Problem-based learning provides a rich opportunity for students to deepen their knowledge, to expand their repertoire of technical skills and to enhance their appreciation of thinking tools, processes and strategies. It is not enough, however, to understand concepts and principles and to solve that one problem. The essential outcome is to develop and expand the dispositions of skillful problem solvers who can apply their learnings to an ever-expanding array of challenges in their world.
While we are interested in how many answers individuals know, we are even more interested in how they behave when they don’t know. The larger goal is for enhanced performance under challenging conditions that demand strategic reasoning, insightfulness, perseverance, creativity and craftsmanship to resolve complex problems. Achieving this vision requires the internalisation of certain dispositions, propensities or Habits of Mind.
What are Habits of Mind?
Habits of Mind are dispositions that are skillfully and mindfully employed by characteristically intelligent, successful people when they are confronted with problems. When we draw upon these mental resources, the results are more powerful, of higher quality, and of greater significance than if we fail to employ those habits.
Employing Habits of Mind requires a composite of many skills, attitudes cues, past experiences, and proclivities. It means that we value one pattern of thinking over another, and therefore it implies choice making about which habit should be employed at which time. It includes sensitivity to the contextual cues in a situation signaling that it is an appropriate time and circumstance to employ this pattern. It requires a level of skillfulness to carry through the behaviours effectively over time. Finally, it leads individuals to reflect on, evaluate, modify and carry forth their learnings to future applications. It implies goal setting for improved performance and making a commitment to continued self-modification.
1. Persisting
2. Managing impulsivity
3.Listening with understanding and empathy
4. Thinking flexibly
5. Thinking about thinking
6. Striving for accuracy
7. Questioning and posing problems
8. Applying past knowledge to new situations
9. Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision
10. Gathering data through all senses
11. Creating, imagining, innovating
12. Responding with wonderment and awe
13. Taking responsible risks
14. Finding humour
15. Thinking interdependently
16. Remaining open to continuous learning
A CASE STUDY
The following episode is based upon a true problem-based learning experience at California State University, Sacramento. The challenge, submitted by a representative of the Shriners’ Children’s Hospital, was to find a way to reduce/eliminate the occurrences of pressure ulcers on patients that are committed to wheelchairs, specifically children. The team that tackled this problem was composed of five members in their senior year of the program leading to an engineering degree. I am deeply grateful to Eric Lencioni, a member of the team, for his help in describing this experience and the comments made by group members.
The comments, while edited, are taken from group member’s responses to interview questions posed by the author. Several Habits of Mind become evident in the dialogue and are identified in the column on the right.
Toward a larger agenda
Problem-based learning provides a unique opportunity for students to become more scientifically and technologically literate and to make informed decisions. Problem- based learning also encourages a more spiritual agenda and has the great potential of building a more thoughtful world as an interdependent learning community, where all people are continually searching for ways to trust each other, to learn together, and to grow toward greater intelligence. By caring for and learning from one another and sharing the riches and resources in one part of the globe to help the less fortunate others achieve their fullest intellectual potential:
• SOLVING WORLD PROBLEMS: continually generating more effective approaches to find peaceful ways rather than resorting to violence and terrorism to resolve differences.
• FLEXIBILITY: understanding and valuing the diversity of other cultures, races, religions, language systems, time perspectives, and political and economic views in an effort to develop a more stable world community.
• CONSCIOUSNESS of our human effects on each other and on the earth’s limited resources in an effort to live more respectfully, graciously, and harmoniously in our delicate environment.
• LISTENING WITH UNDERSTANDING AND EMPATHY and USING CLEAR AND PRECISE COMMUNICATION with other peoples, regardless of what language they speak. We must dream dreams together, understand complex issues together, and use dialogue instead of weapons to resolve misunderstandings.
• THINKING INTERDEPENDENTLY by sharing the riches and resources in one part of the globe to help the less fortunate others achieve their fullest potential.
Problem-based learning, therefore, supports a vision of classrooms, schools and communities and, indeed, a world that are more thoughtful places.