Although action pedagogy has been at the heart of the methodology of all French as a foreign language (FLE) textbooks for almost 20 years, it is not practiced in Moscow. Or almost not!
Uh...what's the project?
This approach first appeared in the English-speaking world of education, with the publication of Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom by David Nunan, one of the instigators of Task-Based Learning.
In the early 2000s, the CEFR formalized this perspective:
“considers language users and learners above all as social actors who have to accomplish tasks (which are not solely linguistic) in given circumstances and environments, within a particular field of action. While speech acts take place within language actions, these actions are themselves inscribed within actions in a social context, which alone give them their full meaning”. (CECR, 2001: 15).
We communicate in order to “act”. We therefore need to put learners as much as possible in a situation where they have to carry out tasks that are close to those they would have to perform in “real life” (organizing a work meeting, writing a postcard, publishing an advertisement…).
To find out more about the underlying theory, click here.
Projects in the digital age
The arrival of Web 2.0 has given learning a whole new meaning, as learners have become digital social actors.
The classroom can therefore be the ideal place for developing digital skills that are transferable to our private or professional lives.
On the other hand, online platforms offer much greater visibility and creative possibilities than paper-based copywriting.
Incidental learning
A link with Freinet pedagogy, which emphasizes the usefulness of learning for everyday life, is conceivable. Thus,taking action to create something that will exist in the physical or digital world helps to enhance classroom learning.
If the project “catches on”, the learner loses his or her complexes, gets involved and uses the language, which then loses its status as an object of study to become simply a tool at the service of action. Under these conditions, we can say thatlearning is optimal in terms of integration and memorization, because everything is done without conscious effort.
The challenges of project implementation
for students:
- a taste for active learning and sustained attention to process. In this configuration, we don’t hide behind a manual, but discover ourselves, propose and intervene.
- good management of socio-affective relationships linked to group work. Achieving the satisfaction of having completed this undertaking requires knowing how to work with others, i.e. listening, negotiating, synthesizing or agreeing to drop an idea that is not adopted.
on the teachers’ side:
- planning and organizational skills, as you need to mark out milestones and provide for alternatives
- adherence to an ironclad timing schedule, which eliminates the possibility of getting lost. The absolute necessity of completing the project and arriving at a “finished product” to validate the approach must be borne in mind.
- a well-balanced mix of “laissez-faire”, directive and psychologist skills. Even if the project belongs to the learners, you need to know how to guide, redirect, suggest and validate with tact, but also manage conflicts, moments of distraction or doubt…
- a healthy dose of self-assurance, enthusiasm and determination to instill the confidence needed to commit to the process
Why is it so difficult to set up projects?
The time-consuming aspect?
When I ask other teaching colleagues if they implement projects in their classrooms, I get this kind of response:
– what is project-based teaching?
– we don’t do it, it takes too much time.
– we do it if we have the time.
It would seem that the priority is to complete the curriculum, but not through the action paradigm, which is too time-consuming.
The traditional vision of education?
In conventional education systems, collective intelligence is not developed. Students are not encouraged (or only very rarely) to communicate in pairs or sub-groups, to pool their work, to self-correct and to help each other. Communicating in pairs is already cheating…
That’s why I sometimes hear adults say:‘I don’t need anyone to find solutions‘.
I hope the situation has changed, but in my day, I don’t remember doing a lot of pair or group activities, whether in elementary school, junior high, high school or college.
And yet, God knows it works! Here’s a small example of a project to organize a party with schoolchildren.
Socio-affective dynamics?
This factor is linked to the previous one: as learners are not used to working together, they are afraid to start communicating, so they look straight ahead and do nothing.
Carrying out a project together means moving in the same direction. This means listening carefully to each other, and that’s another difficulty.
Proposing, referring to others, agreeing, trying, then evaluating together, expressing one’s point of view, requires communicative skills.
Lack of teacher training?
Even those with the “fibre” and the experience can be reluctant, aware as they are of the amount of effort required to convince, motivate and support an audience unaccustomed to this approach.
A lack of willingness to take risks?
If it’s so difficult for all stakeholders, then why even try and allocate time to projects?
It’s always easier to carry on doing what you’ve always done and give people what they ask for, even if it’s not what’s best for them.
The bottom line
Dear colleagues, do you have the opportunity to set up projects in the structures where you work? Are you encouraged to do so? Or do you teach lexicon, grammar rules and other aspects of the language without putting it into a wider context?
Personally, I think that project-based teaching is a good thing, because even if it’s true that applying it is a real challenge, in addition to giving meaning to language learning, it develops the collaborative skills that are essential in today’s and tomorrow’s world.
A small video selection here.
