Abstract:

Project teaching is one of the teaching methods that are recognized worldwide as it makes students actively involved in their teaching and learning process. In the environment of Czech primary and secondary schools, this method is still classed as innovative, which has its various causes. The author of this article discovers various causes of hindrance to further development and expansion of this activational teaching method across Czech primary and secondary schools.

The first cause to be mentioned is insufficient preparation of future teaching staff, namely the fact that there are no teacher training courses available at pedagogical and natural science faculties across the Czech Republic, that would involve planning lessons with the use of this method. If future teachers do not acquire sufficient practice in the use of this method, they later deliberately avoid the occasions to use it in their professional life. This is understandable as starting a teaching profession, whether in primary or secondary education, is generally not an easy experience. A starting teacher has to make himself familiar with the school educational program and the target audience, ie the students, their age, individual needs or their initial knowledge and skills. Only after that, the teachers can start planning their lessons.

Another cause might be the time-consuming nature of employing this method. The preparation of project teaching is carried out in a number of steps which have to be thought through in great detail. The teacher has to determine the purpose of the whole project, set the targets and the required standards of student performance. At the same time, he or she has to plan the successive activities involved and schedule them into successive lessons as well as consider the project implementation stage led by students. During the project implementation stage, a special care must be paid to presenting the results of the project, the results at which the students have arrived in the course of their activities during the project. Often, it´s not until they present their own conclusions, that the students realize the whole purpose of the project and its benefit.

Another type of hindrance to project teaching may be the incompetence or unwillingness of teachers to cooperate across subjects within the whole primary or secondary school.

This article presents a project teaching plan with cross-curricular aspect involved, ie connecting more subjects within one educational area called “Man and Nature“. Further on, this article presents the evaluation of the teaching staff of two Moravian-Silesian grammar schools. These grammar schools first assessed the given project teaching plan, then adapted it according to their own needs and subsequently used it in their lessons. The author of this article will analyze the pros and cons of the given project “The Ema Heap“, then of project teaching in general and finally the potential of project teaching at Czech secondary schools. The selected method of inquiry research was an interview with a group of selected secondary school teachers who enabled the implementation of the project proposal to be carried out in their lessons, and who observed the project in the course of its implementation, made records of its various insufficiencies and positives.

Keywords:

Project Teaching, the Ema Heap, Interdisciplinary Relationships, Teachers, Framework Educational Program, School education programs.