Introduction
Project teaching or the project teaching method is one of the methods that was used by teachers already in the 20th century and, despite this, it still did not find enough popularity among them to be used routinely in the teaching process. This method is a great benefit for many students and teachers, but also a challenge in itself. The most important thing for students is that they do not learn knowledge by heart, but acquire this knowledge through their own work - that is, they connect school or knowledge with practice. In this method, the teacher has to involve his creativity, but also tries out several roles during this lesson, such as e.g. the role of critic, adviser, organizer or collaborator. And so during this teaching, the relationship between teachers and students is formed, which is based on cooperation in the given project.
History of project teaching
The very history of the project teaching method, as stated by (Knoll, 2012), dates back to 1952, when the project method began to be used in schools of architecture in Europe. In the course of the following years, it began to spread to the United States of America, where this method gained great popularity. It was mainly used in work-educational general public schools. Over time, this method returned to Europe and educators rediscovered the project's ideas in schools. Unlike Knoll, Dvořáková (2009) sees the birth of project-based teaching much later, where we can start from the Herbert school, which began to be criticized by the physician E. Keyova, who expressed the opinion that the 20th century was the "century of the child" and the main value of this century became the curiosity and activity of pupils. J. Dewey is a very important name for project-based teaching, because he is considered the father of project-based teaching, which he created necessary theory for this interesting teaching method (Coufalová, 2010).
Teaching methods vs. project method
Under the teaching methods themselves, we can imagine the purposeful and deliberate ways of the teacher's work and the ways of the students' work determined by him, implemented in the teaching process, which are aimed at achieving the set educational goals (Šlosár – Novák, 2009). It is very important for teachers to realize that the choice of teaching method they choose for their students is very important and important, because they will influence not only the next but even the overall course of the educational process. Thus, teachers have the opportunity to choose not only from classic teaching methods, but also from modern ones, which we consider activating methods, because they have the task of diversifying or enlivening teaching. One of such activating teaching methods is also project teaching or project teaching method. Unlike the classic teaching process, this teaching method (Průcha, 2009) is based on the project method. In this method, students are guided to work on projects independently and gain experience through experimentation and practical activities. Among the main features (Hanuliaková, 2012) of project-based teaching are responsibility, self-organization, interests, product orientation and intersubjectivity. With this teaching method, not only the pupils are educated in a non-traditional way, but this method also has a favorable effect on the teachers themselves and the role of the teacher in teaching is also changing (Coufalová, 2010), because the teacher does not just pass on general knowledge and insights to his pupils, but the teacher must also act as an organizer, collaborator, adviser or critic for these pupils. It is essential to note that this method adds new prerequisites for the development of the relationship between the student and the teacher, because these two subjects become partners who bear responsibility - each for their part of the work. During project-based teaching, there are many unpredictable situations to which the teacher must be able to react correctly and in time. Therefore, this teaching enables not only the students but also the teachers themselves to develop creativity, flexibility and logic. From practice, I can state with certainty that, in addition to the above-mentioned basic features and stimuli, which this project-based teaching enables to develop, it also develops communicativeness, ingenuity, criticism, self-criticism, self-reflection, empathy, enables the development of personal values, evaluation, pro-sociality or the ability to make compromises.
The main goals of this teaching method definitely include "bringing school closer to life, changing the system of acquiring new knowledge - the teacher and the textbook are not the only source of new knowledge - students acquire new knowledge by solving a project task - the path to active learning, changing the organizational forms of teaching in terms of the place and independence of the students' work, identifying students with learning goals by orienting the teaching to their needs" (Petrášková, 2007, p.18).
How is the project implemented?
As well as traditional teaching, the use of project teaching has its own certain sequence, which we cannot disturb because if this sequence is violated, the goals of project teaching could not be fulfilled.
The sequence of steps suggested by the author Petrášková (2007) is as follows:
- project initiative, intention (the main initiative in this step is taken by the teacher, whose task is to motivate the students - then in this first step, the most important thing is to choose the right topic, next is the correct and clear formulation of the task, which should always be realistic, concrete, useful and interesting, we must also have the main goals set, determine the scope of the solution and study the necessary literature),
- project planning (in addition to the planning of the teacher, who specifies the given topic, assigns given project dates and collects information about the given issue, in the second step after the teacher, the pupils themselves take the initiative and the teacher acts here only as an advisor),
- implementation of the project (the implementation of the project itself consists in the own solution of the assigned project task and the processing of documents and documentation),
- project evaluation (after this implementation of the projects by the students, there should be a defense and publication of the solution, analysis of the solution and use in practice.
Even project teaching has its advantages and disadvantages
Project teaching, like everything in life, has its advantages and disadvantages. In this case, we can assess and outline the benefits on both sides, both for teachers and for the students themselves. The advantages that I see for the teacher when choosing project-based teaching are as follows (Zormanová, 2012):
- the teacher learns a new role - the role of an advisor,
- the teacher learns to perceive the student as a whole,
- the teacher expands his repertoire of teaching strategies,
- the teacher expands his organizational skills,
- the teacher uses new possibilities for evaluation and self-evaluation.
On the other hand, regarding the pitfalls or disadvantages of this chosen teaching method for teachers, I can say that with this method I agree with the author Slavkayová (2005), who states some of the pitfalls of this teaching method:
- everything must be managed, thought out and organized,
- the teacher must adequately estimate the degree of freedom and responsibility of the pupils,
- the advantage is the teacher who is a good organizer, diagnostician and also an expert in the subject and pedagogy,
- the teacher must estimate the degree of use of projects in the teaching process based on the internal systems that make up the knowledge of individual sciences,
- it is important to come to terms with the fact that life practice or situations do not respect the principle of the sequence of teaching knowledge or the principle of adequacy.
Project teaching itself has not only pluses and minuses for the teacher who chose this teaching method, but it also has many benefits for the students themselves. For a better idea, I will list some selected positive influences on the student (Slavkayová, 2005):
- has a high motivational force,
- shapes the personality of students,
- has a connection with real life,
- teaches students to work together,
- teaches them to solve problems,
- teaches them to discuss or formulate opinions,
- teaches to create and develop imagination,
- has a moral dimension (teaches responsibility, ethics, discipline, respect, justice, tolerance, honesty, relationships with oneself and others, etc...).
Also, in addition to the above-mentioned positives, I can mention positives that, according to Zormanová (2012), are also very important. It is about teaching pupils to develop their independence, acquiring but also using acquired knowledge and skills, as well as basic skills such as planning, organizing or managing some/certain activity. After mentioning all the positives and negatives of this modern activating method, I can evaluate that this method has many positives not only for the students themselves but also for the teachers, but as a bonus it can make the teaching process itself very effective and pleasant for the object as well as the subject of teaching. And that is precisely why it certainly deserves much more attention from teachers than it has had or has until now. I was so interested in this teaching method that I conducted a survey at the selected high school and I present the results of this survey below.
Research of project-based teaching in practice at secondary school
The goal of this research was to find out how and to what extent the project-based teaching method is used in a selected secondary vocational school with an economic focus. The following methods were used to obtain background materials for this research, such as an interview with the school principal and teachers, an analysis of the school's internal materials and the website, and a questionnaire survey. We talked with selected teachers about the preparation for project teaching, the process of project teaching itself and satisfaction with the implementation of this project. The questionnaire survey was carried out among pupils of both sexes, from 2nd to 4th grade, who were involved in this teaching.
Results of the questionnaire survey
At the selected secondary school where the research was carried out, we found out how often project teaching is used in the selected subjects. From the questionnaire survey, we found out from the students that project teaching was most often used in selected subjects only in the 4th grade, when the students already had enough knowledge and skills to be able to work effectively on assigned projects. Furthermore, we were also interested in what form or forms occurred most often during this teaching in the given subjects. We found out that group, cross-subject and long-term form of project teaching was mainly used in subjects in the 4th grade. The students not only had to work together in groups, but also used the knowledge and acquired skills from other subjects in a project they had been working on for a long time. We also asked the pupils how they perceive the classical form of teaching compared to the project teaching method. Here, we found out that the students think that project-based teaching is more beneficial for them than classic face-to-face teaching. The students said that thanks to the development of the projects that were assigned to them on the basis of project teaching, they see benefits in that they learn and understand the subject matter faster thanks to this method, they gain new skills and experience, and this method also brought them an important connection between theory and practice. We were also surprised by the result that students like project teaching so much that more than 80% of students in all subjects would welcome a much larger scope of project teaching. We were also interested in how the students themselves see the advantages and disadvantages of this activating teaching method. We were able to find out from the survey that the students see the biggest advantages in the fact that this teaching helped them to improve their communication skills, to improve their creative thinking, the students also learned to work better with their classmates and get along with people, they mastered handling different situations and learned to solve them. They also learned to be more empathetic when working with people, to do things pro-socially, to communicate assertively, to determine their values, etc. As already mentioned, everything has its advantages and disadvantages. And just as this teaching had its advantages for the pupils, these pupils see the disadvantages of project teaching mainly in the time requirement. They consider the fact that they have to work on additional tasks in addition to school, they have to find out a lot of additional information on their own, and they have stress from the final presentation of their project. Finally, we were also interested in how difficult the realization of the projects was for the students themselves from various points of view. The projects for the students were the most demanding in terms of time but also from a psychological point of view.
Conclusion
In this article, the reader had the opportunity to find out that there is another teaching method than just the frontal one, when the teacher transmits knowledge to the students orally. Of course, we know several alternative teaching methods, but the project teaching method helps students not only to connect their knowledge with real life, to develop their creativity, communication or presentation skills, but it can also focus on the development of the person himself and support empathy, prosociality, honesty, justice and establish their own values. That's why we can see with project teaching, as one of the few, that it not only teaches students knowledge from subjects in an experiential and practical way, but also shapes their personality.
Author: Mgr. Zuzana Uličná
List of bibliographic references
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