Author: Maggi Savin-Baden

Maggi Savin-Baden Associates

Keywords: Problem-based Learning, PLB, self-directed learner, curricula, education and training, work flexibility

Article style and source: Paper presented at 'Managing Learning Innovation. The challenges of the changing curriculum', University of Lincolnshire and Humberside, 1-2 September 1998.

Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Problem-Based Learning in Context
• Barriers to Learning through Problem-Based Learning
• A Vision for a Possible Future
• Conclusion
• References

Abstract

This paper will examine some of the organisational issues and barriers to innovation and curricula change against the backdrop of an empirical study (Savin-Baden, 1996) that examined the experiences of staff and students involved in diverse programmes in four UK universities. It will suggest that the use of problem-based learning will continue to grow at a rapid rate over the next ten years as curricula alter to meet the changing requirements of employers.

Introduction

Curricula change towards problem-based learning is becoming a feature of professional education where the demands of universities and employers are requiring that professionals of the future can adapt to changing climates. It is likely, and argued here as desirable, that over the next five years Health Care Trusts will increasingly require of educators undergraduate education and training that promotes work flexibility and transferable skills along with creativity, critique and cost-effectiveness. Thus it would seem that problem-based learning is likely to become high on the agenda for consortia whose task it is to purchase education and training. Simultaneously in the drive towards inter professional education problem-based learning is increasingly being viewed as a vehicle for its promotion and implementation, particularly as problem-based learning is seen to transcend discipline boundaries, assist the integration of theory with practice and promote effective team work.

This paper will examine some of the organisational issues and barriers to innovation and curricula change against the backdrop of an empirical study (Savin-Baden, 1996) that examined the experiences of staff and students involved in diverse programmes in four UK universities. It will suggest that the use of problem-based learning will continue to grow at a rapid rate over the next ten years as curricula alter to meet the changing requirements of employers. content

Problem-Based Learning in Context

Yet it would appear that problem-based learning was popularised in the 1960s as a result of research by Barrows (Barrows and Tamblyn, 1980) into the reasoning abilities of medical students.

The attraction of problem-based learning seems to lie not only in its timely emergence in relation to other worldwide changes in higher education, but also because of new debates about professional education. Yet on closer inspection is this actually the case? Those who argue for problem-based learning, and indeed all forms of experiential learning, assert that learning means more than the acquisition of a body of knowledge supplied by experts. Instead, students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, (Boud, 1985), to become life long learners, (Walton and Matthews, 1989) and to become self-directed learners and thereby construct their own knowledge. Problem-based learning is said to enable students to become self-directed learners, so that they know how and what to learn, and are thus equipped as life-long learners, and are better able to cope with the rapidly changing world (Engel, 1991; Bridges and Hallinger, 1995; Boud and Feletti, 1997). content

Barriers to Learning through Problem-based Learning

Barriers for staff

Those who have implemented problem-based learning will know from their own experience the difficulties that they and their colleagues have encountered when making the shift to using problem-based learning. It is often the case that the barriers created though staff's own notions of learning, knowledge and problem-solving lead to difficulties in securing agreement across the faculty to implement problem-based learning. Staff's epistemological perspectives, those perspectives that affect their notions of knowledge and what counts as knowledge stem, in the main, from their "pedagogical stances in learning" (Savin-Baden, 1997b). Pedagogical stances are constructed through a combination of staffs' prior learning experiences, their often taken-for-granted notions of learning and teaching, and the type of higher education that they have received.

Thus staffs' pedagogical stances and their consequent epistemological priorities may force students to adopt the `know how/know that' priority against which Barnett (1994) argues. For in problem-based learning programmes that focus predominantly on vocational relevance, students will be forced into a modus operandi in which valid knowledge is only seen in terms of what it will enable the students to do. The dangers are all too obvious when we consider that our students are being encouraged to develop transferable and market related skills that may enable them to secure employment, but may not enable them to develop the ability to critique current cognitive frameworks or dominant models of culture. Furthermore courses where academic competence is seen as paramount may encourage students to continue to acquire vast amounts of propositional knowledge with a view that this is what will enhance their knowledge and understanding of the world. What is required instead are epistemological priorities in problem-based learning programmes that encourage students to `know that' and `know how' and thus embrace the ideal of not merely favouring particular epistemologies but instead recognising, valuing and querying different forms of knowledge(s) and knowing. Furthermore the examination of these kinds of barriers may be the means of forcing an interrogation of the theories and cultures that underpin the very disciplines in which students learn, and whose boundaries they will be expected to respect as professionals.

The particular form of problem-solving expected and/or rewarded by staff can also cause barriers to self-direction and autonomy because of the boundaries staff impose about the way in which a problem scenario is expected to be solved (Savin-Baden, 1998a; 1998b). For example, in some disciplines problems tend to be `limited' by staff so that students learn a particular body of knowledge and invariably produce a `best' answer that fits with the tutor's agenda. Many staff operate with the assumption that students need particular knowledge, in this case subject-based knowledge, to solve problems. Tutors also appear to believe that students require a body of knowledge before they can solve a problem. Thus the guidance students receive in terms of the way in which they are expected to solve problems appears to be affected by particular cultures implicit within the professions for which they are training. For example each profession allows for questioning within given parameters defined and accepted by the academics and professionals, but not beyond. Therefore problem-solving can take place within a given framework; a framework of knowledge, problem-solving and professional culture.

Staffs' conceptions of critique, particularly in relation to problem-solving, can result in barriers to students' learning. For example if we are to use Barnett's (1997a) taxonomy of conditions of critical thought we will see that what often occurs in many curricula is that critique is espoused but in practice students are only required to use critical thinking skills. Here students will employ cognitive skills to solve the given problem scenario.

Thus if staff see critique only as something with a use value within given boundary conditions then it is not the kind of critique that will, in the long term, encourage students to develop imaginative possibilities for discussion nor be multidimensional or dialogic in character. In courses that use problem-based learning, it is important to see problem scenarios as dilemmas to be managed, rather than just problems to be solved. This will relate not only to staffs' conceptions of critique but also to the degree of choice students perceive they have in the way that a problem is approached, and their perceptions of what is allowed and disallowed within epistemological and professional frameworks.

Challenges for students

In the context of problem-based learning students' concepts of learning and knowledge are often challenged because of the ways in which they are expected to be researchers of, and creators of, knowledge in ways that few have experienced in prior experiences of learning. Problem-based learning can be a significant challenge to students who expect learning to be discipline based even if the knowledge being learned coalesces around a problem scenario.

It would seem from research into students' learning that students today construe learning tasks as predominantly assimilating and reproducing material supplied by academics, rather than engaging with what is a meaningful and framing experience for themselves (Barnett, 1997b). Thus transcending discipline boundaries may be difficult to manage if students see knowledge as essentially propositional, rather than connected to their learner or pedagogic identity. For example Bernstein (1992) has argued that, through their experiences as students, individuals within higher education are in the process of identity formation. Thus pedagogic identities are characterised by the emphases of the time such as a common set of market related, transferable skills for the 1990s. The difference between learner identity and pedagogic identity is that, whilst pedagogic identities are seen to be identities that arise out of contemporary culture and technological change, learner identities focus upon the transcendence of structures embedded in higher education. Thus, in developing learner identities, some students are enabled to shift beyond frameworks that are imposed by culture, validated through political agendas or supplied by academics and prompted through learning such as problem-based learning (Savin-Baden, 1998a). It seems that for some students this transcendence occurs through encountering and engaging effectively with disjunction so that students see learning and epistemology as flexible entities. Whereas for others who are unable to make transitions in learning the disjunction that is experienced tends to be disabling and often results in shifts towards individualism, strategic approaches to learning and an overall sense of fragmentation in the learning process (Savin-Baden 1998b). Learning therefore involves not only critically evaluating knowledge supplied by tutors, but also the values implicit within that knowledge. Thus students should be encouraged to deconstruct not only their personal and pedagogical boundaries but also those of the academy. They will then be enabled to come to self understanding whilst also realizing the limitations of their profession and institution.

Institutional boundaries

An innovation such as problem-based learning is required to be not only central but also integral to the philosophy of an organisation. Yet innovations such as problem-based learning can also be seen as prompting "creative destruction" within an organisation whereby the innovation challenges and destroys established practice (Morgan, 1997). The academy of recent years has had to learn to reinvent self in numerous guises, determined by the needs of its `customers' and the government. We still have much to learn from industry about managing innovation and change effectively and indeed in our understandings of the notion of meritocracy. Effective universities of and for the future should be able to ground their current activities from a vision of multiple futures. They should be able to see the deficits and use creativity and innovation to help to manage challenge, change and organisational faults. Fault lines are the places where fissures appear in structures and institutions, systems and communications because of susceptible areas. We can all point to fault lines, places where things persistently go wrong. Breakdowns commonly occur as a result of the same catalyst and with similar characteristics as on the previous occasion. For example fault lines in organisations tend to occur in four key but interrelated areas: communication, standards, information and monitoring (Leslie, 1997) that over time can result in increasingly haphazard decision making and inaccurate assumptions about what is required within the organisation. Academic leadership can therefore play a major role in influencing the success or otherwise of the introduction of problem-based learning and effective leadership can minimise fault line risk.

Professions Borders

Patterns of learning developed through competency-based and skill-based learning can result in a notion of professional life governed by means-end solutions, formulaic practices and a lack of sound professional judgement. Although initially for novices, this kind of practice may be seen as a helpful and enabling process but its long term cost is the setting of a pattern for professional life characterised by non reflective practices and modes of thinking that barely reach the level of critical thinking skills.

The real concern here is that if students at undergraduate level demonstrate the use of strategic approaches to learning and choose to avoid engaging disjunction then this can set a pattern for professional life. It will be a life characterised by narrow frameworks and the inability to create and reframe knowledge for themselves. The result will be professionals who avoid engaging with issues and concepts that challenge their life world (Habermas, 1989) in order that they can remain in comfortable frameworks and avoid being challenged or taking up positions that interrogate the very frameworks in which they work. This has serious implications for the notion and practice of continuing professional development. Let us take for example the area of the education of health professionals since this is one of the areas in the United Kingdom where the use of problem-based learning is currently flourishing.

For a number of years the aim of the National Health Service Executive and the Department of Health has been to improve clinical effectiveness to encourage an evidence-based health care system. Evidence-based practice, practice whereby the best available evidence is used to inform decision making and practice and so ultimately improves clinical judgement, is being promoted as a necessary next step for many health care professionals at undergraduate level and in continuing professional development. At the same time there is an increasing desire within Health Care Trusts to have flexible workers who can adapt to a changed climate of health care. Agencies such as the National Health Service National Training Forum and the National Health Service Training Authority have supported shared training to encourage flexibility of staffing and, increasingly, higher education is finding that interprofessional education is perceived to be economically worthwhile. Thus the financial pressures on the National Health Service and higher education will mean that there is increasing support for methods that promote shared learning and interprofessional education which meet both multiple aims and decreased funding requirements.

Yet simultaneously there is great resistance to moving disciplinary borders between the education of health professionals. This kind of stance can be seen too in the professional bodies that guard the access to process and propositional knowledge in their territories as defined by Eraut (1994). These particular territories are seen as those areas of knowledge and skill that are defined specifically by a profession, are seen to be bounded and owned by that profession, and are expected to be recognised and acknowledged as such by other professions. Nevertheless it is hardly possible to specify a knowledge base in relation to any kind of qualified competent practitioner when knowledge is not a constant - except that it is a constant state of change.

Methods of experiential learning such as problem-based learning thus bring to the fore the problem of what actually counts as knowledge and who makes the decisions about what counts and what does not:

"It is not just that we have to grapple with different theories or ideas; for example, that doctors or lawyers will often come to quite different judgments about the same situation. Rather, the very frameworks with which we understand ourselves, our practices and our environment are themselves contestable. What it is to be a doctor or a lawyer in the modern world is disputed. The frameworks with which we interrogate the world and find our way in it are multiplying" (Barnett, 1997a: 11)

In order to manage these difficulties we will need to acknowledge the complexity of managing professional territories and underlying attitudes and in practical ways that enable our students to understand the subtext of `silent dialogues' in professional education. One such way would to be to make explicit the actuality that knowledge is contingent, contextual and historical.

We need to recognise this state of affairs and then opt for the kind of knowledge in professional life characterised by critical self-reflection and responsiveness to change. It is only by embracing this kind of stance that the shifting borders and the contextual nature of knowledge can be managed. We may then have the kinds of professions that are self-learning communities and that help the development and continual renegotiation of professional frameworks and identities. content

A Vision for a Possible Future

Staff wanting to implement problem-based learning for life world becoming would seek to provide for the students a kind of higher education that offers within the curriculum multiple models of action, knowledge, reasoning and reflection along with opportunities for students to challenge and evaluate them. Thus students would be encouraged to challenge borders, create new borders, live and work in the border country (Giroux, 1992). Knowledge would be seen as being constructed by the students, and they would both begin to see themselves as creators of knowledge, and be able to build upon and integrate previously learned knowledge and skills with material that was currently being learned. Furthermore they would be encouraged to evaluate critically personal knowledge and propositional knowledge on their own terms; thus the student would not only embrace knowledge but also query it. Additionally, in the context of their peer group, students would be encouraged to make knowledge claims to be put before the group and examined by others in order to facilitate shifts towards life world becoming. Individuals would use dialogue and argument as an organising principle in life so that through dialogue they would challenge assumptions, make decisions and rethink goals.

Students may use the group process to challenge identity and all that is implicit within that identity. Thus students would be expected to develop qualities of moral and intellectual as well as emotional independence and they would be required to set their own goals and objectives for learning. Within the problem-based programme they would be offered opportunities to examine themselves as reflexive projects and be enabled to foster mechanisms for finding and developing their own voices, so that in a sense they would be in a continual state of personal and cognitive renewal.

From the stance of problem-based learning for life world becoming students, as future professionals, would be encouraged to become questioning and critical practitioners; practitioners who would not only evaluate themselves and their peers effectively, but be able to analyse the shortcomings of policy and practice. Thus students in this form of problem-based learning would tend to see learning and epistemology as flexible entities, would perceive there to be other valid ways of seeing things besides their own perspective and would accept that all kinds of knowing can help them to `know' the world better. Problem-based learning of this sort would enable students to develop critical frameworks with which to interpret the practice of others, develop their own critical frames and thence to critique them. Modes of learning such as this interrupt linear models of learning and can become for us not just a theory of learning but also a practice whereby values and practices can be presented, explored and contested in the light of lived experience. content

Conclusion

References

Alavi, C. (Ed.) (1995) Problem-based learning in a Health Service Curriculum, London: Routledge.

Barrows, H.S.& Tamblyn, R.M. (1980) Problem-based Learning, An approach to Medical Education, New York: Springer.

Barnett, R. (1994) The Limits of Competence, knowledge, higher education and society, Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press.

Barnett, R.(1997a) Realizing the University based on an Inaugural Professional Lecture delivered at the Institute of Education November 25 1997 (London, Institute of Education, University of London).

Barnett, R. (1997b) Higher Education: A Critical Business, Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press.

Bernstein, B. (1992) 'Pedagogic Identities and Educational Reform'. Paper presented to Santiago conference, mimeo.

Boud, D. (ed.) (1985) Problem-based Learning in Education for the Professions, Sydney: Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia.

Boud, D. and Feletti, G. (eds) (1997) 2nd Edition The Challenge of Problem Based Learning, London: Kogan Page.

Bridges, E.M. and Hallinger, P. (1995) Implementing Problem-based Learning in Leadership Development. Oregon, ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management

Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education, New York: Collier and Kappa Delta Pi.

Engel, C. (1997). Not Just a Method But a Way of Learning. In D. Boud & G. Feletti (eds), The Challenge of Problem Based Learning, London: Kogan Page.

Eraut, M. (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence, London: Falmer.

Giroux, H. (1992) Border Crossings, London: Routledge.

Habermas, J. (1989) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Polity.

Leslie, A. (1997) `Organisational Fault lines: Surviving and Thriving in an Imperfect World'. Paper presented to North Down and Ards Health and Social Services Trust and Eastern Health and Social Services Board, 9 April.

Morgan, G. (1997) Images of Organization, London: Sage.

National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (1997) Higher education in the Learning Society (Report of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education chaired by Sir Ron Dearing), London: HMSO.

Savin-Baden, M. (1996) Problem-based learning: a catalyst for enabling and disabling disjunction prompting transitions in learner stances? Unpublished Ph D Thesis. University of London Institute of Education.

Savin-Baden, M. (1997a) `Problem-based Learning, Part 1: an innovation whose time has come?', British Journal of Occupational Therapy 60 (10).

Savin-Baden, M. (1997b) `Problem-based Learning, Part 2: Understanding Learner Stances ', British Journal of Occupational Therapy 60 (12).

Savin-Baden, M. (1998a) `Problem-based Learning, Part 3: Making sense of and Managing Disjunction', British Journal of Occupational Therapy 61 (1).

Savin-Baden, M. (1998b) `Understanding problem-based learning contexts from staff and students' perspectives' Paper presented at `Higher Education Close Up' University of Central Lancashire 6-8 July.

Schön, D.A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, New York: Basic Books.

Walton, H.J. & Mathews, M.B. (1989) ` Essentials of problem-based learning', Medical Education 23 542-558.

Weil, S. (1998) From Dearing and Systemic Control to Post Dearing and Systemic Inquiry: Recreating Universities for `Beyond the Stable State' Systems Research (forthcoming).

About the Author