International Journal of Education & the Arts

Citation: Dillon, J. E. (2023). Project-based learning: Toward a world-centered music education. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 24(13). http://doi.org/10.26209/ijea24n13

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.