Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning

By Judith Green

Problem-based learning (PBL) has been deployed as a student-centered instructional approach and curriculum design in a wide range of academic fields across the world. The majority of educational research to date has focused on knowledge-based outcomes addressing why PBL is useful. Researchers of PBL are developing a growing interest in qualitative research with a process-driven orientation to examining learning interactions. It is essential to broaden this research base so as to support PBL designs and approaches to leading students into higher-order thinking and a deeper approach to learning.

Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning explores how students learn in an inquiry-led approach such as PBL. Included are studies that focus on learning in situ and go beyond measuring the outcomes of PBL. The goal is to further expand the PBL research base of qualitative investigations examining the social dimension and lived experience of teaching and learning within the PBL process. A second aim of this volume is to shed light on the methodological aspects of researching PBL, adding new perspectives to the current trends in qualitative studies on PBL. Chapters cover ethnographic approaches to video analysis, introspective protocols such as stimulated recall, and longitudinal qualitative studies using discourse-based analytic approaches. Specifically, this book will further contribute to the current educational research both theoretically and empirically in the following key areas: students’ learning processes in PBL over time and across contexts; the nature of quality interactions in PBL tutorials; the (inter)cultural aspects of learning in PBL; facilitation processes and group dynamics in synchronous and asynchronous face-to-face and blended PBL; and the developing nature of PBL learner identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Release date: Aug 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781612495866

Book preview

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

Why Focus on Interactions

in Problem-Based Learning?

Susan M. Bridges

The University of Hong Kong

Rintaro Imafuku

Gifu University

This volume arose from an invitation by the editorial board of Purdue University Press to extend the work presented in the 2016 special issue (volume 10) of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning (IJPBL). Our goal for both collections has been to contribute to the growing evidence base that is affording new insights into student experiences in problem-based learning (PBL) as an inquiry-led approach as it is coconstructed through dialogic, interactional processes. In curating and shaping this volume, we recognised important points of departure from the 2016 special issue and, indeed, since the genesis of PBL in medical education half a century ago. We note that the field of interactional studies in PBL is not only growing but, significantly, is addressing the key philosophical, curriculum design, and pedagogical issues facing many learning approaches in an era of complexity, change, and ubiquitous access to information.

Given its focus on dialogic approaches and collaborative inquiry, PBL is a logical field to explore from a situated perspective. Indeed, as Dolmans and Gijbels (2013) noted, it is important to investigate how the different elements of a PBL environment can be optimized for what kind of student, under which conditions and why (p. 217). Evensen and Hmelo-Silver’s (2000) edited volume was one of the earliest attempts to create a compendium focussed on investigating the group meeting and self-directed learning in PBL in medical education and reported empirical studies drawing on self-reports, interviews, observations, and verbal protocols.

In this volume, contributors have further responded to our question: Why focus on interactions in PBL? In doing so, they have explored the key themes of students’ learning processes in PBL over time and across contexts, the nature of quality interactions in PBL tutorials (and how quality is achieved through talk and other modalities), facilitation processes, and the developing nature of PBL learner identity. In chapter 11, Savin-Baden’s article (reproduced from Savin-Baden, 2016) provides a framework of four transdisciplinary threshold concepts in PBL that support transformations in understanding: liminality, scaffolding, pedagogical content knowledge, and pedagogical stance. If we adopt this as a metaframing for the studies in this volume, we can see how each study’s focus on interactions in PBL contexts illustrates liminality by highlighting the moments of dissonance, conflict, or confusion that can generate transitions and transformations as conceptual epiphanies, new group norms and practices, and identity formulations. In terms of scaffolding, the studies on educational technologies and new digital information flows trace how new affordances are taken up by the facilitator and/or the PBL group, with analysis indicating the inherent PBL dilemmas related to the degrees of scaffolding necessary for learners across a variety of contexts. Shulman’s notion of pedagogic content knowledge remains, in his own words (Shulman, 2018), a fuzzy term, but as Savin-Baden argues, it underlies the importance of PBL to identity formation. In the studies in this volume, this can be seen in relation to professional education but also in terms of identities grounded in disciplines, for example, gender and mathematics education. Perhaps central to the nuances of the interactional studies in this volume is the notion of pedagogical stance, as, by taking an emic perspective, we are able to gain textured insights into the actions of students and their facilitators within and across the PBL cycle of inquiry.

The invited commentaries in the preface and the closing provide unique, outsider perspectives from an expert educational researcher (Green), on the one hand, and novice educational researchers (Verbeek and Maximo Chian) on the other. As editors, we trust that the etic and emic insights presented in this volume provide a platform for expanding and integrating interactional scholarship to extend the potential of PBL into its next 50 years.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to sincerely thank the external reviewers and Purdue University Press for their guidance, as well as Florian Verbeek and Min Yang at The University of Hong Kong for their editorial assistance. We also sincerely thank Emeritus Professors Peggy Ertmer, Founding Editor, Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning (IJPBL) (Purdue University) and David Silverman (Goldsmith’s College) for reviewing the volume and providing expert testimonials for promotional purposes. We gratefully acknowledge funding support from the General Research Fund (GRF) of the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong SAR (Ref.:17100414).

REFERENCES

Dolmans, D., & Gijbels, D. (2013). Research on problem-based learning: Future challenges. Medical Education, 47, 214–218.

Evensen, D. H., & Hmelo, C. E. (Eds.). (2000). Problem-based learning: A research perspective on learning interactions. New York: Routledge.

Savin-Baden, M. (2016). The impact of transdisciplinary threshold concepts on student engagement in problem-based learning: A conceptual synthesis. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1588

Shulman, L. (2018, March). Igniting the imagination of teacher education: Learning from our own best ideas and practices … and from our neighbors. In Re-imagining teacher education. Symposium conducted at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, HKSAR. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Uq9MvYU0vYk

SECTION I

EMIC PERSPECTIVES OF PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING DYNAMICS THROUGH INTERACTIONAL RESEARCH

The studies presented in this section have adopted a variety of methodologies drawn from the larger traditions of educational ethnography, interactional sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis, which share an interest in examining the lived experiences of learning processes in situ. A shared theme across these chapters is an exploration of the sociocultural and sociocognitive dimensions of PBL, with researchers aiming to make visible the impact of the social on student and group learning. This is achieved through close examination of a range of PBL interactional processes across contexts and years of study. Foci range from exploring human interactions (peer, facilitator, group) to understanding how technologies are reshaping new formulations of PBL in its 50th decade.

To provide a broad framing for the field of interaction research in PBL, we open with Jin and Bridges’s review of qualitative research in PBL, which, while restricted to studies in medical and health sciences education, indicates future directions relevant to a range of disciplines and educational contexts. The remaining studies can be viewed as building from these authors’ closing call for further interactional studies to contribute textured understandings of PBL facilitation, assessment, and the new impact of educational technologies. The remainder of the chapters in this section contribute new perspectives through studies embracing ethnographic approaches to video analysis, introspective protocols such as stimulated recall interviews, and longitudinal qualitative studies using discourse-based analytic approaches. Skinner and colleagues’ exploration of students’ views of social practices with respect to quietness and dominance in groups is illuminating in terms of how group roles and functions are negotiated and developed, while their ethnographic investigation of PBL group practices notes the dual nature of silence as either generative or negatively impacting learning and social interactions in PBL tutorials. Schettino’s narrative analysis examines interactional aspects of adolescent female students’ mathematics learning in relational problem-based learning (RPBL) and constructs I-Poems to identify developing empowerment and agency in problem-based mathematics learning. Svihla and Reeve’s emic analysis of student–teacher interactions, field notes obtained from participant observation, and students’ learning artifacts explores the agentive process of students’ learning in a problem-framing activity within project-based instruction at a U.S. charter school. They demonstrate the power of codesign in PBL, which enables students to take ownership. Almajed and colleagues adopt a constructionist interpretive approach to examining collaborative learning, specifically in case-based discussions in dental education. Their study reinforces prior assertions about the generative and productive nature of sociocognitive knowledge conflicts in inquiry-based group discussions. Wiggins and colleagues draw upon discursive psychology to analyze interactions in the first tutorial of a new PBL group. Their study illustrates how students present themselves in a new interprofessional group learning setting and indicates implications for group and academic identity development through interactions. In their discourse-based study of PBL in Japan, Imafuku and colleagues examine student participation patterns in an interprofessional education (IPE) seminar. Their analysis of classroom interactions and stimulated recall interviews sheds light on what and how learners gain in terms of both their collaborative processes of knowledge coconstruction and managing conflict in IPE. In another discursive psychology study, Hendry, Wiggins, and Anderson’s fine-grained microanalysis of students in situ provides a nuanced accounting of personal mobile phone use during PBL to examine the management of psychological issues in talk and text. McQuade and colleagues’ conversation analysis (CA) study addresses the problematic issue of how students manage instances of social loafing in PBL groups and makes visible the social dimension of teaching and learning within the PBL process, including the resilience of PBL learner identity and interactional strategies in mitigating the issues raised as a result of social loafing. Finally, Lai, Wong, and Bridges’ interactional ethnography (IE) explores how students and their facilitator incorporate a screen-sharing presentation system in face-to-face PBL tutorials to reshape knowledge coconstruction processes in a blended learning environment. Their findings suggest that the use of educational technologies in PBL can expand not only the facilitators’ repertoire of effective strategies for scaffolding learning but also student’s active engagement.

As a whole, this section moves us into new and nuanced understandings of the role of interactional processes for collaboration and inquiry, which are central to the tenets of problem-based learning.

CHAPTER 1

Qualitative Research in Problem-Based Learning in Health Sciences Education

A Review

Jun Jin

University of Graz

Susan M. Bridges

The University of Hong Kong

INTRODUCTION

Problem-based learning (PBL) has had a profound impact on education worldwide. While its implementation has gradually extended from clinical to nonclinical disciplines (Lu, Bridges, & Hmelo-Silver, 2014), the majority of research studies in PBL have been conducted in health sciences educational contexts such as medicine (Schmidt, Vermeulen, & van der Molen, 2006) and dentistry (Winning & Townsend, 2007). This body of research has mainly emphasized quantitative investigations, with growing interest in mixed-methods approaches (Albanese & Mitchell, 1993; Berkson, 1993; Newman, 2003; Shin & Kim, 2013; Smits, Verbeek, & de Buisonjé, 2002; Vernon & Blake, 1993). This may be seen as a historical shift from positivist toward interpretivist designs. Indeed, the role of qualitative research in health sciences education has been increasingly acknowledged since the 2000s (Bligh & Anderson, 2000; Eva & Lingard, 2008), and its impact on the field in addressing new lines of inquiry is expanding.

Qualitative research aims to gain an understanding of people’s experiences in the world and their perspectives in social situations. Merriam (1998) identified five central characteristics of qualitative research in education:

1.  Understanding the phenomenon of interest from the participants’ perspectives, not the researcher’s;

2.  Situating the researcher as the primary instrument for data collection and analysis;

3.  Usually involving fieldwork;

4.  Employing an inductive research strategy; and

5.  Focusing on process, meaning, and understanding with the product of a qualitative study being richly descriptive (Merriam, 1998, p. 6).

As such, qualitative research aims to capture the complexities and subtleties of human thoughts and behaviors rather than measure population variables as in survey research (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2000). Quantitative studies tend to select large samples in experimental designs, with randomized control trials viewed as a gold standard, particularly in health sciences research. Their goal is to achieve an objective, generalizable representation of a phenomenon. Qualitative studies, on the other hand, are inclined to focus on small, nonrandom, and purposeful samples such as typical and atypical case studies to gain subjective, nuanced understandings.

Qualitative studies in PBL, compared to quantitative studies that mainly measure the effectiveness of PBL programs or curricula, primarily investigate the perceptions of participants and various practices within the PBL process. Some of the earlier qualitative studies in problem-based health sciences education drew on public health survey traditions to examine students’ and facilitators’ perceptions through open-ended questions in written questionnaires, focus group interviews, and other self-report approaches (e.g., Steinert, 2004; Virtanen, Kosunen, Holmberg-Marttila, & Virjo, 1999). Previous literature reviews of PBL in health sciences education have predominantly included these quantitative studies. For example, Koh, Khoo, and Wong’s (2008) review focused on the effects of PBL on physician competency, while Polyzois, Claffey, and Mattheos’s (2009) review investigated the benefits of PBL compared with conventional teaching.

Hmelo-Silver (2004) and Bridges, McGrath, and Whitehill (2012) noted that there were fewer empirical studies to investigate what and how students were learning in the PBL process. The potential for the relevance and utility of qualitative research in studies of PBL in health sciences education research is indicated, but no systematic work has been conducted to date to map trends in this relatively new field. Thus, it is timely to review this developing field and identify future directions in terms of both research focus and approach. This review therefore focuses on qualitative research studies in PBL in health sciences education, with a particular focus on current and emerging methodological trends. The key research question addressed is: What are the current methodological trends in qualitative research studies in PBL in health sciences education?

As Chiriac (2008) suggested, a good literature review presents a critical synthesis of research articles, identifies knowledge, highlights gaps, and provides guidance, eventually offering a new perspective. For this literature review, the existing research studies of PBL in health sciences education were searched via online databases, and the results were synthesized. Research foci, methods, and findings are identified. Research gaps are indicated in terms of topics, study designs, and methodology in general. The implications for future research are discussed accordingly.

Methods

The screening process and classification of selected articles were guided by Cook and West’s (2012) stepwise approach to conducting systematic reviews in medical education (Leung, Mok, & Wong, 2008; Polyzois, Claffey, & Mattheos, 2009), as presented below.

Screening Process

Two computerized databases were screened: the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) and PubMed. ERIC is a digital library of education literature, and PubMed includes peer-reviewed literature in health sciences education. Initial search terms were problem-based learning, OR PBL, AND qualitative. Publications in the English language were selected. Following are the criteria for inclusion:

1.  Original research was done within health sciences education between 2000 and 2015.

2.  Empirical studies were conducted in real-life PBL classrooms.

3.  The subjects of studies were students in health sciences education.

4.  The research methods in the studies were solely qualitative.

The following were excluded:

1.  Controlled or simulated study designs.

2.  Mixed-methods (both quantitative and qualitative methods) studies.

3.  Review studies.

Figure 1.1 The process of literature searching and identification.

The process of literature searching and identification is presented in Figure 1.1. Precisely 2,405 journal articles were identified in the initial search. Titles, keywords, and abstracts of articles were then screened to refine results according to the above criteria for inclusion and exclusion. This screening process resulted in the selection of 82 publications that met the criteria for inclusion. Full-text articles were retrieved and assessed, while duplicates were removed. From there, 53 full-text articles were included for in-depth review. Cross-referencing uncovered eight additional qualitative research articles from the gray literature. Finally, 61 full-text articles were included for analysis.

Classification of Selected Articles

In order to address the research questions, the studies were classified according to research methodology. The coding categories were discussed and confirmed by the research team. Based on the identified features of data sources and research methods in qualitative study designs (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Holliday, 2002; Merriam, 1998), four groups of studies were identified. These included self-reported studies using interview data (see Table 1.1), studies analyzing video recordings of PBL tutorials (see Table 1.2), introspective studies analyzing written reflections (see Table 1.3), and studies using multiple qualitative methods (see Table 1.4). Following Cook and West’s (2012) approach, key information (i.e., author, year, research focus, subject, region, data sources, analytical approach, and main findings) for each article was included. The results were then analyzed and synthesized by narrative or quantitative pooling, examining themes of key information in the selected articles. The quality of these studies is not assessed, which is a limitation in this review process.

RESULTS

The number of recent qualitative research studies of PBL in health sciences education is small but growing, with 61 qualitative articles identified in the review period. Four main research issues in PBL were identified in the review period: (1) participants’ experiences or perceptions, (2) facilitation, (3) assessment, and (4) educational technologies. Participants’ experiences or perceptions of PBL have drawn the most research attention to date, while issues of facilitation, assessment, and educational technologies have been addressed to a lesser degree. Identified articles include self-reported studies using interview data (n = 29) (see Table 1.1); studies analyzing video recordings of PBL tutorials (n = 9) (see Table 1.2); introspective studies analyzing written reflections (n = 6) (see Table 1.3); and studies using multiple qualitative methods (n = 17) (see Table 1.4). Among these studies, the majority are perception studies, with only a limited number focused on the learning process of PBL or conducting interactional analysis. The following section reviews the research topics and findings of the 61 selected articles.