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This book explores the dynamic approach to student-centred learning known as project-based learning, or project work. It addresses both the concepts and practical application of project-based learning to enhance teaching and learning. It describes empirical case study research into the impact of research-based project work on independent learning for academically-able secondary school students at Hwa Chong Institution, a premier independent school in Singapore. The research investigated how students dealt with an innovative project-based learning curriculum built on a social constructivist approach designed to foster independent learning attitudes. The students had to research and initiate their own projects, and see through the entire process with guidance from their teacher mentors. The case study findings give rich insights into student perspectives and experiences as they engage in projects and respond to real-life challenges and problems. A new theory of project-based learning is presented in the form of theoretical propositions. The research has implications for the professional development of teachers as project work mentors to help prepare their students to be ‘future-proof'in dealing with 21st century study, work and social challenges with confidence. The book highlights compelling reasons for schools to include some form of research-based project work within their curricula, thereby allowing students to engage in collaborative, authentic research.

This ground-breaking book uncovers a hidden history of the professional development of serving teachers. Drawing on hitherto unpublished archive material, Wendy Robinson reveals an optimistic and liberal age of high class conferences in the 1920s and 1930s, in London hotels and Oxford colleges, free from government control, where teachers from across the country and abroad, gathered for professional, intellectual and cultural ‘refreshment'. The status attached to these occasions was signified by the celebrities who graced them, including royalty, public intellectuals, educational practitioners and politicians. Professor Robinson then shows how post-war training became more instrumental, taken over by the Ministry of Education with its centrally-prescribed advanced courses, and, from 1970, by Local Education Authorities'invention of apparently democratic Teachers'Centres. This analysis is complemented by face-to-face interviews with teachers and other practitioners once active in professional development. Fascinating, detailed interviews brilliantly capture teachers'lived experience of professional development and its influence on their teaching, career development and professional identity. Fresh and original, lucidly written by one of the leading historians of education in Britain, A Learning Profession? is essential and engaging reading for those interested in the development of a teaching profession.