Dewey's Contribution to a Standard of Problem-Based Learning Practice

Although we already have many theory-based definitions and procedural descriptions of problem-based learning (PBL), we currently lack anything that could serve as a practical standard, that is an account of the critical practices that make an instructional activity recognizable as PBL. I argue here that the notion of inquiry developed in the writings of the American educational philosopher John Dewey could be useful in illuminating the features of observed interaction that would be relevant to a description of instructional practice. An example is provided based on a segment of recorded interaction in a tutorial group in a problem-based curriculum at a U.S. medical school. Within this segment, a conflict emerges among the students with respect to their planned handling of a case. Through their discussion, the students determine what they would need to know in order to resolve the conflict, or in Dewey’s words to make an "indeterminate situation determinate." The paper calls for additional work to produce a large corpus of fine-grained descriptions of instructional practice from a variety of PBL implementations. Such a collection would provide a basis for the eventual development of a PBL standard.