Abstract:

This paper reports an experience of coordination and support of pre-service teacher trainers (Higher Education lecturers) on the design and completion of a challenge-based multidisciplinary learning project named Projecte TILC.

Pre-service teachers (Higher Education students) gathered in teams of up to five students and implemented two assignments. The first one they produced was lesson plan for primary education pupils that integrated the syllabus of Maths or Social Sciences and the languages medium of instruction in local schools in València. Participants familiarised with the curriculum and put into practice their lesson planning skills. They designed a task-based session under a pluriliteracies approach. Their second assignment made participants present their plan online to different lectures and their classmates.

The teachers in charge of this experience agreed to reflect individually on different aspects about the whole experience. The topics covered by their reflections were the organisation of the challenge, teaching competence development and the completion and how lesson plans and students performances in the oral presentations were evaluated.

The lecturers' perceptions pointed out their need to meet regularly, how they agreed a common ground for a template of lesson plans and the process followed to acknowledge the assessment of both assignments. Furthermore, higher education practitioners declared that by engaging in this project, their expertise on different teaching principles had been enlarged. The students that took part stated they were in need of more more time to plan their lessons.

Keywords:

Pre-service teacher education, Challenge-based learning, Pluriliteracies, Higher Education innovation.