30 Jan 22
Last week I chose to give you some insight into a pneumonic that I have used to assist and teaching my students a process to work through a difficult problem. In essence, I gave them a tool to help them critically think. As I stated in that post, I never really thought that this was needed and it was one of those “you either have it or you don’t have it” kind of situations. However, through a lot of experience with my students through the years, I found that critical thinking doesn’t come naturally to everyone I came across.
This week, I want to give some insight into problem-based learning (PBL) theory.
What is Problem-Based Learning?
My personal definition of PBL is:
A teaching method that uses realistic scenarios, and instructor guidance to challenge students’ critical thinking skills toward a decision-making process that allows the students to evaluate their own results and correct them for follow-on problems.
Why a personal definition John? Well, there are A LOT of researchers out there that have defined PBL themselves and I haven’t found one that I disagree with yet but there are little pieces of several different definitions that I do agree with. So, I aggregated the data together in order to develop my own definition.
Why is it important to teach and incorporate PBL?
The benefits of problem-based learning involve an increased ability to make decisions and solve problems; increased awareness of complex real-world issues; increased exposure to several bodies of knowledge; developed ability to learn beyond the classroom; increased desire to think holistically; increased use of theories and practice; and a lifelong learner’s or self-directed learning mindset carried into their professional lives (Jones & Turner, 2006).
Problem based learning has been proven to work, with high results, in several different fields of learning. Educators have been successful incorporating problem-based learning in social sciences, communication, and even mathematics (Abraham, Hassan, Ahlam Damanhuri, & Salehuddin, 2016). Students that have been involved in experiments with problem-based learning reflected that they hope for more activity-based, dialogical, and interactive learning in future instruction (Takahashi & Saito, 2013). Additionally, they are eager to seek out their own information and, generally, notice the importance of self-directed learning (Takahashi & Saito, 2013). The final reason for promoting the widespread use and education of problem-based learning is the ability to have students practice their professional skills while attending a training course. An article in Medical Teacher (2014) concluded that problem-based learning-graduates (that is students who attended a university that focused on problem-based learning instruction) are better problem solvers, have increased retention of knowledge and an enhanced ability to integrate basic science of clinical problems (Bate, Hommes, Duvivier, & Taylor, 2014).
That’s a lot of good data but what is your experience, John?
Data is good, research is good, but experience, in my opinion is even better. From the moment I researched and then realized that the course I was in charge of was teaching in this style without even knowing about it, I set out to change that. While the medical field has been using this style for a long time I took into context how long the medical field has to produce an “expert”. The problem with the course I was in charge of was that we had a shorter amount of time, just 5.5-months, to produce the same level of expert as the medical profession had been producing in 8+ years of time. To say that we needed to be efficient is an understatement!
I took on the challenge of ensuring that I educated every single one of my cadre and I even took it a step further to incorporate learning theory instruction into our syllabus as a formal class to all of our students. Since I have done that, it has been nothing but good results for myself, my teammates, and my students.
Make an expert tactician and operator, but also make an expert teacher. That was my vision for my team. I provided all of the data that I had been researching. I also provided our students with a few classes on PBL in order to show them that the knowledge gap wasn’t actually that big. In essence, we were talking about a near-transfer versus a far-transfer of knowledge. Our cadre and our students literally did not realize that this (PBL) is what they had been doing the whole time. When I taught them the theories and supporting evidence, they were excited about it and ready to make themselves and our students better.
What I was most impressed with was that my team was willing to learn more about PBL after my initial instruction. There were a lot of questions and it allowed me to go deeper into the PBL theories with my own research. I also got the same amount of intrinsic motivations from our students as I began to teach this to them. After students graduated, I fielded several requests for my research data and the classes that I was teaching. This actually supported a lot of research I had done with PBL in that PBL not only fosters the growth of an expert teacher, but it can actually sustain it over the course of a teacher’s career.
PBL is capable of doing this through its ability to increase the intrinsic motivation of students while facilitating recall of knowledge and establishing context for real-world application (Bate, Hommes, Duvivier, & Taylor, 2014). Those attributes fall directly in line with Amy Tsui’s (2009) dissertation on expert teachers. Amy, a professor at the University of Hong Kong, observed 4 teachers over an 18-month period. She set out to understand what makes an expert teacher. Of the 4 teachers one was in her eighth year of teaching 2 were in their fifth year and the last teacher was in her second year. Amy concluded that an expert teacher possesses three qualities that distinguish them from novice teachers: (1) their capability to integrate various aspects of knowledge in relation to their subject-matter; (2) their personal relationship with the context of the material they are teaching; and (3) their capability to engage in reflection and professional deliberation on their topic (Tsui, 2009)
When I dove into the above research, I found myself consistently relating what my team was doing at our course back to these research articles and periodicals from academia. Using Amy’s research from above and the qualities she described I would argue that my team and our graduates of the course could accomplish all of those qualities:
1. My team and our graduates possessed an innate capability to integrate a vast amount of knowledge and apply it to their fields of instruction. An example would be the ability to teach a group of individuals who were extremely knowledgeable in the violent application of airpower and kinetic effects on very non-kinetic, non-violent technological integration. They could teach our students about the intricate details of these new things with the same rigor and enthusiasm as the very violent things.
2. Both my team and graduates possessed a personal relationship with the material that they were teaching. The personal relationship is fostered in the culture of the educational institution to which they belong. The instructors are hand selected to return, after an operational assignment, to educate the next generation of graduates. This return only builds on their personal relationship with the material since each instructor has gone through the same program as the current and future students. It is truly a professional community of practice that surrounds each instructor with the best of the best from all communities in the USAF.
3. Each member of my team and our graduates were surrounded by a culture that enabled opportunities to engage in reflection and deliberation. Instructors frequently engaged in reflection and deliberation through peer-reviews and student critiques. A research team from the University of Liverpool found that being a part of these types of communities of practice is another characteristic of an expert teacher (Bate, Hommes, Duvivier, & Taylor, 2014). With this community, my team fostered the skills necessary to become a life-long learner. This skill gave my team and our graduates the necessary reflection and professional deliberation ability.
Instituting PBL greatly enhanced the product we produced and assisted us to further professionalize our team and our graduates. By providing the educational base of knowledge and the demonstration of PBL throughout our program we built the experience necessary to create expert teachers.
Problem based learning has proven itself to be one of the most effective methods for teaching our medical professionals how to thrive in their respective fields. It is only fitting that this same approach should be used to teach our warfighters how to employ their systems to defend our nation just as doctors defend our lives. The use of PBL ensured that my team and our graduates are instructing the necessary knowledge, fostering the critical skills needed for an expert instructor, and providing the enhanced counselling and leadership skills that are all traits of an expert teacher. (Jones & Turner, 2006)
References
Abraham, R. R., Hassan, S., Ahlam Damanhuri, M. U., & Salehuddin, N. R. (2016). Exploring students self-directed learning in problem-based learning. Education in Medicine Journal, 15-23.
Bate, E., Hommes, J., Duvivier, R., & Taylor, D. C. (2014). Problem-based learning (PBL): Getting the most out of your students - Their roles and responsibilites: AMEE Guide No. 84. Medical Teacher, 1-12.
Jones, R., & Turner, P. (2006). Teaching coaches to coach holistically: can problem-based learning (PBL) help? Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 181-202.
Takahashi, S., & Saito, E. (2013). Unraveling the process and meaning of problem-based learning experiences. Higher Education, 693-706.
Tsui, A. B. (2009). Distinctive qualities of expert teachers. Teachers and Teaching, 421-439.
Comments