The Perception and Knowledge of Engineering Teachers about the Structuration of Project Based Learning

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to present the perception and knowledge of the teachers regarding the Project Based Learning - PBL in an Engineering School. PBL is one of the strategies that started to be used in the curriculum of this school as of 2015, mainly in the Special Projects and Activities (PAEs) offered to the students, since the first grade, parallelly to the subjects of the course. The teachers were invited to create activities in the form of projects and workshops in which they had the possibility to make use of their knowledge in order to propose projects that aimed to develop student's competencies. The issue covered in this work is bound to the use of PBL: which are the conceptions of the teachers regarding this strategy and its structuring in the workshops that make use of them? For the analysis, a questionnaire was created, which was answered by the teachers. The results indicate that the basic principles of PBL are fully understood by the teachers, as well as the advantages of their use. However, the structuring of PBL does not follow a line that is in accordance with its classic model. This displacement from the model indicates an adaptation carried out by the teachers that, however, does not put at risk the intelligibility of the model.