PROJECT-BASED LEARNING AS AN APPROACH TO DEVELOP CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

Project-Based Learning is a learner-centered approach, which is known as one of the ways that facilitates the development of professional competencies and promotes learners’ critical thinking skills. This paper provides a selective review of the literature and the analysis of the studies on Project-Based Learning (PBL) in the field of foreign language education and critical thinking skills including the main concepts, key components and a learning process within PBL. PBL has a strong theoretical support from the foreign literature, and most of the researchers understood and implemented it as an approach to foster critical thinking skills in the reviewed studies; however, not all of them complied with its essential elements proposed as “Gold Standard of PBL”. Particularly, the analysis of the selected studies in PBL sphere revealed that most of the researchers did not take into consideration the requirements of the last and main stage of the PBL as “Public product”, that demands the projects to be presented in front of the alternative audience. Even though the final products were designed within these projects, they were not performed out of the classroom, which in its turn is opposite to the policy of rigorous “Project-Based Learning”. Key words: PBL, critical thinking skills, foreign language education