Introduction

This chapter explores whether ‘project-based learning’ (PBL) combined with ‘community curriculum making’ (CCM) (Leat and Thomas, 2017), referred to as PBL/CCM, can provide more critically engaged, confident and informed citizens, and be a catalyst for developing a localised place-based culture and infrastructure of learning opportunities with some of the characteristics of a ‘Learning City’. These potential outcomes of PBL/CCM are explored through the focus of a particular project undertaken in June/July 2018. PBL is a student-centred pedagogy in which students learn through active exploration of realworld challenges and problems. CCM is about making use of place in learning. It involves engaging with the local context and resources, including schools and other stakeholders, to design learning that meets the needs of both students and local communities.

In this chapter, there is an outline of the evolution of PBL/CCM work in the context of the performative culture that has moulded the school curriculum in England over the last 30 years. The chapter discusses how a national curriculum contrasts with a more localised curriculum. There then follows an account of a case-study PBL/CCM week, including an outline of the partners involved. There is a consideration of the good, bad and disconcerting outcomes of the week, which reflect both pragmatic issues and much deeper issues about working towards social justice. The conclusion broaches some wider issues about the role of universities in compulsory education and uses CCM as a lens for considering Tyneside (and its surrounds) as a ‘Learning City’.

Policy context: two metaphors of learning

Anna Sfard (1998) articulated two metaphors of learning: acquisition, in which direct instruction and memory are centre stage, as evident in traditional models of curricula; and participation, in which experience and participation are the source of learning. Sfard makes the point that whereas the proponents of each camp claim supremacy, there is a danger of choosing only one metaphor as we need both. Since the Education Reform Act 1988, England has had a ‘national curriculum’, which largely exemplifies the acquisition metaphor. Initially, this was achieved through specifying taught content but the government has increasingly switched to control by school exam performance.