A couple of weeks ago, when the weather turned ridiculously cold, I was on my way home from visiting with some teachers in a nearby city when I got a little lost.  My GPS went a bit screwy and started to send me in circles.  After going by the same gas station three times, I attempted to navigate as my forefathers had done—I stopped and asked directions.

A helpful, older gentleman got me recalibrated, and pointed me in the right direction.  The route he suggested took me in front of a newly remodeled high school with a handful of sports practice fields on one side.  Though it was only 2 in the afternoon and barely twenty degrees outside, there were kids everywhere.  My first thought was that the school must have been having some sort of Arctic fire drill.  That’s when I heard a muffled explosion and a loud cheer from the kids on the field.

It turned out that these students were participating in their very own version of Pumkin Chunkin’—a competition where builders construct trebuchets, catapults, and air cannons to see who can launch pumpkins, gourds, and a variety of other edibles the furthest distance through the air.  The event was put on by a handful of science teachers and community members in order to build interest in physics, engineering, and problem solving—all of which are being emphasized in emerging curricular standards across the nation.

As I visited with the students, they kept talking about their teacher, Doctor Sylvester, and the learning activities that went on in his classes. They said that he was always demonstrating something potentially perilous to students and insisting that they would all ‘be safe as long as no one made any sudden movements.’  Even more interesting was how often it sounded like students got to be involved in these types of activities.  Pumpkin Chunkin’ seemed to be just one of a long list of activities used to get students excited and engaged in problem-solving.

The more I heard students talk, the more this teacher sounded like some sort of mad-scientist.  Every year Doctor Sylvester also rigs up an elaborate, musically-synchronized Christmas lights show up at his house. People drive for miles from nearby towns and cities just to line up for a chance to park in his driveway and experience the seasonal spectacle. He also runs the music at school dances…which he enhanced with a laser-light show and a fog machine.

It also turns out that the ‘Doctor’ in Doctor Sylvester’s name isn’t just an honorary title.  After working for a few years in the Computer Science field, he decided he wanted to be a teacher instead, so…he went out and got a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction.  His dissertation?  You guessed it—Problem-based Learning.

This type of learning insists that all of education should involve either problem solving or preparation for problem solving (Delisle, 2004).  Instead of memorizing information, PBL presents students with a situation that leads to a problem and provides opportunities for students to assume the role of scientist, project manager or engineer.

Problem-based Learning originated in the medical field as a means for improving practitioners’ critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.  Barrows and Tamblyn (1996) summarized the process as follows:

* The problem is encountered first in the learning sequence, before any preparation or study has occurred.

* The problem situation is presented to the student in the same way it would present itself in reality.

* The student works with the problem in a manner that permits his ability to reason and apply knowledge to be challenged and evaluated, appropriate to his level of learning.

* Needed areas of learning are identified in the process of work with the problem and used as a guide to individualized study.