Teachers

Strongly rooted in a pedagogy of active learning, the Integrative Project Program invites Secondary V students in the Province of Québec to spend an entire school year realizing a personal project of their choosing. These projects, which are both stimulating and imaginative, require students to integrate their prior learning and competencies in order to shape, direct, and give meaning to their projects. Students learn how to adapt and transfer their prior learning and give it meaning in a new context.

The aim of the learning integration process associated with the realization of a project is to render students’ prior learning explicit by asking them to name what they know, how they know it, and the role this learning will play in their projects. Educational research confirms the impact of reflexive thinking, both in terms of school success and the development of expertise. The interdependence of the learning integration process and the project execution process provides the program with its structure; the aims of the two processes are clearly associated with the two program competencies.

Even though other programs in the Québec Education Program are based on project-based learning, what distinguishes the Integrative Project Program is the requirement that students make explicit links between their IP projects and the knowledge and competencies they have developed throughout their schooling. In terms of students’ overall school careers, this program allows them to take an inventory of their prior learning and assess their future plans in accordance with these findings.