Project Based Teaching As A Didactic Strategy For The Learning And Development Of Basic Competences In Future Teachers

The educational experience that we present here seeks to encourage change in the university training of future teachers, promoting interdisciplinarity and cooperative work based on the premise that project based teaching, as opposed to direct teaching, now represents the best didactic guarantee for an effective contribution to the development of basic competences and the learning of the curricular contents as it is a student-centred learning process which deals with learners' needs and encourages learners to become more involved in the learning process of which they are the protagonists. Thus, we sought to study whether or not the balance between planning, flexibility and adaptation to the new situations that are made possible by project based teaching justifies its adoption as the didactic strategy to be implemented in the new syllabus plan for the Nursery School Education Degree. The aim of this teaching initiative has been to promote the following improvements in the learning process of future Nursery School teachers: - Increasing student performance by also acquiring cross-curricular skills that include reflection, synthesis, expression, communication, group work, public speaking, etc. - Developing student involvement in course work and boosting active learning. - Improving communication between students and lecturers in tutorials and making these tutorials more relevant for students. - Enhancing the quality of the teaching materials produced by students through the use of new technology. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCLTA 2013.