Abstract:

Traditional methodologies based the relationships of teaching-learning in the effective transfer of knowledge, following a communication model that privileged the teaching action, against the work of the student who was reduced to a mere recipient of messages. On the contrary, new methodologies give advantage to the student’s activity as the main part of the learning process entrusting him a higher ability and autonomy in the construction of his own learning. However, the communication approach that directs these new practices and its deepening as a competence that enables to its students to develop the autonomous learning, as interaction with various socio-communicational contexts, has frequently been put sideways when dealing with teaching design.
Project Based Learning (PBL) is a pedagogical methodology based on the autonomy given to the students both in what regards the design and development of the learning project as in what concerns the meaning attributed to it. However, the approach to the learning activity of the student is not done in an isolated individual basis but from a team work dynamics approach which should be supported on a convenient cooperative attitude cross implication where the meaning attribution is socialized and hence, the work out of the communicative competences becomes decisive.
This paper propounds a work methodology based on PBL and on the Habermasian concept of “communicative action”. According to the utter, the communication not only affects to the way in which the students exchange information with the goal of developing their project but it also and specially affects to the way in which the students negotiate, agree between them and attribute meaning to the activities they undertake, from the conceptualization of the learning objective to the pertinence of the results.
The project based way of focusing learning also implies an educational reflection on the paradigmatic range, a way of thinking teaching-learning relations transferring the attention focus of efficiency of the teaching procedures and methodologies towards the pertinence and meaning with which the students get involved in them.
This work is part of the Programme for Innovation in Education (PIE 09/11) of the University of the Basque Country (UPV). It is inscribed in the theoretical and methodological principles of the research-action education. The practice of this approach enables the teachers to experiment, analyze and reflect on the teaching practice in real situations of learning-teaching and hence having actual feedback on their application experience. However, these are not exempt of conditioning by the social and institutional framework that produces them.

Keywords:

Communication, competence, project, learning.