New Perspectives in Science Education

Promoting a constructivist paradigm, based on a structured, interrogative and active pedagogy, requires a culture that allows the recreation of projects with new resources and new ways of thinking and solving today's problems (Quadros-Flores, Marta & Sá, 2018). The Project Work Methodology, inspired by the approach of William Kilpatrick (2008) “Project Method”, favors an intentional, situated, flexible and transversal learning that drives the educational continuity as fruitful to the children's development. This study intends to understand, in a deeper way, intervention projects, which involved Pre-School Education and the 1st CEB, carried out by students in an internship situation of a professional master's degree. The study involves five trainees, who carried out three projects promoting curricular articulation and vertical transition, and about 100 participants, between 4 and 11 years old. It is a qualitative case study, based on naturalistic research methods with the purpose of expanding knowledge about the phenomenon under study. Data collection, based on observation and content analysis of reflective texts carried out by students, assumes an interpretive plan. The results show that the Project Work Methodology, in a transdisciplinary and educational continuity perspective, is based on an emergent situation of the educational practice that involves children in the interest and in the decisions, in the collection of information and in acting on the context, learning in a way holistic and situated. In this sense, it unites educational levels. It is also based on a natural environment of collaboration and discovery, participation and construction, with effects on the child and the environment that surrounds him. In this context, digital technological resources favor access and collection of information, communication and its positive implications for the transition and educational continuity. In this context, this methodology gives the student in training an opportunity to act and understand the specificity and similarities of educational levels, better preparing him for a double professional profile.

Keywords: initial teacher training, double profile, project work methodology, educational transition.

References:

• Quadros-Flores, P., Campos Marta, M. & Marques de Sá, S. (2018). Criatividade com avatares na Prática Educativa Supervisionada. Revista Practicum, 3(2), 60-76.
• Kilpatrick, W. (2008). O Método de Projecto. Lisboa: Edições Pedago. ISBN: 9789728980086