With the 21st century skills including scientific literacy, problem solving or curiosity as many of its components closely related to science education, project-based instruction seems to be the approach to adopt. Its key principles focused on student activation are designed to enable the otherwise often neglected parts of (science) education.
Despite its long tradition, however, evidence of its effectiveness remains mostly fragmented. In addition, both reviews in this area as well as reports from individual research project deal only with a limited sample of students.
Also, they are highly influenced by particular project-based activities, including teachers' input, which are difficult or even impossible to be generalized. In this contribution, pieces of evidence from literature are put together.
The talk results in a proposal of future endeavours which could have the potential to promote project-based education beyond a mere buzz-word used in practice for various activities, yet without a proper background.