Studies in the Education of Adults

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Exploring the transformative potential of project-

based learning in university adult education

Astrid Von Kotze & Linda Cooper

To cite this article: Astrid Von Kotze & Linda Cooper (2000) Exploring the transformative
potential of project-based learning in university adult education, Studies in the Education of
Adults, 32:2, 212-228, DOI: 10.1080/02660830.2000.11661431

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212 Studies in the Education of Adults Vol. 32, No.2, October 2000

Exploring the transformative

potential of project-based learning
in university adult education
ASTRID VON KOTZE
University of Natal, South Africa
LINDA COOPER
University of Cape Town, South Africa

Abstr act
This paper critically explores the potential of Project Based Learning (Pbl) to facilitate
socially transformative kinds of learning. It focuses on a model of Pbl developed at the
Catholic University of Leuven for students of ‘Social Pedagogy’, which has its origins in
the social democratic concerns of linking student learning to real-life community
problems. The paper explores the pedagogic and epistemological considerations for
adopting such a model of Pbl in university adult education in South Africa. It argues that
it has the potential of allowing students to construct new knowledge which is action-
oriented and socially relevant; of emphasising collective learning and promoting an
inclusive approach to knowledge production and dissemination; and of strengthening
critical reflectivity and creativity. In the final section, the paper raises concerns around
recent shifts that reflect increasing pressures on universities to become more
vocationally and market oriented. It concludes that Pbl can as easily be used to support
the ideology of ‘new vocationalism’ as it can to support a more radical education
agenda. The challenge facing university adult education in South Africa is how to use
Pbl not only to equip students with the means to survive in a ‘risk society’, but also to
build their confidence and ability to challenge and re-negotiate the current terms of
globalisation.

In tr oduction
Adult educators in South Africa, as elsewhere, are subject to – and subjected to – the
tensions arising from conditions that are market driven rather than people driven,
systems oriented rather than focused on human relationships, individualistic and
competitive rather than collective and co-operative, and reproductive of inequalities
rather than favouring social integration. Educators and educational institutions are under
pressure to design curricula that will serve national priorities to become more
economically effective, efficient, competitive and flexible, and which favour instrument-
alism and vocationalism over critical faculties (Smyth, 1996). In other words, educators
Exploring the transformative potential of project-based learning in university adult education 213

are expected to service the ideology of neo-liberalism and to reproduce the idea that
what is in the best interests of the economy is also in the best interests of the learners.
In this climate, university-based adult educators can do one of two things. They can
reflect and perpetuate the structures of advantage and disadvantage of society by
contributing to: ‘the juggernaut of exclusionary processes which are seemingly
inherent in the present developments of capitalism and through which the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer’ (Shanahan, 1998, 846). Alternatively, university adult
education (UAE) institutions can attempt to develop curricula that work towards
greater inclusivity, combining the short-term goals of self-improvement with the longer-
term goal of changing the social order. Such curricula acknowledge that students come
to university because they want a degree of some kind, but assert that it is possible to
‘facilitate both the credentials and a new and truly liberating consciousness’ (Pritchard
Hughes, 1998, 139). In such curricula, UAE does not simply service the national plan; it
fosters in students critical questions, a desire to seek alternatives, and a sense of civic
responsibility.
Such curricula are what we will refer to as ‘construction sites’, where students
engage in forms of social practice of which learning is but a part. At this site various
participants contribute different knowledges and tools in order to craft together – in a
carefully negotiated process – ‘useful knowledge’ (Johnson, 1988). As they work at this
project, it grows into a shape that is not entirely pre-discernible because it is dynamic
and living, representing many different voices and constituencies, accommodating
different needs and desires, and reflecting a spectrum of aesthetic considerations. This
model of curriculum seems most appropriate in a ‘risk society’ in which there are no
certainties, no easy ‘truths’, no clear-cut development options (Beck, 1992) but clear
winners and losers.
This paper charts some of our efforts in search of a ‘construction site’ model of
learning. In particular, it focuses on Project Based Learning (Pbl) and critically explores
its potential to be a ‘construction site of learning’. We became interested in Pbl after a
research trip to institutions in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark where Pbl is
offered in various forms. After comparing other models with that at the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, where Pbl is an option for students in the field of ‘Social
Pedagogy’1 in their post-graduate years of study, we decided to pursue the ‘Leuven
model’ further. In subsequent literature searches we discovered that much of the
literature on Pbl uses ‘project-based learning’ interchangeably with ‘problem-based
learning’, and focuses predominantly on case studies from the medical field, on the
usefulness of skills acquired in terms of the market, or on the field training of
professionals. What distinguishes the use of Pbl in the training of adult educators at
Leuven are the social democratic concerns that underpin and are supported by it’ (Poell
et al, 1998). Here, Pbl is directly linked to community development where non-
governmental organisations (NGOs) or community organisa-tions identify a real life
problem that acts as the starting point for students, working in groups, to undertake
community-oriented research that integrates theory and practice.
This model of Pbl holds immediate relevance for those of us engaged in UAE in
South Africa where the majority of adult education students come from community
settings. It offers a model that closely links UAE study and community development, is
based on cooperative learning principles, and seems to offer a collective alternative to
current notions of ‘self-directed learning’, which are increasingly shaped by a context
of growing individualism and competitiveness.
214 Astrid von Kotze and Linda Cooper

But it is the epistemological dimensions of Pbl that interest us most here. This model
of Pbl seems to offer a curriculum that is based not on the desire to eradicate ‘deficits’;
that is, it does not assume that students have a lack of knowledge or skills that need to
be ‘filled in’. Rather, Pbl seems to open up possibilities for our students to draw on their
prior expertise and knowledge (nurtured in collective struggle), and to build on their
experience gathered at their different sites of practice and learning. Furthermore, it
would allow them collectively to construct new knowledge that is action-oriented and
socially relevant, while at the same time gaining academic recognition and
accreditation.
Not much has been written in English about Pbl at universities (Poell, v.d. Krogt and
Warmerdam, 1998, Ulriksen 1997), and this paper will not seek to fill the gap of
research articles on Pbl. Instead, on the threshold of experimenting with the
application of Pbl in UAE in South Africa, we explore what we consider to be some of
the important pedagogic and epistemological considerations for adopting Pbl in UAE
curricula. The paper is in three parts: first, we give a brief outline of Pbl as practised at
the Division of Social Pedagogy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.
Second, we explore the pedagogic and epistemological assumptions which make the
Leuven model of ‘project-based learning’ potentially so promising for UAE in South
Africa. Finally, we raise a number of issues and concerns around the potential for Pbl to
provide a model of learning that works towards greater equity and equality, in the
current context of increasing pressures on UAE to deliver education that supports
global economic competitiveness.
The Belgium-based research for this paper is based mainly on primary and
secondary sources. First, we consulted documents such as student information
brochures, both from past years and recently re-worked versions; other texts for
students and colleagues on Pbl and Pbl-related matters; files/folders documenting
actual research projects undertaken and/or Pbl group products. Next, we were
observers at a few weekly meetings of student project groups, participant observers in
some of their final project presentations, both to participating organisations and the
other Pbl groups, and observers at a final evaluation session. We conducted a range of
informal interviews with students, both individually and in groups, about experiences
in and thoughts on Pbl. Academic staff members who supervise project work, very
generously made themselves available for filling in details and offering answers to our
endless questions, over a period of ten weeks. Their critical support was particularly
valuable when we began to interpret some of the changes that are in evidence in Pbl
documents and current practice. In a final seminar based on a draft version of this
paper, they responded to some of our assumptions and the hopes we have about the
potential of Pbl. They also lead us to think about how we could learn from their
experience with regard to creative responses to the pressures of neo-liberalism.

Pr oject based lear n in g: th e ‘Leuven ’ Model

Project-based learning at university institutions arose in the 1970s in Europe as part of a
move for curriculum change and the democratisation of universities. It is a process in
which students work in groups, in a sustained way over a number of weeks, on a
project that is usually built around a problem. Depending on the learning purpose,
different models of project-based learning place emphasis on either the ‘project’ or the
‘problem’ dimension of the exercise. What follows is a brief overview of the key
Exploring the transformative potential of project-based learning in university adult education 215

distinguishing features of project-based learning at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

(KU Leuven).
At KU Leuven, PBL is an option chosen by students in the field of social pedagogy, in
their third and fourth years of study.2 As the current information brochure for students
states, PBL in social pedagogy is informed by three main considerations:

1. Scientific consideration: unlike in other subjects the emphasis is not on the system-
atic dissemination of subject matter or theory, but on the solution of real problems.
As the information brochure states, ‘the task of a project group can be described as
the analysis and (partial) solution of a problem, in a continuous exchange of experi-
ence and reflection, in a scientific and socially relevant manner’(Baert et al, 1999).
Students should consider and apply previously learnt psychological, sociological,
anthropological and ethic-philosophical knowledge in order to analyse a problem
and work towards a solution.
2. Professional consideration: ‘project work is by definition group work in the form
of a self-directed (independently planning) learning and work group’(ibid). Based
on the idea that the best form of professional development is ‘learning by doing’,
students have to take care of both the task at hand, and maintain the group as a pro-
ductive collective, through autonomously planning, executing and evaluating the
project.
3. Democratic consideration: project-based learning was inspired by the democratis-
ing tendencies that began in the 1970s, and it still seeks to contribute to the democ-
ratisation of the traditionally authoritarian university. In fact, bridging the gap
between academic staff, professionals and students is still seen as one of the
strengths of this method, as ‘the introduction of project-based education meant the
end of professor-centred instruction at social pedagogy – at least for the subjects
that were replaced by it, for the rest we still have lectures . . . In our project-based
education the student is not a passive listener anymore in the professor’s lectures . . .
Both work together in the project group’ (Vangeneugden, 1997).

Unlike Pbl models in other university settings, Leuven projects are executed in
conjunction with service organisations and non-government organisations that have a
long tradition of delivering services to various constituencies within communities. This
shifts the site of learning from the academy to outside the university, requiring students
to apply their theoretical knowledge and research skills to the ‘real world’. At the same
time, students can render a real service to the sector in which they may work after
completion of their studies. To this end, organisations are invited to make a ‘bid’ for a
project, based on ‘a problem of great relevance in terms of the long-term strategies of
the organisation’ (Baert et al, 1999). 3 Project bids are reviewed by a group of staff and
students and the most appropriate ones are then offered to students who ‘sign up’ for
the topic of their choice. In selecting projects, attention is paid to their potential to
develop a critical-reflective approach and a ‘democratic, emancipatory perspective’.4
For example, an organisation of organic farm produce growers may ask for a project
group to assist them in finding a way of building a stronger and more regular clientele
for their produce. In conjunction with a representative from the organisation, students
undertake to research the problem and design and test an appropriate response.
Learning in project groups happens in roughly five phases:
• students select a topic and form groups;
216 Astrid von Kotze and Linda Cooper

• they plan their project and present plans to each other;

• they have weekly meetings in which they report on work done, discuss their learn-
ing, and plan the next week;
• they prepare and conduct an ‘agogic moment’ where the ‘outcome’ of the project is
presented to the commissioning organisation;
• they prepare a comprehensive report on the project (both content and process) and
participate in a collective evaluation process, involving all students in the group and
relevant academic staff. (Baert et al, 1999)

Assessment is formative as well as summative, and based on two factors: participation

in the group and group process, and the quality of the research and other project-
related work. Thus, students are expected to learn on two levels: as members of
collaborative learning groups, and as students of social pedagogy.

Pedagogic an d epistemological possibilities of Pbl

The main difference between the model of Pbl used in ‘Social Pedagogy’ at KU Leuven
and other universities is its emphasis on ‘problem solving’ as a socially situated practice
serving socially developmental ends, as opposed to being a purely academic exercise.
In traditional approaches to ‘problem-based learning’, the exercise of defining and
solving a problem can run the danger of becoming just another ‘scientific’ method-
ology. As Ulriksen (1997, 9) warns: ‘The risk in this approach is that theory and method
are reduced to tools for solving problems as if they were screwdrivers or drills’. The
perspective on life as essentially problem-governed, and on professional practice as
problem-solving is debatable in other ways too. As noted by Fenwick and Parsons
(1998, 54):
problem-based learning in professional education teaches through problems abstracted
from embodied social contexts and objectified for the managing gaze-in-training of pre-
service professionals and, in so doing, serves to reinforce the dominance of the
professional elite, ensuring the continued epistemic privilege accorded to performativity
and control.

Due to the socially embedded and developmental orientation of Pbl, KU Leuven seems
to avoid these problems by viewing learning as a productive process of interacting with
and acting on the world. This combines with a number of other features that strengthen
its potential to offer a more socially applied, inclusive and responsible curriculum.
These are discussed below; if they seem somewhat idealised, this serves our intention
of outlining an ideal against which we would like to pitch our designs. As stated earlier,
one of the purposes of this paper is not simply to render a picture of what is, but also of
what could be.

Situated learning
Traditionally, educational institutions have been in the business of transmitting
knowledge. The most common pedagogic practice is one of scientific experts
presenting discipline-specific knowledge, to be internalised by individual students and
transferred at some point in the future to whatever new situations they face.
Knowledge thus ‘transported’ is assumed to pre-exist; its origins are obscured, it is
considered objective and transferable, and, as scientific, it is unquestioned as ‘worth-
Exploring the transformative potential of project-based learning in university adult education 217

while knowing’. In short, knowledge is detached from specific time/space locations

and its conditions of production and application.
The Leuven model of Pbl offers a break with the cognitive learning model, because
the primary site of learning moves beyond the academy to organisations within civil
society. This shift acknowledges that knowledge production is situated within the
world. That is, it involves agency, activity and the world, which ‘mutually constitute
each other’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991, 33).5 Learning is linked to producing and
reproducing life: it is as much part of daily life as eating or sleeping, working and
participating in recreation, building and growing, constructing social connections and
making beautiful objects. Learning is part of our ‘lived experience of participation in
the world’ (Wenger, 1998, 3).
Pbl recognises this link between learning and other activities, and at its best, it
encourages students to explore how, and not simply what, they learn in the process of
engaging with people and the world. Project groups leave the virtual reality of
academic discourse defined by subject-specific knowledge experts and demarcated
terrain of what constitutes worth-while/important knowledge. They interact with the
much more unpredictable world of different service organisations and function as
actors within a wide variety of social practices in the context of competing interests
and power relations.
Organisations submit project requests/proposals with the expectation of obtaining
real help. Their concern is not primarily with supporting students’ learning processes,
but with getting useful and usable results. In this context students have to find ways of
operating within the particular ethos and professional practices of an organisation, that
is itself pushed and pulled by socio-economic, political and cultural demands, while at
the same time trying to affect those in some or other way. For example, a project group
working with an organisation that assists immigrants is quickly confronted with a
whole spectrum of issues. While university-based study can prepare students to
recognise such tensions, how can it prepare them (for example) to negotiate the right
of tax-paying foreigners to vote? Such learning happens as part of social and political
action, not in classroom reading.
‘Academic knowledge’ has come to be understood as synonymous with knowledge
that is ‘unreal’, unapplied, remote or irrelevant. This may partially be due to the fact
that the very process of reflection and writing is an orderly process of selecting,
ordering and rationally presenting information, all of which tends to obscure the social
embeddedness of our actions and ideas. In this process the connections between
people and their bodies, their social contexts, their emotions and intuitions, and their
relationship to the world is severed – and the depth of knowledge and knowing is lost.6
It is not surprising that calls for a greater orientation of learning towards a market
location are seen as a positive development in university education and training. Pbl
seeks to re-situate learning in its social context, but by linking learning to service, it
promotes the principle that in an environment where higher/further education is still
very much a privilege for a few, those few have a responsibility to give something back
to their communities.
In its ideal form, Pbl seems capable, more than other forms of learning at university,
of subjecting the constructed nature of knowledge to scrutiny. This can create
understanding that the knowledge employed to produce and reproduce social,
economic and political relations is manufactured, and hence changeable. Instead of
working with pre-defined knowledge, as students encounter and participate in various
218 Astrid von Kotze and Linda Cooper

organisations and groups of people (including their own project group), they become
aware of the process of knowledge-production within different social practices.

Collective learning
Fundamental to Pbl is a collective process of learning. In Leuven students work in
groups composed of a mix of six to eight third- and fourth-year students. This mix is
deliberate as the fourth years induct third years into the process of collective group-
based learning, creating a social learning situation in which different and differently
aged and experienced people assist each other in discovering and uncovering
connections and making meaning. Furthermore, the mix potentially introduces
interesting power dynamics, with which the group has to learn to deal.
There are three aspects to the collective learning that we find particularly important.
First, collectivity potentially counteracts the deficit model inherent to so much formal
learning. Second, the necessity of establishing a ‘community of practice’ requires the
construction of a group identity and process that has the potential to pre-figure a
communal action model that values shared meanings and priorities. Third, the object of
collective learning is to produce (new) knowledge that represents negotiated interests.
Unlike other curricula where incidental or informal learning from experience is
neither recognised nor valued, Pbl groups are sustained by the contribution that each
member can make to the group not just within the discipline, but with regards to other
skills and knowledges. Contributions are as varied as a particular skill in computer
technology, communicative competency, the ability to mediate in conflict situations,
experience in working in the field, or a thorough grasp of learning theories. Thus,
although students clearly select topics on the basis of what they want to learn, project
work begins by establishing the competencies of each participant, and builds on them
as appropriate and relevant to the project, rather than working purely on the basis of
skills and knowledge deficits. The social learning model established by Wildemeersch
and colleagues (Wildemeersch et al, 1998) helps to illustrate how a balance of available
knowledge and skills, resources and particular learning needs must be established so
that a group can work productively, and happily. It also illustrates how learning in a
project group does not necessarily happen through a linear process of incremental
information-collection. Rather, it happens in leaps and bounds, highs and lows, inward-
and outward-looking movements, through a process of negotiation, as different
members of the group assume different roles in relation to each other, and the ever-
changing task at hand.
Groups are, as Wenger (1998) puts it, ‘communities of practice’ within historical
and social contexts that give structure and meaning to their work, but also define them.
In Pbl success or failure is to a large degree contingent upon the ability of group
members to establish a group identity and modus operandi. This, in itself, is an
important dimension of learning, and one that is assessed formally – both by the group,
by each member individually, and by the support staff. Each group member is evaluated
in relation to her contribution to the functioning of the group in its learning process,
and in terms of the project task at hand. Thus, it is important for students to consider
themselves as functioning parts of a whole, as members of a community, thus
strengthening collective values.
In the process of working together, group members bring their individual
interpretations, personal experiences and views to the task. Collectively the group has
to evolve a way of dealing with the different perspectives, knowledges, viewpoints and
Exploring the transformative potential of project-based learning in university adult education 219

interpretations. Negotiating meaning, analysing how power relations within the group
might privilege one interpretation over another, how scientific discourses are often
valued more than insights based on intuition and emotion, and producing new
understanding and knowledge are demanding and difficult processes that are part of Pbl.
Students not only have to learn how to agree with each other (even if agreement means
deciding to disagree), but must also learn to negotiate with the voices of authority from
the organisation on the one hand, and their academic supervisors on the other.
The knowledge that arises is built on collective efforts, and it reveals itself
embedded in collective processes and intentions. Such knowing is not marked by
private ownership. While in time, it might be traded for personal gain, its origin is in
collective authorship and forms of assessment recognise that it is produced through
collective action in a process governed by commonly agreed rules and norms. The
experience of moving from alienation as an individual to agency through learning and
working within a group has been described variously in feminist writing and in
descriptions of consciousness-raising groups (Loughlin, 1994). We suggest that within
UAE, Pbl might be uniquely placed to facilitate such experience and learning.

Inclusive knowledge
We are interested in the potential of Pbl to promote an exploration of the exclusionary
nature of much knowledge production, particularly within academic paradigms.
Feminist literature and theory, in particular, have provided us with insights and tools for
investigating interconnectedness, and analysing exclusionary discourses. As Stalker
(1996, 102–3) has shown,
Powerful ideological structures are congruent with and indeed underlie and inform
androcentric research. They define what is ‘genuine’ knowledge, its legitimate sources,
and its limits in support of the male agenda. Since ideological structures legitimate some
ways of being and knowing while devaluing others, those who initiate, create, and
maintain them have power over the social discourse. Images, vocabularies, concepts and
knowledge of methods of knowing are parts of a social discourse.

There are two common ways of excluding knowledge: through omission, or by

deletion. The privileging of written text as the main source of information in academic
discourse means that much of the knowledge that is passed on orally has been
invisible. Black experience and perspectives are not well represented in any writing,
and adult education is no exception (hooks, 1981). The South African histories of
resistance are good examples of how important experiences of learning through
organising, mobilising, and consciousness raising via social action campaigns have not
been recorded in writing, and thus legitimised. Similarly, local African ways of dealing
with environmental problems, social strategies for survival, and economic coping
mechanisms are discredited for having no certain scientific base and hence excluded
as ‘knowledge’.
A holistic approach to knowledge production should also include the whole body as
sensor. However, as Michelson (1996, 446) has noted:
With the rise of the modern bureaucratic state . . . the appropriation of the experience of
others and the privileging of mind at the expense of body become explicit material power
moves within which knowledge is coded as power. The erasure of non-rational sites of
knowledge-production such as emotion, the body and material labour is reenacted in the
220 Astrid von Kotze and Linda Cooper

draining of knowledge from the shopfloor, the home and the native village in favour of
professionalised expertise.

Michelson advocates ‘thinking through the body’: listening to our emotional, sensual
and physical beings as informants of self and others, since ‘empathy, anger, desire, and
interestedness are moments of connectedness to self and the world that provide
important evidence about the world’ (Michelson, 1996, 450). We would suggest that Pbl
offers the potential of such ‘thinking through the body’. As members of project groups
interact with each other and the social practices within the organisations they are
working with, they are bound to encounter and experience strong emotional responses.
Rather than discrediting these moments, they could become the source of valuable
information, and lead to important insights. Viewing such knowledge as partial and
unreliable because it is materially and emotionally embedded is lending support to the
claim that ‘scientific’ (male) knowledge is disinterestedness and objective.
‘Deletion’ of knowledge producers is another exclusionary measure. In academic
discourse the subjects of certain kinds of knowledge – women, Black peoples, rural
communities and workers – are often removed from the findings. The source of
information is denied a voice and becomes reified, or simply made to disappear as if the
subject, location, and process of knowledge production were not important to the
message. Furthermore, as researchers and writers record and analyse the experiences
of marginalised and excluded people, they order, sanitise and explicate their
experiences in order to turn it into academically ‘acceptable’ knowledge – that is,
‘scientific’ and ‘objective’ fact. As Michelson (1996, 444) says,
A rhetoric of order and control undergirds these approaches to adult learning. The cerebral,
the objective, the universal are seen as superior to the subjective and particular, and the
whole is cast in highly scientific and objectivist terminology in which the ability to have
power over experience, mining it as a resource while transcending its embodied and socially
situated limitations, is what allows biases to be identified and fallacious thinking overcome.

Finally, project-based learning through service providers and community organisations

recognises the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of knowledge. As knowledge
becomes more and more fragmented into areas of specialisation, with gatekeepers who
jealously guard the expert knowledge of their own discipline, the need to develop a
more holistic approach to knowledge becomes particularly important. Through Pbl
students can potentially develop first-hand insight into how knowledge is constructed
and negotiated by different interest groups, and can experience their own participation
in the collective effort of creating meaning by drawing on interdisciplinary knowledge
in the broadest sense. For UAE in South Africa, where students bring a rich variety of
experiences and different kinds of knowledge, and where the communities they serve
are themselves sources of valuable knowledge, the potential of Pbl to facilitate a more
inclusive approach to knowledge production and dissemination is to be welcomed and
supported.7

Criticality and creativity

Criticality involves working with contradictions and tensions, and analysing power
relations. Criticality is the component that ensures that things remain fluid and that the
potential for transformation can be realised. Pbl can promote the process of
questioning what appears natural and normal (Newman, 1999), and what Shor (1987,
Exploring the transformative potential of project-based learning in university adult education 221

93) has called ‘extraordinarily re-experiencing the ordinary’. This process is about
uncovering and investigating the ‘invisible mechanisms of the works’, and interrogating
the ‘powers that move such works’. For example, a group project focused on trade
relations between a European-based organisation and one in a developing country will
have to examine critically what might constitute ‘fair’ trade for either of the
participating partner organisations, and how it is exercised.
It is the connectedness of knowledge and the collective processes of learning and
knowledge production that facilitate critical reflectivity and learning. Different bits of
information contradict each other, views collide and opposing perspectives open up
tensions. Those are the moments when group members, unsettled by the gaping
disjunctures, can initiate thorough critical questioning in order to understand how
views come to be held and reproduced, and whose interests are represented, possibly
at others’ expense. If the production of knowledge actions such as unearthing,
challenging, comparing, reinforcing and extending are the main occupations of a
project group, then all these activities involve being critical.
Schapiro (1995, 45) suggests that:
The learning relationship is a creative space, known to artists as the sphere of the
imagination, and to sages as the realm of the sacred. Learning is essentially anarchical. It
transcends the structure of knowledge out of which it emerges. It is antithetical to all
hierarchical authority, including that of ideas.

Learning in a collective community of practice can provide a safe environment in

which people are free to experiment and take risks with flights of their imagination.
Projects groups can provide a place where students feel free to identify alternatives, to
play, to dream: to become construction sites of creative productivity. Pbl has the
potential to stimulate lateral thinking and creativity. Critical impulses can either take a
group back to affirming what they already know, but in a more meaningful and
insightful way, or lead it to thinking about alternatives. ‘What if. . .’ is one of the
formulas of creative thinking, as in ‘what if we were to consider independence, self-
reliance and autonomy not as “naturally” good and desirable, but as unsustainable and
counter-life?’ ‘What if we trusted our intuition more, and followed our senses when
assessing a situation, action or person?’

Pbl in th e age of n eo-liber alism

We have described the potential of Pbl for being a more inclusive, situated, critical and
creative form of learning and knowledge production. Productive human activities are
rarely solitary acts, and as project groups work collectively to produce knowledge in
response to a perceived need, the opportunity is created for them to negotiate
meanings and understandings from multiple viewpoints, and to use their whole bodies
as sources of knowing. Pbl draws on interdisciplinary/cross-sectoral information and
represents a composite of different fields of activity, application and theory. The
process of mediating, negotiating and constructing knowledge is realised most fully
through critical questioning, and the use of creative impulses and ‘futuristic’
imagination. All these features have the potential to make learning and knowledge
production in UAE more inclusive. Whether or not these potentials have been fully met
in Leuven in the past, or indeed now, are the not concern of this paper as we are
looking for a ‘model’ rather than an example.
222 Astrid von Kotze and Linda Cooper

This paper set out to explore the potential of Pbl to give students the experience of
collective knowledge production, and its ability to offer both an alternative model of
learning, and an illustration that the knowledge necessary to solve social problems
cannot be found at the level of the individual, but must be worked for collectively and
within the context of a particular social practice. However, there is ultimately no
inherently progressive or radical ‘essence’ to Pbl. Project work – like all teaching and
learning methodologies – can be deployed in a range of ways, to achieve any one of a
range of learning outcomes. Its pedagogic and epistemological significance and
meaning is shaped strongly by the context in which it is used.
At KU Leuven, Pbl was originally conceived in the environment of the 1960s of
heightened struggle both in Europe and other parts of the world for greater
democratisation and social relevance of higher education institutions. In the 1990s
however, higher education has been re-shaped by a very different set of pressures –
essentially those seeking to ensure that such institutions better promote the nation’s
global competitiveness. We note that over the years there seem to have been changes in
the Leuven model of Pbl that reflect this changing broader global environment. In
particular, there appear to be four key changes with regard to the main underlying
considerations, the staff time dedicated to project work, and the format of assessment
and evaluation. All lead to an overall shift from placing value on [it]process[/it] to
placing value on the end product. The shift in emphasis in intended learning outcomes
raises concerns whether considerations of social control are overriding considerations
of educational and social purpose. In the following section, we suggest that these shifts
seem to reflect the pressures on UAE to be more vocationally and market oriented, and
we explore the implications of this in terms of the pedagogic and epistemological
significance of Pbl.

From ‘learning process’ to ‘learning product’?

In 1994/5, KU Leuven’s evaluation report on Pbl, and the student information brochure
referred to ‘didactic consideration’ as one of the three underlying facets of Pbl. This
didactic consideration expressed a concern that the work of social pedagogues would
entail working in and with groups, and thus learning in a goal-oriented project group
would be a good preparation of students for such work. The brochure spelt out that:
‘Project-based learning demands a strong involvement of students in their own learning
process and offers the opportunity to “learn how to learn” (or, learn about learning),
learning how to tackle problems, learning how to find and work with sources,
instruments, methods etc’ (Startmap 1994/5, 13).
The student information brochure for 1999/2000 on the other hand speaks about
group work in the form of a ‘self-planned work and learning group’. What was then
called the ‘didactic consideration’ has now become a ‘professional consideration’. The
outcomes of learning through project work seem less oriented towards ‘learning how
to learn’, and are spelt out more specifically as learning participant and leadership
roles, personal and group responsibilities, social and communication skills, and giving
and receiving feedback. This seems to suggest a shift from learning defined openly as a
process and skill in itself to the acquisition of particular skills related to taking on a
leadership role in effective team-work. While the word ‘didactic’ in the earlier
brochures clearly thematised the learning dimension of the Pbl process, ‘professional’
speaks more about project work as a way of preparing students to take on their
professional role in the world of work. To the outside world, this word could signal that
Exploring the transformative potential of project-based learning in university adult education 223

what is involved here is ‘experts in the making’, offering a ‘professional service’.

Pressures in this direction are coming from students as well. According to one member
of staff, over the past few years students have increasingly expressed concern that they
achieve learning outcomes relevant to their future ‘employability’.

Assessment and evaluation

The new language of the brochure lists much more clearly what the expected learning
outcomes are, and it could be argued that this allows students, the university, NGOs
and agencies in the private sector the opportunity to imagine better what ‘this Pbl’ is all
about. However, there is evidence to suggest that there has been a shift in emphasis
away from the process of doing and learning to a greater stress on the product.
Increasingly, there is pressure on Pbl groups (and on support staff) to work towards a
substantial quality product, which is viewed as having greater importance than the
quality of the learning. Some of this pressure may be unconscious, but when project
reports are produced as publications, described glowingly in the media and held up to
future generations as examples of what is possible, this must exert some pressure on
future groups to do likewise, or be even better. The academic support staff who
supervise a project and who can, within limits, influence the direction it takes, are
under some pressure to try to ensure more impressive products. Competition, it seems,
is creeping in – and this is consistent with the neo-liberal environment that encroaches
on all adult education and training providers.
These changes have been accompanied by changes in the assessment process.
While groups still have to reflect on their process of working together as a group, and
assess how they functioned in terms of interactions with each other, they are no longer
required to show evidence of reflections on learning. The emphasis is increasingly on
the subject matter, the content, the ‘what’ of the research – not on the ‘how’. Questions
like ‘what did you do in order to learn this’? ‘Why did you chose that path rather than
another one’? What assumptions did you make’? How did you know you had learnt
what you planned to learn’? are neither asked, nor answered. In this way, reflectivity
remains at the single-loop level: groups discuss their findings, but not the process that
led to the insight. For example, they may debate whether a set of interviews generated
the information they were looking for, or whether, beyond being a good experience
and a way of developing skills in interviewing, the interviews were in fact worth-while.
But they do not (expressly, overtly, and on record) reflect on the learning process itself.
Greater emphasis on elaborating expected outcomes and clearer guidelines seems
to arise from the need to systematise, order and regulate the ‘messiness’ of Pbl which
we would argue seems to be one of its most important strengths. Pbl is not a linear
process of learning: it is an organic process that should allow learners to stray off the
planned path and discover unknown treasures, develop unforeseen abilities, grow in
unpredictable ways. We believe that it is this unpredictability of process and product
that contains much of the exciting potential of Pbl. As group participants weigh up
alternative options and consider the possibilities and limitations of each, and each in
relation to the other(s), they begin to understand the process of thinking in alternatives
and develop their own capacity for multi-tangent (lateral), imaginative thinking.8
The change in evaluation format away from learning processes to group product
raises the question as to whether Pbl projects are still meta-learning projects.9 The
absence of explicit reflection on learning means that different knowledges and
different ways of knowing are also not made explicit and conscious, and this has
224 Astrid von Kotze and Linda Cooper

implications for the question of criticality. If Pbl works with established sets of (expert)
knowledge, through teams, we must also ask whether it still retains it’s capacity to be
that ‘construction site’ that we search for in our endeavour to find a more inclusive
curriculum. There is a danger that Pbl will become ruled by instrumentality, no
different from other curricula.

Academic support and institutional authority

The change from ‘didactic’ to ‘professional’ considerations has been accompanied by a
reduction of academic support, and a change in the nature of participation by support
staff. The initial concept of Pbl saw two members of staff supporting each group: one
from the academic institution, and one from the ‘outside’ agency. Both staff members
were integral participants in the project work, attending all meetings and contributing
to deliberations, decision-making and knowledge production. The academic staff
member’s function was from the start defined in terms of expert knowledge: ‘it is
desirable that the project should link to the experiences, scientific activities,
knowledge and skills of the staff member’ (Startmap, 1994/5, 9).
However, this role is no longer integral to the group’s work: the number of group
meetings that academic staff members are expected to attend has dropped from
approximately 30 to 35 over the project period, to about half of that (in addition to
being available to students ‘by appointment’). There are a number of possible
explanations for this. Reduction of staff availability to students could well be linked to
increasing pressures on staff to devote more time to publications (the growing ‘publish
or perish’ ethos of universities) rather than to innovative teaching. Linked to this, in
turn, is the global trend towards self-directed learning, where learners are increasingly
expected to take responsibility for their own learning.
Some staff feel this is a positive move towards the development of more self-
directed learning on the part of students. Students have noted the decrease in staff
participation with mixed feelings: while they liked the guidance and support from the
staff, they also enjoy a sense of greater ‘freedom’ and feel more relaxed in a group that
holds meetings in an unsupervised fashion. However, the reduced involvement of
academic staff in projects raises the question of whether this signals a positive
development towards greater self-directedness in learning, or rather an increasing
abandonment of educator responsibility for the learning.
From the outset, Pbl was informed by a desire for greater democratisation of
universities. In the 1999/2000 information brochure there remains a commitment to
the ‘democratic consideration’ of Pbl: the desire to change the traditional relations
between experts and laypersons, that is academic staff and students. In practice
however, reduction in staff support appears to be accompanied by the re-assertion of
institutional authority. More than in the past, academic staff now assesses individual
students’ performance and marks are allocated, rather than collectively negotiated. The
change in assessment procedures seems to indicate that the seat of real value
judgements is retained firmly by the representatives of the institution. This suggests a
shift not only towards greater individualisation of performance and assessment criteria,
but also towards re-asserting the authority of teachers over learners.

From collectivity to ‘team work’?

The increased orientation towards producing expert professionals and more
marketable products, the reduction of staff time, and the changes in the format of
Exploring the transformative potential of project-based learning in university adult education 225

project evaluation must all have some impact on the learning and learning potential of
Pbl. When project work becomes product oriented there is the possibility that project
groups must take the short-cut to what’s best-known and accepted, reproduce theories
and knowledge frameworks rather than invent new ones, and favour those theories that
best serve the market rather than those that interrogate the notion of ‘scientificity’
itself. The impetus of Pbl to stimulate the production of more inclusive knowledge may
get lost as groups are tempted to accept existing solutions. This could signal the loss of
critical engagement and creativity.
However, these changes also suggest a shift in the view of how the project group
should function. With the introduction of clearer guidelines for procedures in the
planning and execution of a project, student groups are no longer left to struggle
painstakingly until they have established themselves as a community of practice.
Instead, they work with a more regulated, ordered process, with more defined roles,
tasks, procedures and feedback mechanisms. There is no doubt that this is a more
efficient and possibly trouble-free way of operating (particularly for staff who are
increasingly under pressure), but it is the task at hand – the project – that takes centre-
stage rather than the building of collectivity, support-systems and a community of
caring.
These changes signal a paradigm shift away from collectivity and community of
practice, to ‘team-building’ and ‘teamwork’. We would argue that there is a difference
between collectivity and the notion of ‘teamwork’ as understood and valued in the
corporate world. Communal learning through collectives involves struggle,
contestation, colluding and colliding, conspiring and conforming (Wenger, 1998, 46),
while teamwork tends to be set up with the help of a set of rules and norms. Like good
teams, collectives build on group members’ strengths. But unlike teams, collectives
have the potential to offer their members the freedom to try out different roles, and
experiment with different behaviours within the safe environment of the group. Since
working with knowledge is not defined solely as a ‘cerebral’ process, but can include
activities that involve the whole body, it is expected that group members feel, intuit,
have hunches, make wild suggestions – all of which are valid for constructing meaning.
The freedom to explore is what makes this good learning. Teams, on the other hand,
are a means towards goal-oriented productivity: teamwork tends to be planned, linear,
often streamlined, task-oriented process, in which each member performs according to
a pre-designed role. Unlike in a collective, there may be no need to understand and
work towards shared values and moral convictions, because these are often pre-
determined by the ‘vision/mission’ of the corporation.
Similarly, creative is not the same as ‘flexible’, even if the corporate world would
like us to believe it. Creativity is not simply harnessed to problem-solving – a means for
coming up with better, more competitive solutions. Creativity is about playfulness and
letting go – about flights of the imagination beyond what is to what could be. It is about
thinking/feeling/creating beyond boundaries.

Implemen tin g Pbl in UAE in South Afr ica: w h ich w ay do w e go?

Earlier, this paper identified two ways in which ‘alternative’ knowledge forms are
excluded from academic discourses – through omission and deletion. However, there is
a third way in which dominant discourses deal with those that challenge them: they
incorporate these alternative discourses through a process of re-articulating and
226 Astrid von Kotze and Linda Cooper

reconstructing the discourses’ elements in a form resembling, or acceptable to, the

dominant discourse.
What has become evident is that there are at least two models of Pbl: one is the
‘ideal version’ in the ‘old’ social democratic framework, while the other is a more
recent development adjusted to the demands and constraints of the neo-liberal
environment. Gee et al (1996, 29) have reminded us of the dangerous similarities
between the ‘new capitalism’ and opposing movements. They point out that:
part of the way in which fast capitalist texts ‘grab us’ is that they use words that name
things which nearly all of us like but which, on reflection are seen to mean slightly (and
sometimes very) different things in fast capitalist texts than they might mean to many of
us: words like ‘liberation’, ‘empowerment’, ‘trust’, ‘vision’, ‘collaboration’, ‘teams’, ‘self-
directed learning’, ‘quality’ and many more.

Both new capitalism and opposing movements reject the idea of knowledge and
learning as locked into and ‘owned’ by private minds, and argue instead that
knowledge and learning are social and distributed, in parts, over multiple people
collaborating with each other in ‘communities of practice’. Both stress collaboration
and communication skills as ‘essential ingredients of group work in which knowledge
is distributed and embedded in the practice and not in the person’ (Gee et al, 1996,
67). Like social democratic movements, the new capitalism blurs traditional borders
between ‘workers’ and ‘managers’ and encourages the undermining of overt authority
through the building of ‘flat’ structures. We have seen how the ‘new’ model of Pbl
might operate with what appear as the same core ideas of collaboration and
democracy, employing the tools of group work and shared inquiry. The main
difference between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ models seems to be in terms of underlying
purposes, values, and politics. However, unless these are articulated clearly, Pbl could
be in danger of becoming just a more vocationally oriented education service to the
neo-liberal agenda.
Writing about Australia, Sedunary (1996) has argued that many elements of the
radical education philosophies that underpinned progressive education movements of
the 1960s and 1970s have been ‘embraced’ and given ‘new direction and legitimacy’ by
the new vocationalism that has emerged out of the 1990s’ corporate alliance of
government, business and unions. All three value the education principles of
interdisciplinarity; equality of access; emphasis on skills rather than content; blending
of ‘mental’ and ‘manual’ work; inquiry and problem-solving rather than passive
regurgitation; and an aversion to the ‘abstract, academic’ world of learning.
Pbl seems to be ideally placed to act as a vehicle for either a radical education
discourse or the education discourse of the ‘new vocationalism’. As we sit poised to
experiment with Pbl in UAE in South Africa, the question we face is not: ‘Which one
should we follow?’ – because, given the influence of the 1990s, we do not have an
entirely free choice in this matter. Instead, the difficult questions we will need to seek
answers to are: Can Pbl help students to be prepared for the market-oriented reality and
dictates of global economic competition, while still retaining critical reflectivity and a
willingness and capacity to question and challenge the world as they know it? Can we
develop a version of Pbl which helps students to keep in tension a recognition that ‘the
market’ credits team-work in which individuals each play their assigned part, but that
real, collective work is underpinned by a belief in interdependency and mutual benefit?
Can Pbl help them to recognise that ‘the market’ privileges expert systems of scientific
Exploring the transformative potential of project-based learning in university adult education 227

knowledge-claims, while at the same time giving them the opportunity to experience
the value of interdisciplinary knowledges that include indigenous epistemological
systems?
How do we instil in students a sense of pride in their new knowledge acquired
through Pbl, while acknowledging that such knowledge may not be valued in the ‘real’
world unless it is put through a process of rational systematisation, abstraction and
conformity? In short, how do we ensure that the new knowledge produced, and the
theories formulated at the ‘construction site’ of Pbl, are not incorporated into the
dominant neo-liberal ideology that defines development primarily in terms of
‘competitive advantage’ and ‘national economic growth’?

Ackn ow ledgemen ts
We would like to gratefully acknowledge the supportive and critically constructive comments offered
by Danny Wildemeersch, to an earlier version of this paper, and to two anonymous reviewers who
raised important issues.
We would also like to express our gratitude to the many students and staff at KU Leuven, who were
ready to answer countless questions, gave of their time and energy in interviews, and opened their
shelves and files for inspection. Their assistance in our learning process was invaluable, and we are
truly thankful for the opportunity to learn from, through and with them. Our thanks also go to those
staff who gave critical feedback on this paper. Final responsibility for the conclusions drawn in this
paper rests, of course, solely with the authors.

Notes
1. Training in social pedagogy prepares students to work in four broad fields of practice: 1) socio-cul-
tural work with adults; 2) socio-cultural work with youth; 3) socio-cultural work with community
development organisations; and 4) human resource development.
2. These are students who have completed two years of ‘Junior College’, comprising a broad intro-
duction to philosophy, psychology, sociology and theories of education. Their Masters degree con-
sists of three years of study – two years of course work, and a final year for their dissertation.
3. It must be pointed out here, that the Department has long-established links with NGOs and other
service providers such as trade unions and public authorities. Years of working together, and the
fact that many of such organisations employ staff who, during their student days at KU Leuven,
were part of a project group and thus know what is involved in this form of learning. This link has
lead to the establishment of a strong network of co-operation that is constantly expanded to
include other agencies, and now includes companies from the private sector.
4. H Baert, pers comm, 19/5/00
5. Compare Alheit (1998) who points out that life course is shaped by institutional procedures and
constructions of normality; thus individuals are always linked to the collective through their life
course.
6. As Michelson suggests: ‘dis-membered’ (1998) In this process the depth of knowledge and know-
ing has got lost.
7. We also need to consider the possibility that Pbl can function to extend the university epistemol-
ogy to the field of practice, and not only the other way round.
8. Wildemeersch (pers comm) argues that ‘Pbl theories in Leuven have never really transcended the
traditional education planning theories . . .’ and that Schön, with his notion of ‘reflective practice’,
‘remained a distant theoretician’.
9. In a seminar held with staff, they acknowledged that there could be a greater concern with ensur-
ing that students reflect critically on their learning processes, and discussed the potential use of
‘learning journals’ to facilitate this process.
228 Astrid von Kotze and Linda Cooper

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