O projeto "A cidade que a gente quer": teoria e prática

Abstract

This research of qualitative nature has as investigative field the project The City that We Want , implemented at schools ran by a not for profit philanthropic institution, focusing on the execution of improvements in learning environments and educational systems, making use of technology in the learning and teaching process carried out by means of workshops attended by both teachers and pupils. This research was an effort to find an answer to the following question: What results and effects the project The City that We Want is producing on the work of those teachers involved? Taking into consideration the complexity of the problem, questions were asked in order to direct the development of the research. For data collection, an online questionnaire was prepared, and sent by e-mail, involving sixtythree teachers/multipliers/mediators, who continued working on the twenty-six schools involved in the project on the time of the research. Also, interviews were carried out with 10 educators (technical pedagogical team and teachers) from two schools which are developing the project. The program MS-Excel was used for the compilation of the data, enabling us to do the triangulation and the establishment of relations among the data, theory and practice. The results of the research were presented considering the analysis of the objective and subjective questions and statements by teachers from two schools during the interviews. From the investigation, it was concluded that the influences of the project The City that We Want in the work of the teachers involved were positive, considering that for a meaningful part it has enabled them to learn more about theoretical conceptions that base the development of the project (78%); acquire new information technologies and communications (67%); act as a mediator in the pupils learning process (84%); encourage pupils to write down all the knowledge construction process in a log book (76%), making use of it to assess the development of the project (83%); develop the project in a partnership with other teachers in the school (81%), from an interdisciplinary project (79%); teach pupils how to do research (83%) and work in teams (83%); encourage pupils to make estimates in order to solve the problems identified (70%); involve students in the whole process, from the diagnosis (75%) to the planning and re-planning of the project (73%), based on a process evaluation that used action-reflection-action (60%), as well as creating an environment that provides pupils with the possibility of developing an autonomy, a desire and a dream (81%), among others. Upon putting together this information with the teachers comments in the interviews, the results show that the project The City that We Want in the schools under investigation enabled the - VII - teachers involved to live a pedagogical practice different from the work with projects, and on the other hand, there is the need to resume the continued education for the teachers aiming to acquire the appropriate methodology proposed, the explanation of theories that help understand the experience with projects and the development of the dominance of the technological resources available in each school