Engaging Children's Minds: The Project Approach

This new edition incorporates many insights and strategies the authors have learned while working extensively with teachers to implement the project approach. Since the popular first edition was published in 1989, the authors have continued to help teachers around the world understand the benefits of this approach. Katz and Chard discuss in great detail the philosophical, theoretical, and research bases of project work. The typical phases are presented and detailed suggestions for implementing each one are described. Using specific examples, this book clarifies and articulates the process and benefits of the project approach.

These specific examples outline how children's intellectual development is enhanced. Years of working with teachers and young children from preschool to primary age provide the authors with first hand experience for employing the project approach. Helpful guidelines will aid teachers in working with this approach comfortably in order to gain the interset of children and in order for those to grow and florish mentally.

LILIAN G. KATZ is Professor Emerita of Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she is also Director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary & Early Childhood Education. She is past President of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and is Editor of the first on-line peer reviewed early childhood journal, Early Childhood Research & Practice. Her most recent book, Talks with Teachers of Young Children (Ablex,1995), is a collection of her best known early essays and several recent ones.

SYLVIA C. CHARD is Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Alberta. She has conducted workshops and institutes on the Project Approach in North America and overseas and has written two Practical Guides for Teachers published by Scholastic.