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Editors:
Bridges, Susan
McGrath, Colman
Whitehill, Tara
Series editor:
Gijselaers, Wim
Author information:
a. Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver
Catherine Eberbach
-
-
e. Rutgers University
Graduate School of Education
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ USA
Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver
Catherine Eberbach
Rutgers University
1.1 Introduction
Several features of PBL are important in achieving the goals. These include the
overall PBL tutorial process, facilitation, problems themselves, collaboration, self-
directed learning, and post-problem reflection. A PBL tutorial session starts by
presenting a group of students with minimal information about a complex problem
(Barrows, 2000). From the outset, students must engage in questioning to obtain
additional problem information; they may also gather facts by doing experiments
or other research (Torp & Sage, 2002). For example, when middle school children
were asked to build artificial lungs, they performed experiments to determine how
much air the lungs had to displace (Hmelo et al., 2000). At several points in the
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problem, students typically pause to reflect on the data they have collected so far,
generate questions about that data, and hypothesize about underlying causal
mechanisms that might help explain it. The students then identify concepts they
need to learn more about in order to solve the problem (i.e., “learning issues”).
After considering the problem with their naive knowledge, the students divide and
independently research the learning issues they have identified. They then regroup
to share what they learned, reconsider their hypotheses and/or generate new hy-
potheses in light of their new learning, as shown in the cycle (Fig. 1.1). When
completing the task, learners reflect on the problem in order to abstract the lessons
learned, as well as how they performed in self-directed learning and collaborative
problem solving. They evaluate their understanding of the problem as well as their
progress towards a solution.
In the traditional PBL model, students use whiteboards to help scaffold their
problem solving (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). The whiteboard is may be divided into
four columns to help the learners record where they have been and where they are
going. The four columns scaffold learning by helping to communicate the PBL
process (Hmelo-Silver, 2006) and help structure and guide the group’s learning
process (Dillenbourg, 2002). The whiteboard serves as a focus for negotiation of
the problem for students to co-construct knowledge. The Facts column includes
information that the students gather from the problem. The Ideas column serves to
keep track of evolving hypotheses about solutions. The students place questions
for further study into the Learning Issues column. They use the Action Plan to
keep track of plans problem solving or finding more information. The use of the
whiteboard helps students externalize their problem solving and allows them to
focus on more difficult aspects of their task. It provides a model of a systematic
approach to problem solving and supports student planning and monitoring as they
identify what needs to go up on the board, and later, to consider what needs to be
removed. This should enhance students’ problem-solving skills (and subsequent
transfer of knowledge and skills to new situations).
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(Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989), where the facilitator plays a key role in mod-
eling the problem solving and self-directed learning skills needed when self-
assessing one’s reasoning and understanding. In PBL, the facilitator is an expert
learner, modeling good strategies for learning and thinking rather than providing
content knowledge. Facilitators progressively fade their support as students be-
come more experienced with PBL until finally learners adopt the questioning role.
The facilitator is responsible both for moving the students through the various
stages of PBL and for monitoring the group process—assuring that all students are
involved so that they can both externalize their own thinking and comment on
each other’s thinking (Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2006, 2008; Koschmann, Myers,
Feltovich, & Barrows, 1994). The PBL facilitator guides the development of
higher-order thinking skills by encouraging students (and the group) to justify
their thinking, and externalizes self-reflection by directing appropriate questions to
individuals. Expert facilitators accomplish these learning and performance goals
through the use of a variety of strategies that often involve the use of open-ended
and metacognitive questioning (Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2008). These strategies
build on student thinking and help catalyze and focus discussions in subtle but
productive ways.
niques may be helpful. One approach is the use of structured journals (e.g., Pun-
tambekar & Kolodner, 1998). These kinds of approaches need evidence of their
effectiveness before advocating their widespread incorporation into PBL models.
To understand how PBL achieves it goals, we turn to theories of learning. We
argue that by understanding these theories, we can better understand how students
learn in PBL and use this understanding to determine which features of PBL are
most important for particular goals and how PBL might be adapted under different
circumstances. Neither information processing or social constructivist theories
alone provides a sufficient account of learning in PBL. Having an understanding
of the theoretical foundations of PBL is thus important in designing and facilitat-
ing productive PBL experiences.
the study reported in Hmelo (1998) were more successful in their problem solving
because they could use their science knowledge and the strategies that they devel-
oped as tools for their thinking. Psychological tools are “those symbolic arti-
facts—signs, symbols, tests, formulae, graphic-symbolic devices – that help indi-
viduals master their own ‘natural’ psychological functions of perception, memory,
attention, and so on and serve as a bridge between individual acts of cognition and
the symbolic sociocultural prerequisites of these acts” (Kozulin, 1998, p.1). Tools
such as these mediate individual and collaborative activity. In studies of learning
processes, the role of several kinds of psychological tools are examined: concep-
tual tools, such as knowledge, strategies, language, and representational tools that
students construct (and that may be used to scaffold and guide their learning).
Knowledge, strategies and language help mediate goal-directed activity by
helping one make inferences and reason about one’s activities. Students use lan-
guage as a tool to help them construct meaning (Vygotsky, 1978). As Lave and
Wenger (1991) point out, mastery of language and discourse allows students to
progress in becoming participants in communities of practice.
PBL provides many opportunities for students to engage with conceptual tools
such as language and domain knowledge. Adequate language practice is essential
for being a part of a community of practitioners – a group of people who share
goals, ideas and interests to solve similar problems. Through participation and dis-
cussion, practitioners have a chance to appropriate and manipulate newly acquired
vocabulary, negotiate word meanings, and interact with other members of the
community (Brown et al., 1993). Such discourse is central to the PBL process. As
students work in small groups they have opportunities to share what they have
learned and discover what they still need to learn. This kind of talk makes learn-
ers’ thinking visible to the group, which then allows it to become an object that is
open for discussion and revision. This is an ideal environment for students to ap-
propriate the conceptual language of a discipline as they practice it and have a
chance to learn from their mistakes.
Besides language, one’s knowledge and strategies can serve as important tools
for problem solving. In PBL, students appropriate new knowledge and strategies
as they engage with problems. This is distinct from acquiring content knowledge
because this knowledge carries an instrumental value (Kozulin, 1998). Knowledge
is only a tool if “it is appropriated as a generalized instrument capable of organiz-
ing individual cognitive and learning processes in different contexts and in appli-
cations to different tasks.” (Kozulin, p. 86). Students in PBL curricula use science
concepts and disciplinary reasoning strategies to produce good quality explana-
tions, which suggests that these concepts and strategies function as psychological
tools (Hmelo, 1998; Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2008). In addition, the hypothesis-
driven strategies that PBL students use in their reasoning also serves to support
their self-directed learning because they can use their hypotheses as a way to eval-
uate the relevance of new information for the problem they are trying to solve
(Hmelo & Lin, 2000). For example, a learning issue related to a disease leads stu-
dents to consider abnormal lab values in a context rather than as an isolated fea-
ture such as in this example “...the physiology of the adrenal gland: what are the
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compounds which it synthesizes, and what are the systemic effects of their release
into blood in abnormally elevated levels?” (Hmelo & Lin, 2000, p.237).
In addition to the conceptual psychological tools, representations can serve as
tools for thinking. Different representations afford and constrain social knowledge
construction in several ways (Pea, 1993; Roth, 1998). First, representations serve
as a shared concrete referent for members of a group and provide a common focus
for negotiation. Second, the structure of the representation can guide student dis-
cussions (Suthers & Hundhausen, 2001). In PBL, several representational artifacts
may be constructed. One representation is the formal structured PBL whiteboard
with its facts, ideas or hypotheses, learning issues, and action plan. This helps
guide the discourse to consider certain issues and not others. The whiteboard
serves as an external memory for the students—it reminds them of their ideas,
both solidified and tentative as well as hypotheses that students need to test. One
ritualized aspect of the PBL tutorial is “cleaning up the boards.” (Hmelo-Silver &
Barrows, 2006). This occurs at several times, but especially after students have
discussed what they learned from the resources they used for self-directed learn-
ing. In this event, students evaluate each of their hypotheses, look at how the hy-
potheses fit with the accumulated data, and how that meshes with what they have
brought in from their self-directed learning. The discussions of what hypotheses
are still worth considering and which ones are more or less likely, lead to substan-
tive discussions that are centered around what needs to be filled in on the white-
board Students often discussed how hypotheses should be ranked or when they
should be added or deleted. Similar discussions revolved around learning issues
(Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2006; 2008). The formal whiteboards serve as a space
for students to negotiate their ideas. When students mark something as needing to
be placed on the whiteboard, it suggests that the group agrees that what is written
on the board is worth paying attention to. The use of the whiteboard is a fluid part
of the tutorial that supports reasoning, knowledge construction, and self-directed
learning as students use it to remind them of what they are considering, what they
know, and what they still need to learn. Other representations students may con-
struct are less formal representations such as flow charts, concept maps, and dia-
grams (see Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2006; 2008).
1.8 Discussion
PBL has its theoretical foundations in Information Processing theory and Social
Constructivist theories. Information processing theory provide an account of the
role of prior knowledge and how knowledge is internally structured and restruc-
tured through problem solving. Social constructivist and sociocultural theories
account for how knowledge is socially constructed and how disciplinary and cul-
tural tools mediate this construction. Although we have described these theories
separately, we do not believe that they are mutually exclusive accounts of how
learning is accomplished in PBL. These theories serve to explain both individual
learning and social knowledge construction. They suggest ways in which PBL is
appropriately structured, from initial discussions that activate learners’ prior
knowledge to the use of language and representations to support learning.
13
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