Problem Based Learning – An Instructional Model and its Constructivist Framework
- Image via Wikipedia
Savery and Duffy in their 2001 paper
- Understanding is in our interactions with the environment.
- Cognitive conflict or puzzlement is the stimulus for learning and determines the organisation and nature of what is learned.
- Knowledge evolves through social negotiation and through the evaluation of the viability of individual understandings
How to design for understanding:
- Anchor all learning activities to a larger task or problem
- Support the learner in developing ownership for the overall problem or task
- Design an authentic task
- Design the task and the learning environment to reflect the complexity of the environment they should be able to function in at the end of learning
- Give the learner ownership of the process used to develop a solution
- Design the learning environment to support and challenge the learner’s thinking
- Encourage testing ideas against alternative views and alternative contexts
- Provide opportunity for and support reflection on both the content learned and the learning process
Read the full article: http://www.dirkdavis.net/cbu/edu524/resources/Problem%20based%20learning%20An%20instructional%20model%20and%20its%20constructivist%20framework.pdf
Advertisement
There are two things that struck me from this article. The first one is that I find I am using cognitive dissonance more and more as a tool with school-age students and adults. I wonder if this is because we are constantly sifting and processing larger amounts of information in our daily lives. Cognitive dissonance causes the learner to pause and slow down the processing of information. This is more likely to slow down the processing and ask the learner to reflect a a deeper level of learning and understanding as they grapple with problematic knowledge.
The second thought is to do with anchoring learning activities to a larger knowledge or problem. As I facilitate learning, I find I am often assisting students to make links to previous knowledge, or connecting current learning to future possible experiences. Why is there an increase in demand for this type of linking in the learning process with less and less students making intuitive links to existing knowledge? Is the learning too demanding on working memory leaving little time/resources to link to other experience or is it that we are still grappling with too much content?
The holiday must be putting you into a reflective mode Ruth. Are the two points you make related to the students on the Learning Design project or related to the general school context? Do you think a project like the Learning Design project allows enough cognitive space for students to take full advantage of cognitive dissonance? I can see that the project puts a significant cognitive load on the students and that it is hard to find time to deal with the most important learning moments for each student. Eg especially in this iteration I am starting to see students patterns of using and processing information.