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Hi everybody--
My semester is over and I can again re-join xmca in full compacity! :-)
Linda, I'm really excited about your posting for many-many reasons.
1) Can you provide the address of the teacher forum you participate in,
please? Do you or anybody else know any similarly deep teachers' forum for
elementary school teachers? I'd like hook my students on such forums --
many of them (if not all) will like to participate in discussions like that.
2) I'm so glad to read xmca discussion about PBL started by Linda because my
UDel colleagues John St. Julien and Tony Whitson work on designing P(P)BL
which is something like problem-based learning on how to teach problem-based
learning preservice teachers.
3) I agree with Nate, Bill, , Linda, and the teachers from the nscc forum
that transformation of teachers are essential for authentic PBL.
4) I also think that we should not glorify "transformation" of teachers and
students. Actually, we should not care about transformations because
paraphrasing Jean Lave's famous statement about learning, it will always
occur. The question is what it (i.e., transformation, learning, PBL) is
about. Any learning -- "good" or "bad" is problem based. Tim wrote, "My
colleague, Paul Feltovich, once said, "PBL is nothing new, it's just the way
that good students have always learned". I would add that "bad" students do
it as well. The problem :-) of mainstream schools for me is that for too
many students problems that they deal in the classrooms are about grades,
minimizing harm that the teacher does to them, boredom, survival. These
problems of students are often deeply academic curricula free and not
collaboratively involved the teacher. I can spin off on "teacher's
transformation" but I think you got the picture.
5) I think that PBL that "we" (who we?) may like is based on collaboration,
mutuality, relevance, and freedom that invites criticism of the authority
(by "authority," I mean "us" not just "them").
6) Bruce, thanks for telling about the unfortunate fate of the Summerhill
school project. I'd like to know more about that. Any articles or books
you can recommend, please? It brings a question of how radical a local
institution can be embedded in the network of mainstream institutions with
centralized (totalitortized) control and for how long it can survive on this
course.
What do you think?
Eugene
-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Polin [mailto:lpolin@pepperdine.edu]
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 1999 4:15 PM
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Problem Based Learning
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Linda Polin <lpolin who-is-at pepperdine.edu>
>To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
>Sent: Thursday, May 27, 1999 12:45 AM
>Subject: Problem Based Learning
>
>
>> I find it hugely ironic that this sort of posting is going on in NCSS
>> (Nat'l Council on the Soc'l Studies) while we're having the PBL
discussion
>> in XMCA. We debate the distinctions and details, and the teachers just
roll
>> it out and bang away on it.
nate writes:
>There will always be teachers who will roll out the carpet for every new
>invention, but there will be others who will negate it as just the most
>recent invention that will fade away. Some teachers as in your example by
>the reference of "we" will incorporate such approaches into their theory.
>I would suspect that such teachers theories would be more relational than
>appossitional as in teacher centered vs student centered.
>
> If we see mutual transformation (activity,
>artifacts, teacher, students) as I see Activity Theory more or less
>embracing, PBL focuses on the transformation role of students, but does
not
>focus on the relational nature of activity, teachers, artifacts etc. In
>this sense, the students only transform but are not transformed. They
>transform or utilize artifacts (internet, books etc) but those artifacts
do
>not transform them. The teacher's role is contructed in reaction to their
>role in a teacher centered classroom rather rethinking the role of the
>teacher itself. Teacher as facilitater, what does it mean? My sense is
>its defined more by what they don't do rather than what they do.
Hmmm...at first I was going to agree with you but I thought about it, the
more I find the intention of PBL in K-12 (the IMSA model) to be about moving
from away from a curriculum-centered approach to teaching. You know: cover
and expose. As such, when teachers implement it I'd bet that it *is*
transformational for them. They do a lot of "rethinking the role of the
teacher." You can't run a PBL unit as a teacher-centered or curric.-centered
unit. Stuff happens. Based on some similar experiences with graduate
students who are themselves K-12 teachers, I'd have to say that good PBL
turns out to be a negotiated experience between teacher(s) and students, and
often with outsiders relevant to the student-defined tasks. I'm not sure the
experience is as profound for the students; I imagine that would depend on
what they encounter in non-PBL classroom life. I sense that the framework of
schooling is way too overpowering for kids to break free, at least by the
middle elementary years. That's why some of us half joke about the need to
dismantle schooling or to let childhood learning eek out to a new venue.
>S/he sees PBL as a particular that can be incorporated into his or her
>general theoretical framework. The teacher in the example sees that with
>how PBL can have a role in studying Africa and Asia. I highly doubt s/he
>is going to throw everything previous out to incorporate PBL. The focus
on
>details I don't see as any different than the teacher, but on a different
>level. An emphasis on details as meaning making in which questions are
>asked about how PBL as a particular addressses or doesn't address the
>theory I am operating under. PBL focuses on not isolating the world
>outside of school from instruction, and how the students are able to
>transform artifacts in order to learn. I find these ideas very
>complementary to my theory, but what is not answered, for me, is how the
>students are also tranformed as part of this process and the relational
>nature of activity, artifacts, teacher, and students.
It would be really interesting to have some of the folks from here
posting/dialoguing with the NCSS listserv folks, or even revealing this
discussion to them. The most interesting thing about the list is the way
sense gets made by the community. It's not quite the same as here. These
folks are often unknown to each other. Here's one of the responses to the
teacher's initial posting.
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 22:07:34 EDT
Reply-To: ncss-l who-is-at ecnet.net
Sender: owner-ncss-l who-is-at ecnet.net
From:
To: ncss-l who-is-at ecnet.net
Subject: Re: Problem Based Learning
Check out books on Constructivist Learning Approaches. Constructivism is
the
basis for PBL, and is wonderful for all inquiry based education
Chris S.
Teacher of the Deaf
>So, I don't
>necessarily see the teacher who rolls out the PBL carpet that different
>from a focus on details. The details or critique of the teacher would be
>more embedded or implicit as in incorporating what is most congruent to
>his/her theory, not taking the particular as a whole. In this sense, a
>focus on details or critique is really not that different from rolling
out
>the carpet and banging away at it.
I do see a difference. In this list we're discussing implications and
underlying assumptions that might affect the implementation. The teachers on
the NCSS listserv tend to be focused on procedural and logistical detail.
(In most but not all of the threads on that list, this would seem to be the
case. Recent more theoretical/philosphical discussions have revolved around
things like testing.) They are not questioning or reflecting on whether or
not, or to what extent, PBL transforms their students. I think the
self-selection occurs before you decide to do PBL. You either groove with it
or you don't.
And, this reminds me of a phenonmenon, much like you've described, that I
see in my teacher ed. students. Often their first take on, say,
"constructivistm" is to apply it to what they do. THey take some unit or
lesson or activity chunk and try to "make it constructivist." I see these
funny little parodies of constructivism on very teacher-centered lessons.
Then we have the discussion about the difference between remodeling the
house and rebuilding the house. It's usually a huge insight for them, the
idea that concepts such as constructivism are intended to be completely
different takes on learning, not add-ons or "techniques." They report that
they are "relieved" by this news, and that they have been uncomfortable with
their prior interpretations and work. [I'm just using constructivism as an
example; no implicit endorsement intended.]
Btw, the irony I was referring to was a division of labor issue. I find
this list and its participants to occupy a particular place in the community
or activity or culture of education as a profession. Ditto with the NCSS
listserv folks, for instance. I'm just sitting here highly amused and
intrigued by what I see in the larger view of professionals at work making
education.
Linda
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