Abstract:

Brazilian Federal Institutes are a network of 38 Institutions of education, science and technology spread in all states of Brazil, composed by 644 campuses offering vocational, undergraduate and postgraduate courses. This federal network has the main purpose of providing professional and technological education at different levels and to foster applied research associated with the productive arrangements. Due to the practical nature of the courses at Federal Institutes, with the majority in the areas of Engineering, Computing, and Business, the use of projects as a pedagogical strategy has become increasingly common, changing from a teacher-centered learning to a student-centered learning approach, leading to increased student learning and engagement. Today’s students are moving beyond the basics and embracing the 4C’s — “super skills” for the 21st century, they are: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, that means sharing thoughts, questions, ideas, and solutions; Effective Communication, that means working together to reach a goal - putting talent, expertise, and smarts to work; Collaboration, in order to look at problems in a new way, linking learning across subjects and disciplines and Creativity and Innovation, in the sense of trying new approaches to get things done equals innovation and invention. This research work tried to find out evidence of 21st Century Skills development in teaching practices using Projects at Brazilian Federal Institutes. The researchers conducted a survey of four open questions with 170 lecturers (N = 170), following a qualitative data analysis to encode collected answers using the computer assisted qualitative data analysis software NVivo 10. The data was encoded considering four nodes, each one representing one of the 21st Century Skills: collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity. The researched population was from different knowledge areas, such as Engineering (N = 46), Informatics (N = 40), Languages (N = 17), Business (N = 16), Biology (N = 14), Teacher Training (N = 11), Environmental Management (N = 10), Architecture (N = 6), Chemistry (N = 3), Math (N = 2), Scientific Methods (N = 2), Law (N = 1) and Physics (N = 1), as well as from twenty different Federal Institutes spread on all regions of Brazil. As the main results of this research, it was realized that participant lecturers have prioritized the promotion of authentic projects and experiences, encouraging a critical autonomy and a sustained inquiry about the knowledge approached. Lecturers also have tried to reach, through creativity, empowerment of students to solve problems in an innovative way, providing them creative freedom. Participant lecturers reported they have developed in their students a series of social and organizational skills in the sense they could be able to perform their projects collaboratively. Finally, lecturers have perceived the ability of the students to conduct discussions throughout the progress of projects, and after decision-making, to synthesize the process in a clear way that they are able to justify and make public the developed project. An immediate benefit of the Project-based Learning approach is related with the change of the teacher´s and student’s mindset about meaningful learning and the benefits of an approach that brings real problems to the student’s lives.

Keywords:

Project-based learning, 21st Century Skills, meaningful learning.