PROJECT WORK AND PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATION: BETWEEN METHODOLOGICAL CHANGE AND PEDAGOGICAL TRANSFORMATION

Abstract

This article critically analyzes the association between project work and pedagogical innovation, considering that the adoption of a particular form of organizing teaching does not, in itself, define the innovative character of an educational experience. It is a theoretical and bibliographic study that brings together contributions on education, teaching, project work, and pedagogical innovation, drawing on historical and contemporary formulations and examining the educational relations involved in this form of organization. The analysis shows that inquiry, student participation, curriculum articulation, and the reorganization of teachers’ work may assume different educational meanings according to the roles they play in the formative process. Based on this discussion, five interconnected dimensions are proposed for analyzing project work: educational purpose, knowledge, curriculum, student participation and authorship, and teacher mediation. These dimensions are examined through the nature, scope, and educational meaning of the transformations produced. The study concludes that pedagogical innovation needs to be understood through the relations that are effectively reorganized within the educational experience, the extent of these transformations in a given context, and the formative direction they assume. Project work therefore constitutes a possibility for organizing teaching whose innovative character requires critical examination of the pedagogical transformations it actually produces.