Conceptual Bases of Problem-Based Learning

Conceptual Bases of Problem-Based Learning

Teaching strategies in higher education have been biased toward monologic and monomodal approaches to learning, whereby learners are pacified and their knowledge measured according to their ability to reproduce what teachers say. Implicit in this approach is the conception of learners as depositories of knowledge, and in which cognition and perception is hegemonic to other forms of knowing.

Problem-based learning (PBL) denotes a range of different educational strategies characterized by more holistic and, more recently, multimodal approaches to learning (e.g., Iedema, 2003). We view learning as identity transformation that encompasses knowing, being, doing, and relating in a complex multivoiced oneness: The focus is on practice understood as a social phenomenon that involves both individual and social dimensions that exist in mutual constitutive relationships.

There are important differences among PBL approaches. We will sketch four different approaches. Our starting point is U.S. pragmatist John Dewey, who also laid the foundation of PBL and its implications. We develop and supplement Dewey's pragmatic approach with emancipatory pedagogy [Page 441](Freire, 1996), storytelling pedagogy (e.g., Boje, 2008a; Jørgensen & Boje, 2010; Jørgensen & Strand, 2011), and intra-active pedagogy (Barad, 2007; Taguchi, 2010).

Despite differences, these four approaches share a concern in taking a holistic approach to what teaching should accomplish, namely transforming the whole person as well as transforming societal or organizational situations. PBL is one means for these achievements—it organizes learning and education around the practical matters to change the world and people. However, there are also important differences among these approaches in the ways in which they address political issues involved in education and regarding what kind of modalities (language, space, artifacts, and bodies) they integrate into the teaching and learning processes.

PBL is often regarded as an important instructional method for bridging theory and practice to make the subject matter more comprehendible to students. Although this point is important, we stress that PBL's goal is not merely instrumental in producing more effective learning. It is also focused on determining that learning produces desirable effects on organizational and societal problems.

The four different approaches to PBL sketched here are thus all characterized by being located within specific philosophies of education in which the micropractices of teaching and learning are linked to broader societal issues of democracy, ethics, and emancipation. U.S. pragmatism serves as the overall framework for our discussion on the three other approaches to PBL.