Extracts from John Dewey’s Democracy and Education (1916) Negating Extraneous Aims in PBL

In this article, I present selected extracts and formulations from John Dewey’s seminal book Democracy and Education (1916) that speak to the question of the educational purpose of PBL. Dewey’s work, and in particular this book, is in many ways foundational in regard to arguing for PBL as an educational approach. However, in contemporary discourse, PBL is predominantly tied to what Dewey argued against, namely extraneous aims. Rereading Dewey might help us recover PBL as a form of education ‘worthwhile in its own immediate having’ (p.109).