Experiences of Project-Based Teaching Applied in the Field of Psychology

Abstract

The history of project work in higher education is quite a novelty starting at the end of the sixties, with a controversial discussion and several practical developments in the early seventies. Undoubtdly, the brief history of the project study and especially of the project-organised curricula is characterized by some outstanding and successful solutions, but even more by many failures and disadvantages with respect to the ambitious intentions and due to various reasons. To some extent the discussions about the project study are still controversial - particularly in the engineering education, and in border line field of it - and therefore it is worthwhile to investigate in detail the various models and experiences in order to support wider implementation in the future. Now, at the Technical University of Budapest, at the Psychological and Ergonomical Department, we have more than 20 years of experience in the teaching of psychology to students of engineering. In the last few years we began the project-based teaching in the correspondence courses, organised for students of engineering to train them to be technical teachers of technology. We give a brief information about project organisation and the topics, and we report on our first experiences. One of the most original results of applying the project, that in this form a real connection can be realised between practice and theory. The other consequences, that the student engineer - teacher is constrained to be engaged in a very active way in the pedagogical and psychological studies. In the project courses within the technical teacher education in the psychological subject, the self actualization and the professional qualities of a teacher are developed.