UKIDS Project – Valorize the challenge Trash Value in interdisciplinar context

Abstract

Supervised Teaching Practice should promote the development of competences associated with the teacher-researcher profile: observation, recording, analysis, reflection and at the same time provide children with rich and diverse experiences that produce an education for citizenship. The research project developed had its foundations in the European project UKIDS (Erasmus +) and was based on learning by project methodology, allowing the interdisciplinarity of knowledge. The challenges proposed in the project are part of a holistic learning program. It is based on the Tripartite Entrepreneurship Education Model which encompasses three areas. The first, “Entrepreneurship Education”, encompasses core competencies for entrepreneurial thinking and action (the ability to develop and implement ideas). The second, “Culture of Entrepreneurship”, promotes the development of personal skills in a social context (a culture of open-mindedness, empathy, teamwork, creativity, awareness and risk-taking). The third, “Entrepreneurial Citizenship Education”, aims at developing social skills and empowering students as citizens (being responsible for themselves, others and the environment). Challenges offer a variety of tasks to address aspects such as initiative, motivation and innovation, trust and social responsible participation. Specifically, the Trash Value challenge proposes to give a new life to waste, respecting a sustainable environment. Based on the implementation of this challenge and using the egg cartons, we investigated how this material enhanced the development of students’ social skills, reasoning and mathematical communication in 4th class. The research methodology had action research characteristics and several data collection techniques and instruments were selected. In addition to the pre-test and post-test performed for the students and the class teacher, audio recordings, field notes, photographic records and children’s productions were collected and organized in the form of multimodal narration. After conducting the study, it was possible to verify that the Trash Value challenge promoted the development of social competences, focusing more on cooperation, self-control and responsibility. In a convergent way problem solving and mathematical communication skills have improved considerably in a rich environment of children’s environmental awareness.