Problem-Based Learning: Curriculum and Connections Shelagh A. Gallagher, Ph.D.

1. Problem-Based Learning: Curriculum and Connections Shelagh A. Gallagher, Ph.D. sgallagher5@carolina.rr.com

2. The new age of science is marked by the dissolution of barriers across traditional disciplines and fields. Scientists are grouping and regrouping not based on similarity in background, but to ensure that diverse perspectives are considered. It is not unusual to see biologist in the aeronautic lab...

3. Neurological Development: A Brave New World • Acquisition of new brain cells • Peaks at age 11 or 12 • All in the prefrontal cortex • The brain ‘prunes’ from early adolescence through adulthood

4. Cognitive Changes • Formal Operations • Epistemological Reasoning

5. Romance

6. Once a scientist experiences the exhilaration of discovery and once he has felt the deeper and more expansive feeling…that is the reward for any real advancement of the understanding—then he is hooked and no other life will do. P.D. Medewar

7. the historian’s passion for manuscripts and sources is not the desire to confirm facts and dates or to correct occasional points of error in the historical story, but the desire … to see at first hand how an important decision comes to be made. So the last word of the historian is not some fine firm general statement; it is a piece of detailed research. It is a study of the complexity that underlies any generalization that we can make. Butterfield, 1931

8. Precision

9. There is a tremendous amount of work that you have to do to get your idea to come to life. But you’re not going to do that work if you don’t have the idea; if you don’t have that inspiration, that love. I didn’t know that you could not improve the fibers easily through plant breeding; I thought it would be fairly straightforward and then WHAM, it’s extremely complex. But by then I was hooked. Entomologist The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence. Write Till You Drop Annie Dillard

10. Generalization

11. The world is there. And so are other scientists. The social system of science…continues to be a collaboration at the bench or the blackboard, and on to formal publication--which is a formal invitation to criticism. The most fundamental function of science is to enlarge the interplay between imagination and judgment from a private into a public activity.

12. The Importance of DISPOSITIONS • Without dispositions of thoughtfulness, neither knowledge nor the tools for applying it are likely to be used intelligently. …dispositions have attracted the least attention in the professional literature, but a good argument can be made that dispositions are central in generating both the will to think and in developing…qualities of judgment that steer knowledge and skills in productive directions.

13. Requirements for Expertise(and Academic Achievement!) • Content • Factual • Conceptual • Skills • Metacognition • Mature Epistemology

14. To Make Learning Look like the Real World • Use problems at the beginning, not the end • Use ill-structured problems • Relate all learning to the problem • Make students apprentices • Give students responsibility for problem definition and plan of action • Have student defend their resolution using criteria which are meaningful to the discipline.

15. Welcome to the Middle Ages!!

16. Learning Issues Board What do we know? What are our Learning Issues? What is our Action Plan?

17. Time to Reflect Time to Reflect…

18. What did you notice?

19. Instructional Goals of PBL Core Content Problem Solving Conceptual Reasoning Research Dispositions Thinking Skills Ethics

20. Key Components of PBL • Initiating Instruction with an Ill-Structured Problem • Student-as-Stakeholder • Teacher as (Metacognitive) Coach

21. The Ill-Structured Problem • Needs more information before it becomes clear • Can be solved in more than one way • Has more than one resolution • Changes sometimes with new information • Is ambiguous and unclear

22. Student-As-Stakeholder • Real world problem solvers are not objective: we have perspective (bias) • Increases ownership • Provides a form of apprenticeship in a discipline • Authority, Responsibility, Accountability

23. Metacognitive Coach

24. The PBL Coach • Cruise Director • Socrates

25. Laying out the Plan... The Flow of the Problem

26. Engagement The Flow of the Problem Inquiry and Investigation Problem Definition Problem Resolution Problem Debriefing

27. Embedded Instruction • Research Skills • Interview Techniques • Letter Writing • Analysis of Information • Rules of Interpretation • Question Asking • Reflection

28. AssessmentThe Problem Log Classroom Rubrics

29. So Many Models, so Little Time! • Need to Demonstrate Synthesis rather than something ‘brand new’

30. Engaging for ALL Differentiated for Gifted Civil War Habits Of Mind Compare/Contrast Intended and Unintended Consequences Group work on Research, Presentations Laws Map Reading Problem Solving Interdependence, Good and Bad Communication

31. To Know them is to Love Them…PBL Resources • William and Mary Science Units www.kendallhunt.com • ASCD Materials • PBL and the Internet http://zephyrpress.com/ • Project Insights Curriculum

32. New!

33. Thompson’s Truths about Curriculum • The more academic learning is, the less academic it seems • Students acts as hero willing to become an unknown self • Creates a quake in the state of assumptions • Cognition without Imagination is shallow • Phasing of engagement and scholarship