverpool School.” Ibid. 14, no. 9 (1933) and 14, no. 10 (1933): 245-248.
53
“Dr. C. W. Kimmins and the choice of a ‘Prep’ School.” The New Era in Home and School (1930):103.
54
“Notre Ligue.” Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 6 (1923): 23.
55
“L’École Internationale.” Pour l’Ére Nouvelle 14 (1925): 21.
56
“L’École Internationale.” Pour l’Ére Nouvelle 15 (1925): 27.
57
Vidal, Jean. “La Doctrine de la ‘Nouvelle Éducation’.” Revue Pédagogique (1923): 110-121.
58
Ferrière, Adolphe. “A new method of teaching and a new school.” Revista de Pedagogía 39 (1925): 9798.
59
Bovet, Pierre. “El ‘project method’ en los Estados Unidos según Collings”. In Ferrière, Adolphe. La
libertad del niño en la escuela activa. Madrid: Francisco Beltrán, 1928: 265-282. The fact that Ferrière
included this monograph in a book which had as its unifying thread children’s freedom, aside from the
analysis of Bovet’s critique, in which he stressed the infant’s interest as a criteria for choosing the
contents of a curriculum supports my affirmation regarding the classification and labelling as
‘individualizers’ that the Swiss pedagogue made of the project method.
60
Semel, Susan F. “The City and Country School: a progressive paradigm.” In “Schools of Tomorrow”,
Schools of Today, 125.
61
Decroly, Ovide and Buyse, Raymond. “Le Rêve entrevu. Une journée à ‘Park School’ (Buffalo, EtatsUnis).” Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 4 (1922): 74 and Delgoffe, J. and Dr. D. “Une École expérimentale à New33
20
York.” Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 7 (1923): 50. These articles were included by Ferrière in a brief bibliography
in French about the project method.
62
Depaepe, Marc, Frank Simon, and Angelo Van Gorp. “The Canonization of Ovide Decroly as a ‘Saint’
of the New Education.” History of Education Quarterly 43, no. 2 (2003): 224-249.
63
Ivanoff, S. W. “Le système complexe de l’enseignement en Russie.” Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 41 (1928):
177-179.
64
“Une semaine d’éducation nouvelle à Paris.” Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 37 (1928): 85 and “Echos de la
Semaine de l’Institut J.J. Rousseau à Paris.” Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 40 (1928): 155-156.
65
Butts, Marie. “Los centros de interés, los ‘proyectos’ y la simplificación del empleo del tiempo.” La
Escuela Moderna XLI, no. 480 (1931): 390-396.
66
“Voix de différents pays.” Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 17 (1925): 39.
67
“Freedom Through Method.” The New Era 8, no. 32 (1927): 153.
68
“Les Méthodes nouvelles.” Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 32 (1927): 232.
69
Luzuriaga, Lorenzo. “La Pédagogie de l’Équipe.” Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 31 (1927): 193; “La pedagogía
del equipo.” Revista de Pedagogía 69 (1927): 405 and “Spain.” The New Era 8, no. 32 (1927): 179.
70
Ferrière, Adolphe. “Chronique du Congrès.” Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 51 (1929): 223-224.
71
Brehony, Kevin J. “A New Education for a New Era,” 750.
72
All of the information gathered from the monographic issue dedicated to the project method by the
publication Progressive Education was a small paragraph of the article by Bonser about its basis in the
psychological principle of repetition of satisfactory experiences. Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 14 (1925): 25. In
other cases he was aligned with the individualizing methods together with the Dalton plan. From Beatrice
Ensor’s article all that was included was her reference to the synthetic nature of the method and the
principle that ‘l’enfant est le point de départ, le centre et le but’. Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 22 (1926): 139.
73
Gebhard, Julius. “The Project Method in the Infant’s School.” The New Era in Home and School 16,
no. 4 (1935): 102-105.
74
De Coster, Tom, Marc Depaepe, Frank Simon, and Angelo Van Gorp. “Dewey in Belgium: A Libation
for Modernity? Some intellectual plays about his presence and possible influence, and the ways in which
such research can be shaped.” In Inventing the Modern Self and John Dewey: Modernities and the
Travelling of Pragmatism in Education, edited by Thomas S. Popkewitz. New York: Palgrave, 2005: 85109.
75
This could possibly be the weak point of my model of the reception in Spain of ideas from the New
Education, which contemplates four stages, from the original author to the appropriation of the method by
the schoolteachers. Pozo Andrés, Mª del Mar, del. “La renovación pedagógica en España (1900-1939):
Etapas, características y movimientos.” In Vº Encontro Ibérico de História da Educação. Castelo Branco:
Alma Azul, 2005: 121-123.
76
The pedagogical magazines studied were the following: Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza
(1915-1936); Revista de Pedagogía (1922-1938); La Escuela Moderna (1915-1934); Revista de Escuelas
Normales (1923-1936); El Magisterio Español (1915-1936); El Magisterio Nacional (1929-1936); Avante
(1929-1936); Escuelas de España (1929-1936), Butlletí dels Mestres (1933-1938) and Cultura Española
(1930-1934).
77
Tyack, David and Larry Cuban. Tinkering toward Utopia. A Century of Public School Reform.
Cambridge, Mss.: Harvard University Press, 1995.
78
Archive of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE); 103/797 and Moreno de Sosa, Juana. El
“project method”. Madrid, 1922; Archive JAE, M-122.
79
Adams, John. “The Project Method.” In Modern developments in educational practice. London:
University of London, 1922: 227-248.
80
Mata, Ángel R. “Un nuevo método de enseñanza: el project method.” Revista de Pedagogía 18 (1923):
206-211.
81
Aguayo, Alfredo M. “El método de proyectos.” Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza 777
(1924): 353-360.
82
Pozo Andrés, Mª del Mar, del. “La Escuela Nueva en España: Crónica y semblanza de un mito.”
Historia de la Educación 22-23 (2003-2004): 344-345.
83
Rodríguez, Gerardo. “Dos aspectos de nuestra renovación pedagógica.” La Escuela Moderna XXXIII,
no. 382 (1923): 481-487.
84
Wells, Margaret Elizabeth. Un programa escolar desarrollado en proyectos. Madrid: Revista de
Pedagogía, 1929.
85
Método de proyectos. Madrid: La Lectura, 1925.
86
Escuelas de España. III, no. 2 (1931): 118.
21
“Un ejemplo de escuela activa.” Revista de Pedagogía 40 (1925): 178-179; 42 (1925): 269-271 and
Luzuriaga, Lorenzo. Escuelas activas. Madrid: J. Cosano, 1925: 49-63.
88
For example, the periodical La Escuela Moderna published an article by Marion G. Clark as well as
one by J. F. Hosic and Sara E. Chase. In both cases, reference was made to the original North American
source – The Journal of Educational Methods and Brief Guide to the Project Method, respectively –, but
not to the actual source of the translation. The linguistic style used in the Spanish version gives me reason
to believe that the translator was Latin American, and it is entirely possible that the publication containing
the material was of the same origin. In the Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza an article was
published – furnishing neither an author nor a source – which was clearly not Spanish, given that the
institutions mentioned were unknown in Spanish school culture. Clark, Marion G. “Dirección práctica de
la enseñanza por proyectos.” La Escuela Moderna XXXV, no. 400 (1925): 7-19; Hosic, J. F. and Chase,
Sara E. “Notas de Pedagogía práctica. Sección práctica. La frutería (Proyecto para el segundo grado).” La
Escuela Moderna XXXVI, no. 418 (1926): 498-501 and “La escuela y la sociedad en el método de
proyectos.” Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza 806 (1927): 138-143.
89
“La escuela y la sociedad en el método de proyectos,” 138 and “Sobre el «método de proyectos».”
Revista de Pedagogía 64 (1927): 199.
90
Butts, Marie. “Los centros de interés, los «proyectos» y la simplificación del empleo del tiempo,” 390396. Also published in Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza 848 (1930): 353-357 and Cultura
Española 91 (1933): 9-11. This last article states that the information came from the magazine
Enciclopedia de Educación de Montevideo.
91
“El trabajo por grupos.” Revista de Pedagogía 56 (1926): 366.
92
Sáinz, Fernando. El método de proyectos. Madrid: Revista de Pedagogía, 1928: 66.
93
Comas, Margarita. “El método de proyectos en las escuelas urbanas.” Revista de Pedagogía 110
(1931): 63.
94
Sáinz, Fernando. “Un medio de vitalizar la escuela rural.” Revista de Pedagogía 85 (1929): 9-15 and
Sáinz, Fernando. El método de proyectos en las escuelas rurales. Madrid: Revista de Pedagogía, 1931: 78.
95
Comas, Margarita. El método de proyectos en las escuelas urbanas. Madrid: Revista de Pedagogía,
1931.
96
Sáinz, Fernando. Las escuelas nuevas norteamericanas. Madrid: Revista de Pedagogía, 1928: 21.
97
Navarro Pavía, Vicente and Vicente Mengod Andrés. Desde la Escuela. El hacer escolar en la
práctica. Valencia: J. Vicente Pont Ferrer, n.d. [1934?]: 163-164.
98
Resa Pascual, Severiano. El Método de Proyectos en una Escuela española. Gerona: Dalmáu Carles,
Pla, 1935: 32.
99
Iglesias, Enrique. “Tópicos y realidades. El Método de Proyectos y el respeto a la personalidad del
niño.” Avante 79 (1935): 18-21.
100
López Fernández, Mariano. La escuela activa y democrática. Barcelona: Imp. Elzeviriana, 1936: 157158.
101
Bayón, David and Ángel Ledesma. El Método de Proyectos. Realizaciones. Madrid: Escuelas de
España, 1934: 88-89.
102
Sometimes the project was defined as ‘a well-linked chain of centres of interest’. Martí Alpera, Félix.
Ensayos del método de proyectos. Madrid: Revista de Pedagogía, 1934: 10.
103
Bayón, David. “Métodos nuevos. Detractores y defensores.” Escuelas de España 8 (1934): 37.
104
“En el Seminario de Pedagogía, de Barcelona.” La Escuela Moderna XLII, no. 486 (1932): 104-107.
105
“Assaigs del mètode de projectes.” Butlletí dels Mestres 152 (1936): 187-188.
87
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