Page 60 - Pedagoška vizija / A Pedagogical Vision

Melita Lemut Bajec

Discussion
The findings suggest that PBL nurtures a variety of skills and competencies
among students, equipping them for their usage in their current and fu-
ture lives. Notably, the emphasis on critical thinking skills, such as identifying
problems, sorting, comparing, inferring, judging, predicting, reasoning, eval-
uating, and planning aligns with extensive research underscoring the impor-
tance of enhancing these skills also as part of the education for active and en-
gaged citizenship (Krathwohl 2002; Coyle, Hood, and Marsh 2010; Kokotsaki,
Menzies, and Wiggins 2016; Seow, Pan, and Koh 2019; Yazidi 2023).
Moreover, the student-centred approach with high levels of collabora-
tion was emphasized, requiring students to exhibit a responsible and au-
tonomous work ethic if the assignment was to be fulfilled efficiently and
timely. This aligns with Sirait and Amnie (2023) who measured collabora-
tion skills during project work and reported a collaboration skills indicator of
76.33, which serves as evidence of the intense interaction occurring during
PBL.
Further, the findings confirm the efficacy of PBL in delivering high-quality
results. This was evidenced through evaluators’ commendations on the stu-
dents’ creativity, aesthetic value, the message of the documentary, and the
critical overview it provides. These observations align with the results of a
similar study conducted by Hernández Ramos and De La Paz (2009), under-
scoring the acquisition of well-grounded knowledge, specifically improved
historical skills, and the cultivation of positive emotions towards the desig-
nated history-related topic.
Moreover, students addressed some of the challenges, such as the unsuit-
able role assignment, character incompatibility, and different standards of
work ethics, which other studies have similarly documented (Ayish and De-
veci 2019; Rees Lewis et al. 2019). Additionally, the results prove project work
activities to be motivational, which is consistent with other research in this
field (Anggraeni 2022; Pradanti and Muqtada 2023).
However, the findings also revealed a discrepancy between students’ in-
clination towards PBL and their actual voluntary engagement in it. Several
reasons for that phenomenon are identified: first, students are overloaded
with work as well as teachers’/parents’ expectations (Shahmohammadi 2011;
Pascoe, Hetrick, and Parker 2020), which is why they are reluctant to add addi-
tional burdens. Secondly, Slovenian national end-of-school exams adhere to
highly prescriptive curricula, where specific guidelines dictate what needs to
be taught (Grmek and Javornik Krečič 2004). Unfortunately, the topic of cul-
turalheritagereceiveslessemphasiscomparedto other‘morecentral’topics.
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