2026
Every school is being asked to move beyond rote. Few will be shown how to make learning meaningful.
Immersion 2026 is where you experience the shift yourself — and leave with the Blueprint to lead it in your school.
Experience → Find Meaning → Joy of Doing
Organised by Propel Curriculum×PBL Path
CBSE made it compulsory.
We make it meaningful.
Project-based work is no longer optional in Indian schools. Compliance is now guaranteed — meaning is not. The difference between a project that decorates a display board and a project that changes how children learn is the leader who understands the shift from the inside.
CBSE Circular Skill-81/2025 mandates project-based Kaushal Bodh work for Classes VI–VIII in every affiliated school.
NEP 2020 & NCFSE 2023 call for pedagogy that integrates project-based, inquiry-based, and experiential learning — because children learn best when actively engaged in meaningful work.
Immersion runs as a full-fidelity project-based learning experience — with you inside it. No lecture about PBL can do what three days of living it can. You experience it, find what it means for your school, and taste the joy of doing — the same arc your students will travel when you lead the shift from rote-based to project-based learning.
Do a real project, end to end, alongside fellow leaders — driving question, inquiry, critique, public product. Feel what your students would feel.
Step back from the experience with design principles, assessment frameworks, and a school visit — and see exactly why it works and how it transfers.
Turn meaning into motion: design for your own school, get structured feedback, and leave with the first moves already rehearsed.
Who want their investment in transformation to rest on evidence, not fashion.
Who intend to lead the shift personally — not delegate it to a circular.
Who will translate the vision into timetables, units, and teacher practice.
Who coach teachers daily and need to know the shift from the inside.
● Immersion stays deliberately small. It is built for leaders who intend to act — a working cohort, not a crowd.
You don't leave Immersion with notes. You leave with a working document — drafted by you, critiqued by peers and practitioners, ready for your first week back. Five parts, in the order you will use them:
What meaningful learning looks, sounds, and feels like in your school three years from now — concrete enough that a visitor could recognise it.
The moves, the owners, and the timeline for year one — where you start, what you protect, and what you deliberately leave for later.
How you will know it's working. The indicators you'll watch in student work, teacher practice, and school culture — know thy impact.
What the shift costs, what it returns, and the case you will make to your management, board, or parents.
The words you will use with your staff in your first week back — rehearsed and refined with feedback before you leave.
Every session across the three days feeds a part of this document. Nothing at Immersion is an aside.
The structure follows the experiential learning cycle — the same cycle your students will travel. You live each stage rather than hear about it.
You learn PBL by doing PBL.
You see why it works and how it transfers.
You leave already in motion.
Immersion is built on the Visible Learning research base — John Hattie's synthesis of over 2,100 meta-analyses covering more than 130,000 studies. The influences below shape every hour of the three days.
A staff's shared belief that together they can move learning is among the strongest influences ever measured. Immersion exists to help leaders build it.
Students predict their own results with uncanny accuracy — and safe targets become self-fulfilling ceilings. Visible learning surfaces expectations so no learner hides behind one.
The highest-ranked nameable teaching method on Hattie's list: every child is at once learner, teacher, and structurally indispensable. It's woven through Propel's projects.
Sustained, practice-embedded professional learning transforms classrooms. One-off inspiration does not — which is why Immersion comes with a 90-day pathway.
Structured, teacher-guided discussion — not rapid-fire question-answer-evaluate — drives deep comprehension. In most classrooms, real discussion lasts under two minutes a day.
The most famous influence, and the most misunderstood: high-information feedback on task, process, and where to next approaches d = 0.99. Praise alone teaches almost nothing.
A learner's belief that "I can do this" is one of the strongest will factors — the inverse of anxiety. Real projects build it through visible success at real tasks.
Cooperative learning outperforms both individualistic (0.55) and competitive (0.53) structures. Interdependence plus individual accountability is the difference between teamwork and one child working while three watch.
Robinson's research: leaders who engage directly with teaching and learning move schools nearly four times more than those who lead by vision alone.
The most misread numbers in the debate. Across 27 meta-analyses, unsupported problem- and inquiry-based approaches average just d = 0.45 — with a spread from −0.30 to 1.15, because implementation is everything. Build surface knowledge first, add contingent scaffolding (d = 0.82) and clear structure, and PBL becomes a different method entirely. That is what full-fidelity, guided PBL means — and why Propel's projects are guided by design.
One honest caution: an effect size is the start of the story, not the end. Implementation quality decides everything — a strong influence implemented poorly loses to a modest one implemented well. That is precisely what the three days, and the ninety after them, are for.
Everyone at Immersion plays a defined role in your work across the three days:
Design and run the three days — you do the project with them, and they coach your Blueprint part by part.
School leaders already living the shift share what actually happened — including at the school you'll visit on Day 2.
Resource persons who ground the shift in evidence on learning, assessment, and impact.
Three decades in education, enabling teachers and school leaders and building curricula that move schools from rote memorisation to meaning-making.
Facilitator
M.Ed (TISS); 18 years transforming education. Leads Propel's research and curriculum development, reaching thousands of students and teachers across Indian schools.
Facilitator
38 years in project-based and place-based learning; formerly National Faculty at PBLWorks / Buck Institute. Coaches school redesign and culturally embedded PBL worldwide.
FacilitatorPrincipals and academic heads from schools already living the shift — including the school you will visit on Day 2 — plus resource persons in learning and assessment. Full list announced with the venue.
No keynote rows. Everyone works with you — that's the difference between a stage and a table.
A shift that stops at the hotel exit was never a shift. Every participant enters a structured pathway — the ripple your three days set in motion.
You convene your staff and hold the conversation you rehearsed — the shift goes public in your school.
A structured touchpoint with the Propel team and your cohort — what's moving, what's stuck, what's next.
Your first project cycle reviewed against your Evidence Plan. Still moving at ninety days is the real metric.
Come back to Immersion 2027 with your first year's story — and take your place in the faculty.
One leader. One staff room. One school. Then the ripple spreads.
A three-day residential immersion. The venue will be announced shortly — register now and we'll confirm your seat and venue details directly.
The hands-on workshops and school visit were thoughtfully curated and left me with actionable ideas to take back to my own school… I returned feeling inspired, empowered, and equipped to drive meaningful change.Richa Ahuja Headmistress · Immersion 2024
I observed a remarkable shift — from students engaged in rote learning to becoming confident communicators, articulating their project journey from inception to completion.Dr Shivani Sahni Academic Head · Immersion 2024
Despite our decade-long experience with PBL, I gained fresh ideas, innovative strategies, and new approaches… The showcase by Gateway International School was truly exceptional.Nisha Khera School Leader · Immersion 2024
Immersion is Propel Curriculum and PBL Path's annual gathering of school leaders — run as a full-fidelity project-based learning experience. Over three residential days you do a real project, study the design principles behind it, visit a school living the shift, and build your own Transformation Blueprint. Exposure, immersion, co-creation — not sessions to sit through.
School owners, principals, academic heads, and instructional leaders — the people who set a school's direction and intend to lead its shift from rote-based to project-based learning personally. The cohort is kept deliberately small so it works as a working group, not an audience.
The working document you draft, critique, and refine across the three days: The Picture (your school three years out), The First Year, The Evidence Plan, The Investment Case, and The First Conversation you'll hold with your staff. You leave with it in hand, not with intentions.
8–10 October 2026 in Delhi-NCR, as a three-day residential immersion. The venue will be announced shortly — register now and we'll confirm your seat and venue details directly.
There is no audience. The entire event is designed as a project you're inside of — the same experiential arc your students will travel. Everyone in the room has a working role: Facilitators you do the project with, Practitioners who've led the shift in their own schools, and resource persons who ground it in research.
CBSE Circular Skill-81/2025 makes project-based Kaushal Bodh work compulsory for Classes VI–VIII, and NEP 2020 and NCFSE 2023 call for experiential, inquiry-driven pedagogy. Immersion is built to turn that compliance requirement into genuine capability — CBSE made it compulsory; we make it meaningful.
You enter a structured 90-day pathway: within 30 days you convene your staff for the First Conversation, with cohort and Propel-team touchpoints at 30, 60, and 90 days. Leaders return to Immersion 2027 with evidence of their first year — and can take their place in the faculty.
Yes — participants receive a completion certificate from Propel Curriculum and PBL Path. The more consequential thing you'll carry back, though, is your Blueprint.
Seats are limited by design. Register now, and we'll confirm your cohort and venue details directly.
