Abstract:

As a way to respond to the challenges of today's society, the investigative work requested by Project Work enhances not only respect for the needs of each student and learns to learn, as well as the development of their scientific literacy and cooperation and communication skills. In this context, the present study, subordinated to the theme, "Work for Projects as a Strategy for Self-Regulation of Learning" had as main objective to study the impact of instruments to support the self-regulation of learning in the work by projects.

The study was developed in the discipline of History and Geography of Portugal, in a class of 6th year of schooling of a public school and had as main specific objectives, (i) To characterize the students' conceptions about Project Work; (ii) Identify the importance of self-regulation tools for learning for students in carrying out Project Work and (iii) Describe the competencies developed by students in Project Work.

To this end, Project Work was carried out with the students and self-regulation tools were used to support this type of work. For the development of the study, we used a methodology of a qualitative nature based on the action-investigation method. As data collection techniques, Focus-Group interviews and documentary research were used. The data were analyzed using content analysis techniques, following the Bardin's assumptions (2013).

Data analysis allowed us to highlight that students consider Project Work a form of work that allows the development of various competencies, such as autonomy, cooperation and communication, and that they present different conceptions in relation to the different phases of work by projects. It was also possible to understand the importance given by students to the support instruments implemented and to the processes of self-regulation of learning in the development of scientific and research skills (or of carrying out the work by projects).

Keywords:

Self-regulation of learning, Research skills, Project Work, Autonomy/Accountability.