This article from the GLEF presents the case for beginning with real world purposes instead of the abstract knowledge needed to create or develop in the future. Quoting Seymour Papert, “So much better to have the first-grade kid or kindergarten kid doing engineering and leave it to the older ones to do pure mathematics than to do it the other way around”.
It then presents the kind of activities seen in the Futurelabs/Microsoft Project Enquiring Minds which lead learners through their own self directed projects towards answering their own questions. We have been thinking about providing space in our curriculum for this kind of project but with some specific teaching to scaffold this approach according to the independence of different learners.
