Re: Problem Based Learning
Timothy Koschmann (tkoschmann who-is-at acm.org)
Fri, 28 May 1999 11:30:26 -0500
>
> PBL probally shouldn't and maybe I interpreted it too much of just one of
> those many programs being put out on both sides of the spectrum as being
>the one
> best practice. It may have just resonated in me how similar programs or ideas
> are often seen in the grander sense as in schools becoming "PBL" schools. My
> reference to a grander theory is partly how many programs like PBL come
>and ago
> rather often. They become "fads" for lack of a better word. It was in
>this sense
> that I tried to incorporate it into Activity Theory or a grander
> theory. What questions does PBL answer and which ones it doesn't.
> I didn't see it so much as comparing per se but appropriating into a grander
> theory. Cognitive Guided Instruction is an example in our state with
>elementary
> education in which it became the sole challenge to a direct teaching
>approach at
> math. Many teachers in the classrooms were doing a variety of methods that
> challenged the traditional approach to math, but CGI was taught as it was the
> only challenge. In this sense CGI became someone's pet project for awhile
>rather
> than connecting it in a broader theoretical framework that challenged the
> top-down way of teaching. Most schools do not use it much anymore which I see
> partly because it was a particular that was not embedded in the larger
> theoretical framework. For me, in the long run its important to incorporate
> projects like PBL, CGI, project work etc. into some unified theory. Without
> doing so they risk just becoming the next fad to become abandoned in the
> classroom. Nate
Howard Barrows, who was one of the developers of PBL at McMaster back in
the early days, is often bemused at efforts to characterize the method as
coming out of some particular theoretical framework such as constructivism,
Deweyean inquiry (as I tried to do the other day), etc., because he knows
that historically it was not designed with any kind of theoretical
orientation, but rather evolved from some practical concerns about how to
better motivate learning in the first two years of medical school. This
doesn't mean it is atheoretic, of course, but that the original designers
were not operating out of allegence to any particular school of thinking.
However, trying to critically analyze the method, as it is currently
practiced in terms of our current theories about learning, strikes me as an
entirely reasonable thing to do.
I think one of the things that prematurely sends innovations like PBL to
the dust bin of discarded educational "fads" is when the innovation is
presented as a rigid and inalterable set of procedures. I think that the
people who are working with PBL are smart enough to see this danger, but it
is always well to be wary.
---Tim