Project-Based Learning: Toward a World-Centered Music Education

Overview & Synopsis

In recent decades, the discourse of music education and education more broadly has shifted from curriculum-centered to student-centered approaches. In an effort to address the existential dimensions of education, Gert Biesta poses a rhetorical and theoretical alternative: "world-centered education," an orientation directed at enabling what Biesta described as "student subject-ness." Situated within and drawing upon U.S.-based conceptions of music education, I position "project-based learning" as a body of practices through which the possibility of a world-centered orientation--and, thus, student subject-ness--can manifest in music education. To that end, I offer three considerations for music educators of all levels interested in student subject-ness in the practice of project-based learning. To prepare a foundation for these three considerations, the article begins with an explanation of project-based learning, an unfolding of concepts pertinent to Biesta's world-centered education, and a rationale for marrying the two together.