Project-based learning didactics to form citizenship on different education levels

Project-based learning as a didactic system, while being not widely used in the Russian educational context, provides a connection between learners and their communities, deepens the understanding of democracy, and fosters citizenship. The aim of the research is to prove the preference for using the didactic system of “project-based learning” for the formation of citizenship among various categories of learners. The study relies on a comprehensive methodology that combines cultural, personal-activity, and axiological approaches, as well as complementary theoretical and empirical methods (educational modeling, experiment, and surveys). The paper analyzes in detail the pedagogical experiment (N = 66) conducted by the author in the 2023/2024 academic year, which demonstrated that project-based learning contributes to the acquisition of competencies as learners address problems related both to local communities and to global contemporary issues. The author presents developed tools and assessment procedures, the didactic content of project modules, and identifies the challenges and potential of project-based learning. The author concludes that project-based learning is scalable. Organizing a curriculum in the humanities and social sciences within the didactic system of project-based learning has the potential to transform education at both the higher education and secondary school levels. Learners understand connections with the surrounding world and the interconnections among sciences while solving problems of varying complexity. Project-based learning is especially valuable in that it engages learners' intrinsic motivation as the main driver of the educational process. Thus, students perceive learning not only through the lens of grades or the separate acquisition of useful skills, but rather through an understanding of the benefits they can bring to society and how they can become full members of it.