From Algorithmic Problem-Solving to Problem-Based Education: An Ethnographic Study in Negotiating an Institutional Network

• In Event: Educational Responsibilities in Problem-Based Education (PBE): Principles, Practices, and Networks Creating and Supporting PBE

Abstract

Objective
This ethnographic study traces the layers of considerations and decision-making processes of a curricular designer who transformed a well-entrenched algorithmic-based General Chemistry curriculum to problem-based education (Hmelo-Silver, Kapur & Hamstra, 2018) in three months for 20 instructors and 1000 students a year at an undergraduate military academy in the United States. An underlying goal for this study is making visible the central argument for the change: how PBE, more specifically, inquiry-based processes, addressed stakeholder interests and critical skills required to prepare student-cadets for military service and officership.

Conceptual Framework
With an interactional ethnographic (IE) approach (Green, Skukauskaite & Baker, 2012) as guiding epistemology, we traced decision-making processes through intertextual (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto & Shuart-Faris, 2005) ties across time, actors and events. Discourse-in-use (Bloome & Clark, 2006) was the focus for tracing socially significant (Bloome & Egan Robertson, 1993) aspects of this decision-making process through evidence in course and communications documentation. Specifically, we traced what was socially significant in this decision-making process by examining what was being proposed, recognized, acknowledged, and undertaken by actors in this particular site, discipline, department, and academic institution.

Modes of inquiry
The first author assumed a dual role of design leader of the curriculum and embedded ethnographer. The latter role involved constructing an archive of the decision-making processes among the actors, i.e. department faculty and administrators, who engaged in the design and implementation process. The document archive enabled us to reconstruct stakeholder interests through discourse analysis across texts and over time. These interests are then linked intertextually (Bloome, et al., 2005) to specific aspects of the developing problem-based curricular design that was eventually adopted to address particular needs of the institution.

Data sources
Data sources are documents, mainly those used to argue for and garner support from decision-makers and course stakeholders for moving to a problem-based model. Other supporting artifacts include planning calendars and notes from meetings and over time communications with stakeholders.

Results
This study shows how the foundational principles of problem-based learning addressed the interests of a network of stakeholders (military service, alumni, university president, academic dean, and department head and decision-maker) over time from initial charge to “change it [the algorithmic curriculum]” to adoption of the problem-based curriculum. Central to this decision was how PBL provides opportunities for negotiating ill-structured problems. These problem-based processes are traced to institutional strategic goals that include preparing student-cadets for the uncertainties inherent in military officership.

Scholarly significance
By reconstructing the network of stakeholder interests and how these influenced the designing of a particular learning environment, this study makes visible the complexity in negotiating institutional curricular decision-making systems. In particular, this study shows how challenges to transforming to PBL are locally driven and can be addressed locally.

Authors

• Melinda Z. Kalainoff, Kalainoff Consulting and Research, LLC

• Eileen M. Kowalski, United States Military Academy