The thesis presents project work and all the main characteristics that should be known to comprehend this method. It also focuses on cultural and art education, outlining it and emphasizing its role in education. Furthermore, puppets and their potential in encouraging child development, different types of puppets and puppet theatre were studied. This topic presents a theoretical background for project Plečnik’s Ljubljana: the city as a stage, which forms the topic of the thesis. To be specific, we studied the participating students’ perspectives and how these changed during the work. The research sample was nonrandomised and purposive. It included 10 students of Faculty of Education, preschool education programme, who were approximately 22 years old, took the elective class on puppetry, and participated in project Plečnik’s Ljubljana: the city as a stage. The results of the study were obtained from pre-designed questionnaires, which included 2 or 3 open-ended questions and a SWOT analysis chart designed by Albert Humphrey.
The main aim of the thesis is to define differences when considering advantages, disadvantages, opportunities, and threats a cultural and arts project brings if a co-operation with a cultural institution is involved, and how the perception of the differences – before, during and after the project – changed with time. The results indicate that the perception of these aspects did not differ significantly according to different questionnaire sets. Regardless of the set of questions given, the students most frequently identified advantages in categories on teamwork and cooperation, social aspect, and general knowledge; disadvantages in categories on lack of experience and knowledge, and time management; opportunities in categories on general knowledge, divergent thinking, and teamwork and cooperation; threats in categories on general aspects of organization, lack of interest, and lack of response. The study exposed other important and positive effects such work brought: personal and professional growth, which followed active participation, enabling the students to gain and master a wide range of skills. Furthermore, the experience of cooperating in a cultural and art project together with a cultural institution proved as positive to all the students and presented the first experience in project work to the majority of them.
The results support the claim that students of the Faculty of Education find project work important. It can add to their theoretical knowledge, be applied to practical work, and contribute to their personal and professional development.
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