Re: the calculus wars
Timothy Koschmann (tkoschmann who-is-at acm.org)
Mon, 24 May 1999 15:52:16 -0500
Glenn wrote:
>
>Your speculations about meaningful educational activity being
>"problem-based learning" is quite reasonable. Such problem-based learning,
>I believe, is quite common in N.A. education, certainly in the Ontario
>educational system. In fact, we have a name for such experiences: "project
>work". The only difficulty with your suggestion is that it can only
>account for part of the curriculum activity in a school. You cannot use
>problem-based learning to learn the intricacies of discipline-specific
>theoretical models because there is simply not enough time. What often
>happens in a secondary school (in fact it has the status of a classic
>instructional pattern) is that one delivers as efficiently and quickly as
>possible the theoretical model, and then sets up a project to allow
>students to explore and critique the potential and limitations of the
>model. There are all sorts of possibilities for really interesting
>learning activities during this project phase, limited only by the
>imagination, experience, knowledge, wisdom and time of the teacher AND
>students.
Glenn, the problem-based learning I had in mind was not the same as
"project work", it's a particular teaching method organized around problems
that was developed in professions education (med schools, actually) and has
now started to migrate into secondary education. Ironically, it was first
introduced at McMaster up in your neigborhood, though it's now used at
schools all over the world.
As to dealing with the "intricacies of discipline-specific theoretical
models", if it works as a replacement for the med school curriculum (and I
don't think it comes any more intricate than that), I think it would work
anywhere. You might try contacting some of the folks at the Illinois Math
and Science Academy to learn more about how teachers have used PBL in
secondary schools.
The model you describe of teaching in the abstract and then attempting to
make concrete is exactly the thing that PBL sets out to turn on its head.
The idea is that you start from an authentic problem (in all the senses
developed in the recent discussion) and then assist the learners in
discovering what they would need to know in order to tackle the problem.
---Tim