The importance of the project teaching for acquirement of geographical functional knowledge

Abstract

Project teaching includes teaching activities of students on a research project in a defined period of time and requires certain resources and organization. Students allows to acquire functional geographical knowledge through independent research that involves consideration of certain problems through a critical aspect. Students during the project acquire cognitive and social skills. In the project teaching connects known and unknown, knowledge is acquired through examples (exemplary learning) as well as a combination of convergent (logic) and a divergent (creative) opinion. By applying project teaching, the teacher has multiple roles and he is the organizer, planner, associate, coordinator and evaluator. Successful planning, implementation and evaluation of a project implies that a teacher should be trained in new ways of working, using modern teaching methods in order to develop student’s creativity and encourage teamwork. By selecting a problem-type project, the teacher is provided with the possibility of creating various methodical scenarios that achieve new quality of teaching and a greater degree of motivation among the students. The teacher and students create an interactive, collaborative and constructive relationship where students independently acquire knowledge based on previous experience and their own possibilities. The aim is to put students on self-thinking, developing skills, forming value attitudes and acquire functional knowledge that in this way becomes more permanent and applicable