School Projects as a Creative Form of Education of the Natural Sciences in Elementary, Secondary and High Schools

Project education involving work on school projects is one of the activizing and effective educational methods and forms of education which stimulates independent and creative activity of pupils in the process of learning in the natural sciences. It leads pupils to face more demanding tasks and more complex problems, to obtain new experience through independent practical activity, researching and assessment of different sources of information, experimenting and combined work of small groups of pupils. Although some long-term (one-year or several yearlong) school projects were already processed in the Czech Republic for the purposes of elementary, secondary and high schools, their limitations lie in the dependence on the current curricular documents for the corresponding degree and type of school, in the professional and methodic lack of appropriate skill on the part of teachers and in the lack of their confidence in the realization and effectivity of projcct education. Last but not least, the temporal and material requirements of school projects play a part. The present state of affairs and the possibilities of implementing school projects in education were monitored and developed especially in 2001 as a part of two projects by the Ministry of Education and in 2002 in the framework of one of the research projects of the Charles University.