LEARNING PRODUCTIVITY
Wingspread Journal, Summer 1997

WHAT IS PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING?

by Linda T. Torp
Linda Torp is director for research, evaluation, and development for the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.

As citizens and professionals we grapple with messy problems daily. Meeting our daily challenges is how we grow personally and as a community. Its how we learn.

Many educators are beginning to realize that this kind of learning works for students as well. Called problem-based learning or PBL, it is a curriculum approach that uses problems as the basis for reaching specified learning goals. These problems are ill-structured, in that they often change with the addition of new information, are not solved easily, and do not always result in a right answer. PBL can help to create a learning environment in which teachers coach student thinking and guide student inquiry into the depths of real-life situations, facilitating learning toward deeper levels of understanding.

Taking the role of a stakeholder in the problem, students gather and apply knowledge and skills from multiple disciplines and resources as they devise viable solutions. In the process, they are making meaningful connections between school learning and learning for life. They live the problem through the perspective of those individuals who own the problem. In this way, they step inside the problematic situation and learn from the inside -- not as an outsider observing from a safe distance.

Students at Chicago's Steinmetz High School's Career Academy, for example, worked with a local medical center as waste management consultants. The hospital had identified biohazardous waste inadvertently stored in the basement of the center's parking facility since the 1930s. Students investigated the problem, the legal issues, the health concerns, the regulations regarding biohazardous waste disposal. They then devised an effective method of disposing of the biohazardous waste which was implemented by the hospital board.

Teachers using PBL assume a supporting sideline role much like that of a sports coach, offering help as it is needed and providing guidance in strategy-building and strategy-testing. Coaching is a process of goal-setting, activating, modeling, navigating, facilitating, monitoring, and providing feedback to students in order to support their active and self-directed thinking and learning. The main trick of the trade is deciding when to let the players play and when or how to intervene.

Students are the principal players in this game, while coaches support them quite actively to achieve the main goals of PBL.

The Goals Are:

1. To develop learners' natural predisposition to recognize and explore problems in subjects they study and in the world outside the classroom.

2. To enable learners in self-directed inquiry and decision-making in confronting and working through ill-structured problems.

Because PBL is organized around the investigation and resolution of messy, real-world problems, it creates a pressing need to know in students. They are attracted by the complexity and urgency of real-life situations. Problem situations demand action or resolution. Teachers say that students involved in PBL find learning more motivating, build critical and creative thinking skills, and are self-directed leaders. PBL is a strategy with the potential to transform teaching and learning for the benefit of learners of all ages.