Situated cognition and problem-based learning: implications for learning and instruction with technology.

The aims of this article are three-fold. First, this article reviews the foundational premises of situated cognition and attempts to substantiate its theoretical underpinnings with the transactional worldview supported by the works of John Dewey, the later Lugwid Wittgenstein, Michael Polanyi, and others. Second, having reviewed the literature, we attempt to draw connections between situated cognition and Problem-Based Learning (PBL) as an instructional process. From these implications, we argue that PBL is fundamentally congruent to situated cognition. Third, from the previous discussion, we draw implications from situated cognition and PBL to learning and instruction with technology. We argue that instruction and the use of technology should focus on the historical and social process of learning centered on authentic problems and tasks.

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The principal idea behind problem-based learning is...that the starting point for learning should be a problem, a query or a puzzle that the learner wishes to solve. (Boud, 1995, p. 13)

Problem-based learning starts primarily with a focus on problems, that is, real-life problems and activities, rather than intense disciplinary knowledge. The approach attempts to move students towards the acquisition of knowledge and skills through a staged sequence (serving as a scaffolding process) of problems presented in context, together with associated learning materials and support from necessary sources, for example, teachers and experts.

The argument of a PBL approach is contrary to the Lockean model of the mind that has plagued education for centuries, the mind as a tabula rasa waiting for the teacher to write on it. Such a conception of teaching implies that learning is nothing other than the transmission of information from active teacher to passive learner. Popper (1979) has disparaged as "the bucket theory of the mind," the theory which regards the mind as an empty bucket which has to be filled with information before it can know anything.

In the same vein, situated cognition is described and the author argues that its fundamental theoretical underpinnings are congruent to PBL approaches. While situated cognition arose out of research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive psychology, and PBL from the perspective of instructional design, we perceive a congruency in both fields. We attempt to ground PBL with the notions of situated cognition and draw implications for students' learning within problem-based learning approaches.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

The theoretical framework, which in the author's opinion encapsulates the beliefs about knowledge and learning, which underpins the PBL approach is situated cognition. Situated cognition emphasizes the contextual dimensions of knowledge where meanings are considered inseparable from its relations among situations and verbal or gestural actions (Bredo, 1994; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Clancey, 1992; Coulter, 1991; Greeno, 1991; Prawat, 1996; Rowe, 1991). In other words, meanings are perceived as inseparable from interpretation, and knowledge is linked to the relations of which it is a product (Clancey & Roschelle, 1991; Dewey, 1910/1981; Reese, 1991; Roschelle, 1989; Still & Costall, 1991; Tyler, 1978). According to Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989), knowing, and not just learning is inextricably situated in the physical and social context of its acquisition and use. It cannot be extracted from these without being irretrievably transformed.

In other words, knowledge is fundamentally a coproduction of the mind and world, which like a woof and wrap need each other to produce and to complete an otherwise incoherent pattern. It is impossible to capture the densely interwoven nature of conceptual knowledge completely in explicit, abstract accounts. In the same vein, Dewey (1910/1985) expressed that knowledge is not just a mental state; rather, "it is an experienced relation of things, and it has no meaning outside of such relations" (Dewey, 1910/1981, p. 185). According to such a perspective, mind is perceived as an aspect of person-environment interaction, where activity involves a transaction between person and environment that changes both (Dewey & Bentley, 1949).

Situated cognition research arose from the study of how representations are created and given meaning. An essential idea is that this process is perceptual and inherently dialectic. Representations are not at the center of the mind, but rather emerge from the interaction of mental processes with the environment. Each time we create these representations, it is an act of perceiving and reconstruction. More precisely, data or "information in the environment" isn't merely described, selected, or filtered, but constructed in the course of perception (Bateson, 1972). Categorizations of things in the world are not merely retrieved descriptions, but created new each time. We are constantly acting in our everyday lives, often in the state of being (Winograd & Flores, 1986). Mental organizations do not merely create activity like stored programs (as in AI research), but are created in the course of the activity, always as new, living structures (Bartlett, 1958). Situated cognition researchers hypothesize that we do no t have an internal memory of representations, but a process memory, that is, a memory for reconstructing events and words. As a product of interactions with the environment (sensory, gestural, and interpersonal), representations cannot correspond to an external, objective reality. Representations are themselves interpreted interactively, in cycles of perceiving and acting--they are the product of interactions, not a fixed substrate from which behavior is generated. Cognition, like all human behavior, is situated (Clancey, 1997; Clancey & Roschelle, 1991). Prior to the recent rise of situated cognition, the notions of AI and information processing focus on representations and processing structures of the brain, where all action is "inside the head." The brain is thought to be a computational engine for input and output transformations. Mental operations mediate environmental stimuli and transform mental representations into plans for behavioral actions (Norman, 1976).

Transactional Worldview

When context and cognition undergo a dialectical process where both dimensions experience dynamic changes, such a view is commonly known as the transactional worldview. The transactional worldview (Altman & Rogoff, 1987) is a synthesis of Pepper's (1942, 1967) contextualist and selectivist orientations and Dewey and Bentley's (1949) transactional perspective.

The root metaphor of contextualism is the "purposive act," which assumes that behavior is goal directed and intentional in a pragmatic and functional way; however, no assumptions are made about teleological or ingrained purposes that govern functioning. The concept of purposiveness also emphasizes meaning, intention, and experiential processes, and an active organism that exhibits volition, agency, and control over its functioning. Selectivism, like contextualism, adopts a holistic unit of analysis of psychological phenomena and rejects the idea of isolated and separate person and environment elements. Instead, purposive behavior consists of integrated acts associated with physical and social environments, with change and process being central features of the whole--a spatial and temporal confluence of people, settings, and activities that constitutes a complex organized unity. There are no separate actors in an event; instead, there are acting relationships, such that the actions of one person can only be de scribed and understood in relation to the actions of other persons, and in relation to the situational and temporal circumstances in which the actors are involved.

In the same vein, the situated cognition perspective as advocated does not deal primarily with the relationship between entities as distinct, instead, it considers the system--context, persons, culture, language, intersubjectivity--as a whole coexisting and jointly defining the construction of meanings. The whole is not composed as separate entities but is a confluence of inseparable factors that depend on one another for their very definition and meaning. In other words, situated cognition points toward defining things that emerge from within the process of acting and inquiring. Rather than being given descriptions from the outside, the focus of processes should be from within the context of interactions--the formative process and not just the summative product. In this regard: "All of the central concepts of educational psychology ... must be reconceived in more active and relational terms rather than in terms of static matching and fixed descriptive frameworks" (Bredo, 1994, p. 29).

Recently, other terms such as "interactivist" (Bickhard, 1992), "relational" (Lave & Wenger, 1991), and "dialectical" (Clancey, 1992) connote the transactional perspective, where the focus is on processes in interactivity. Work related to this perspective includes Vygotsky's socio-historical approach (Newman, Griffin, & Cole, 1989; Rogoff & Lave, 1984), Garfinkel's (1967) ethnomethodology and later works on conversational analysis (Suchman, 1987), evolutionary epistemology (Bateson, 1972; 1979), and neo-Marxist theories of practice (Lave, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Congruent with these works is the view that the history of a relationship causes an outcome, not the actions of one or another party alone. Constraints that are relevant for interpreting and guiding the process are also reconceived in relational (rather than internal or external) terms, as signified by such concepts as situation or context.

Language and the Mediation of Perspectives

Situated cognition thus places learning within a participatory framework, and not just in an individual mind (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This means among other things, that learning is mediated through language by differences in perspectives among co-participants (Bakhtin, 1984; Lave & Wenger, 1991). In his work on linguistic meanings, Wittgenstein (1958) also adopted the view that understanding meanings in language requires insight into the activities or situations in which the language is involved. Wittgenstein took Austin's (1962) work on "speech acts" much further when he claimed that nonlinguistic factors are necessary for understanding the linguistic. To imagine a language means to imagine a "form of life." It is clear from Wittgenstein's examples that by a "form of life," he means the entirety of the practices of a linguistic community. The main focus of his interest was the connection between linguistic expressions and habitual actions (Jost, 1995). Wittgenstein (1958) argued that the multifaceted characte r of language causes it to be used differently in various semantic situations; therefore, it cannot be expanded to abstract principles or universals but can be applied only to specific contexts. Wittgenstein uses "language games" to illustrate that language occurs in a dynamic, changing context subject to historical and temporal change. The meaning of a concept depends upon its use in specific contexts and so is not fixed or universal.

Language Games

Essentially, Wittgenstein (1958) asserted that each use of language occurs within a separate and apparently self-contained system complete with its own rules. In this sense, our use of language is similar to playing a game. We require an awareness of the operative rules and significance of the terms within the context of the purpose for which we are using language. Each use of language constitutes a separate "language game," and the various games have little to do with one another (Wittgenstein, 1958).

To adopt the concept of language games is to take an important step toward rejecting the idea of objective reality. In his later works, Wittgenstein explicitly abandoned the concept of truth as correspondence to reality or a picturing of reality, characterizing it instead as an internal function of language. No proposition can be limited to a single meaning, he said, because its meaning is necessarily dependent on its context, the language game in which it appears. Thus, any sentence has as many meanings as the contexts in which it is used. Taken to its logical conclusion, this position implies that we can never claim to be stating the final truth or truth in any ultimate sense; at most, we can produce utterances that are true in the context in which they are spoken.

Wittgenstein's metaphor carried an additional, far-reaching implication. The characterization of language as a "game" implies a subtle attack on the notion that language can have any sort of "private" meaning. It presumed that language is not a private phenomenon, arising when an individual mind grasps a truth or fact about the world and then expresses it, but rather that language is a social phenomenon, acquiring its meaning in social interaction. This observation lies at the foundation of the postmodern understanding of language.

Similarly, Apel (1980) examined theories of language in the later thought of Wittgenstein and of Gadamer, concluding that there is a convincing case that "the achievement of inter-subjective agreement" constitutes the precondition for effective sign-operations and communication (Apel, 1980, p. 111). Gadamer's emphasis on the trans-cultural horizons of tradition and community, and Wittgenstein's work on public criteria of meaning is "that unlimited community of interpretation which is presupposed by everyone who takes part in critical discussion as an ideal controlling instance" (Apel, 1980, p. 123).

In speaking of "everyone who thinks," Apel had in his view not "consensus" but broad criteria of rationality. Wittgenstein imagined a critic confusing the two issues in this way. He wrote:

"So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and false?" -- It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life. If language is to be a means for communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as it may sound) in judgments. This seems to abolish logic, but does not do so. (Wittgenstein, 1958, sect. 241 & 242)

The main point here is "the interpreting community as an interacting community" (Apel, 1980, p. 110).

By contrast with formalist theories of language, Wittgenstein insisted that the meaning of such terms as "proposition," "language," and even "meaning" itself depend on the "language-game in which they are to be applied." (Wittgenstein, 1958, sect. 96) Wittgenstein observed: "When language-games change, then there is a change in concepts, and with the concepts the meaning of words change" (Wittgenstein, 1969, sect. 65). Wittgenstein also noted: "What determines ... our concepts is ... the whole hurly-burly of human actions, the background against which we see any action" (Wittgenstein, 1967, sect. 567). Additionally, he wrote: "The kinds of use we feel to be 'the point' are connected with the role that such-and-such a use has in our whole life" (Wittgenstein, 1956, I, 8, sect. 567). When he considered language, Wittgenstein observed that some language-games could be thought of in entirely context-relative terms, but for the most part we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing. A lthough social practices of given communities do indeed provide a background which contextually shapes concepts and meanings, overlappings and interpenetration also offer certain criss-crossings which constitute trans-contextual bridges. Sufficient bridging can occur for Wittgenstein to suggest that in many cases a trans-contextual frame of reference for meanings can be found in the "common behavior of mankind" (Wittgenstein, 1958, sect. 206).

In the well-known language-game of "Wittgenstein's builders" (Wittgenstein, 1958, sect. 2 and 3), meanings are created by ostensive reference only because "this narrowly circumscribed region" presupposes a given communicative situation between these two builders; it is context-specific. Wittgenstein also envisages a different example. Two people, this time, share a joke. Wittgenstein wrote: "One of them has a certain somewhat unusual words and now they both break out into a sort of bleating. That might appear very extraordinary to a visitor coming from a different environment. Whereas we find it completely reasonable" (Wittgenstein, 1980, p. 78). In the case of laughter, the "meaning" of this "institutional" or social behavior is trans-contextual or trans-cultural. Wittgenstein saw these as having stable meanings in the context of human behavior.

In the same vein, Habermas (1984) viewed the role of language as coordinating actions and the socializing of actors. Language is a matter of action by social agents. Habermas constructively appealed to the later Wittgenstein. He observed: "language and action interpret each other reciprocally; this is developed in Wittgenstein's concept of the language-game" (Habermas, 1978, p. 168). Similarly, Bakhtin's (1984) differentiation between sentence and utterance also has implications for the use of language within contexts. For Bakhtin, a sentence such as "I am very tired" can be subjected to a syntactical and semantic analysis through the application of formal rules describing the structure of the sentence, the role of each word in the sentence, and the manner in which the different word meanings interrelate to constitute the sentence meaning. On the other hand, the sentence is not an utterance. An utterance encompasses expressive intonations: who is the speaker, who is the addressee, what has been said before, w hat reactions the speaker is expecting, and so forth. For example, a person uttering "I am very tired" elicits completely different reactions if the communicative intention is "I am working too much" or "I am tired of you." The actual manifestation of these communicative intentions cannot be reduced to a formal analysis based on syntactical or semantic rules. One has to consider gestures, what has been said before, facial expressions, who is talking to whom, and so forth. Hence, situatedness is the fundamental aspect of an utterance.

A central idea of Bakhtin (1984) important to our discussion is the notion of dialogism. In the formalist approaches to language, the utterance is seen as an expression of a thought. The speaker, conceived as a carrier of thoughts, is an emitter of utterances whose meaning are his thoughts. For Bakhtin instead, the paradigm of how language is used centers not on the isolated thinker manifesting his thoughts, but on a dialog in which the utterances react to each other and acquire meaning by mutual relationship and conflict. The utterance is voiced by an author whose words express a certain point of view that is recognizable, to himself and to others, only by reaction from other points of view. Dialog is a constant and mutual shift of perspective, and the multiplicity of perspectives is not only consequential but simultaneous. It involves understanding perspectives about the meanings of symbols used by others (Bakhtin, 1984).

Implications of Situated Cognition

Based on the previous discussion, the first implication of situated cognition is that such a perspective adopts the postmodernist standpoint where language cannot represent or mirror nature in absolutely objective terms. Language should rather be recognized as the instrument of social cooperation and mutual participation where the mind is seen to be a function of social interactions (Dewey, 1958). As Rorty (1991, p. 7) suggested, "questions which we should have to climb out of our own minds to answer should not be asked." The crux of Rorty's stand was that there is no way of realistically finding out if what we judge to be objective is really absolute truth. According to Rorty (1979), all claims of knowledge, indeed what is deemed to count as knowledge, arises only from within some given social tradition, in which the context of convention determines what is acceptable as "rational." Rationality, Rorty (1979) claimed, is a property of "what society lets us say" (p. 174). Taking Thomas Kuhn's (1962, 1970) noti ons of the social contexts of scientific paradigms, Rorty interpreted philosophical progress not as the victory of rational argumentation over fallacy, but as "new philosophical paradigms nudging old problems aside" (Rorty, 1979, p. 264). This is social pragmatism because everything depends on the nature of the community in which given or acquired social norms of expectation assume the role normally ascribed to rationality and to argument in traditional epistemology.

Hence, the second implication of situated cognition is that, learning often happens in a social setting, community, and context. Vygotsky (1978) described human learning as presupposing a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them. This growth occurs in the "zone of proximal development," that phase in the development of a cognitive skill where a child has only partially mastered the skill but can successfully employ it and eventually internalize it with the assistance and supervision of an adult. Social interaction with people who are more expert in the use of the material and conceptual tools of the society is thus an important cultural catalyst to extend children's cognitive processes. Through language, members of a community learn to "carve out" the world in similar ways; they develop similar anticipations about external reality. The process of languaging has not only the function of reaching understanding, but also of coordinating action an d socializing actors as well (Habermas, 1984; Hung, 1998). From this perspective, human learning is best understood as a process of dialog, appropriation, and socialization (e.g., Bakthin, 1984; Maturana, & Verela, 1987; Wittgenstein, 1958). Bakthin (1984) used the term appropriation to denote the assimilation of different perspectives through the languaging and coconstruction process. Resnick (1989), tracing contemporary work in cognition to antecedents in the work of Vygotsky, stated that "several lines of cognitive theory and research point toward the hypothesis that we develop habits and skills of interpretation and meaning construction through a process more usefully conceived of as socialization than instruction" (p. 39). According to Maturana (1978), a consensual domain between linguistically interacting systems can be established through the social construction of meanings through language. This brings forth a network of conversation and dialog. In a very real sense, human learning is human languaging , the exchange of conversation and dialog.

From the previous implication, it would appear that thinking and learning have much to do with fostering an appropriate culture of thinking, shared meanings, and intersubjectivity. If students are able to assimilate critical thinking processes of students through classroom discourse, Vygotsky (1981) stated that these communicative processes can be internalized from the intermental to intramental levels. According to Vygotsky's general genetic law of cultural development, any function in the child's cultural development appears twice or on two planes. First, it appears on a social plane, and then on the psychological plane. First it appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child as an intrapsychological category. Social relations or relations among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships (Vygotsky, 1981).

The third implication of situated cognition is that if we view knowledge and thinking as inherently situated in social and physical contexts, much of what is learned is implicit. Thus, we need to communicate about and around learning activities as rich and as authentic as far as possible (Bodker, 1990; Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1993). By immersing students in activities and authentic problem tasks which have rich conceptual meanings and encouraging them to explore and discover, they acquire the skills and dispositions necessary to participate in disciplinary discourse, which could be called knowledge about a discipline. Students also learn the interpretive abilities and skills from those who are already active participants in the disciplinary practice. In terms of disciplinary content, students need to also acquire the technical skills and knowledge in the discipline called knowledge of the discipline. These two kinds of knowledge interact. In learning about discourse, students learn about the kind of knowledge they have when they know how to use that knowledge. At the same time, knowledge of tools, vocabulary, and symbols provide students with the mediational means that enable them to make arguments of a substantially different sort than they would be able to make without them (Leontiev, 1972). The interaction between learning to use the tools that have become a part of a culture and inventing new knowledge by reasoning may be thought as the process by which the individuals in the community of discourse come to know about the discipline (Lampert, 1990).

In a practice or community of learners where expertise is distributed, learners should be encouraged to tap into the experience of others through the use of different tools and technologies to develop key concepts and ideas. For a long time, educational technology has been used to support the goal of transfer and retention of knowledge. Increasingly, the gradual shift in educational perspective towards the social nature of learning emphasizes technology as an important enabler for promoting meaning negotiation. Technology should always be used to support the meaning discovery and knowledge coconstruction process, not replace it. Such technologies can lead to interactions with other members of the larger learning community; for example, academic institutions, libraries, museums, and so on. In the long term, these technologies may drive schools to become more organized according to communal learning and greater student autonomy.

Students have to be in the situation to conceive of new knowledge, to form new theories, and to apply that knowledge. On the other side, when we are in a difficult situation we are in the very position to be compelled to resolve our problem; reflecting on the problem, may thus result in the gaining of new knowledge. When faced with a new problem, individuals weave what they know about solving other problems and information about the new problem into a coherent approach that transforms the novel problem into a more familiar problem. The thinker makes use of whatever is familiar in the context of the new problem to apply information and skills available from familiar problems in bridging a solution to the novel problem. Bartlett (1958) asserted that generalization in learning is not in the least likely to occur unless there is active exploration of the situation that offers it opportunity.

Jonassen (1991) identified three kinds of knowledge acquisition: (a) initial (introductory) knowledge acquisition (acquired through practice and feedback); (b) advanced knowledge acquisition (acquired through apprenticeship and coaching); and (c) expertise acquisition (acquired through experience in situations). According to Polanyi (1964), tacit knowledge or expert knowledge is not just knowledge in the head, but a quality of experience gained in practical situations. Such knowledge is learned when we are placed in connection with some necessity (or problem). From the situated perspective, learning involves thinking and acting in close concert. The whole notion of situated cognition or situated action, tells us that cognition starts from the basis of interaction with the situation and later internalizing into concepts. Thinking and acting cannot be separated. Learning or understanding always takes place in a problem situation or authentic context. Learning is motivated when it is goal directed in a specific context (Lave, 1988).

To reiterate, philosophically Wittgenstein and Rorty placed significant emphasis on the social context of meaning construction. According to this view, cognitive development is explained largely by what Leontiev (1972) termed the appropriation of socioculturally evolved means of mediation and modes of activity. In this regard, cognitive apprenticeship methods (Brown, Collins, & Newman, 1989), seek to enculturate learners into authentic practices through activity and social interaction in a way similar to that of craft apprenticeship. Such methods support learning in a domain by enabling students to acquire, develop, and use conceptual tools in authentic domain activity, just as craft apprenticeship enables apprentices to acquire and develop the tools and skills of their craft through membership of the trade. Thus, the term apprenticeship helps to emphasize the centrality of activity and highlights the inherently context-dependent, situated, and enculturating nature of learning. This situated argument is congr uent with recent studies on "everyday cognition" (Lave, Murtaugh, & de La Rocha, 1984; Rogoff, & Lave, 1984; Scribner, 1984) such as interactions (e.g., calculations of prices) in a grocery store.

Apprenticeship

Polanyi (1964) observed that the primitive sentiments of sharing values, experiences, and joint activities in the community are prior to formal articulation. By fully participating in a "ritual," the members of a group affirm the community of their existence, and at the same time identify the life of their group with that of antecedent groups, from whom the ritual has descended to them. Polanyi's epistemology stresses learning within a community because all knowledge to him is personal knowledge and cannot be reduced to mere rules.

The assimilation of great systems of articulate lore by novices of various grades is made possible by a previous act of affiliation, by which the novice accepts apprenticeship to a community which cultivates this lore, appreciates its values and strives to act by its standards. This affiliation begins with the fact that a child submits to education within a community, and is confirmed throughout life to the extent to which the adult continues to place exceptional confidence in the intellectual leaders of the same community. (Polanyi, 1964, p. 207)

More generally, one task of education could be seen as bringing about changes in students' interpretations according to the thinking possessed by members in the disciplinary framework. If this is so, we may do well to conceive of education less as an instructional process (in the traditional sense of teaching specific, well-defined skills or items of knowledge). Rather, it would seem more like an enculturation (or appropriation) process within a community framework involving members and rules within a practice.

The strength of Polanyi's (1964) epistemology comes to clearest expression in his analysis of acquiring skills through apprenticeship within the community. Applying his description of skills to learning within a master to apprentice situation, Polanyi claimed that since there is no precise prescription for unspecifiable craft or art, skills are learned by example. "To learn by example is to submit to authority," said Polanyi: You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things when you cannot analyze and account in details for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another. A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition. (Polanyi, 1964, p. 53 )

With practice, these skills develop into master skills, or "connoisseurship:" "Connoisseurship, like skills, can be communicated only by example, not precept; ...you must go through a long course of experience under the guidance of a master" (Polanyi, 1964, p. 54).

In the practice of attentiveness and obedience an apprentice gradually develops two kinds of awareness, one a subsidiary or distal awareness, which transposes one from knowing what to knowing how (the tacit dimension of thought and action), and the application of the skill or connoisseurship to the practical needs at hand; knowledge or understanding comes through commitment and practicing the art. Apprenticeship and connoisseurship require an element of passivity and trust, of discovery and submission, of feelings one's way in humble obedience. One lives in it as in the garment of one's own skin: "The act of personal knowing can sustain these relations only because the acting persons believes...that he has not made them but discovered them. The effect of knowing is thus guided by a sense of obligation towards the truth: by an effort to submit to reality" (Polanyi, 1964, p. 63).

MOTIVATIONS FOR PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING

Just as in craft apprenticeship, where apprentices are trained "on the job" for a practice or profession centered on real-life problems and products, we found that the research on problem based learning (PBL) seems to be congruent to the notions previously described. The tenets of problem-based learning approaches are as follows (Boud & Feletti, 1997):

1. PBL takes account of how students learn. It is becoming increasingly apparent that learning takes place most effectively when students are actively involved and learn in the context in which knowledge is to be used;

2. the problem is encountered first in the learning process, before any preparation or formal study has necessarily occurred. The problem is presented in the same way that it would present itself in reality;

3. the real-life cases around which problem cases are constructed must represent both the breadth (reflected in the range of cases chosen) and the depth (reflected in the number of different cases which show the applications of the same concepts) of professional practice;

4. students work with the problem in a manner which permits their ability to reason and apply knowledge to be challenged and evaluated, in a manner that is appropriate to the current level of learning;

5. using stimulus material to help students discuss an important problem, question, or issue;

6. needed areas of knowledge are identified as the problem is explored;

7. students are encouraged to pose their own questions and seek the respective answers;

8. having students work cooperatively as a group or collaboratively at a common task, exploring information in and out of class, with access to a necessarily subject expert and/or technical support expert who knows the problem well and can facilitate the group's learning process;

9. getting students to identify their own learning needs and appropriate use of available resources;

10. the instructor assumes a pivotal role, monitoring the quality of the students' understanding of concepts and issues through a formative process throughout the PBL process;

11. appropriately guiding students' critical thinking and providing limited resources to help them learn from defining and attempting to resolve the given problem; and

12. reapplying this new knowledge to the original problem and evaluating their learning processes.

The expanding knowledge base of most professional practices means that it is impossible to include all the knowledge that is required for the beginner in the curriculum. It is more important for students to be able to learn quickly, effectively, and independently when they need it, than it is for them to have assimilated (at graduation) all the information that their teachers believe is desirable. Change, as it relates to their profession, will make self-directed learning throughout their life crucial. However, to adapt to change and to participate in change within their profession will perhaps be the least demanding of their tasks. They will have to adapt to numerous economical, political, scientific, and technological changes and, as members of their profession, participate in advancing. Moderating or retarding changes as they affect their own society and, increasingly more frequently, as they affect the whole of our world. Adapting to, and participating in, change and self-directed learning are composite c ompetencies, such as the skills in communication, critical reasoning, a logical and analytical approach to problems, reasoned decision making, and self-evaluation. Hence, the perceived advantages of PBL are as follows:

1. adapting to and participating in change;

2. dealing with problems, making reasoned decisions in unfamiliar situations;

3. reasoning critically and creatively;

4. adopting a more universal or holistic approach;

5. practicing empathy, appreciating the other person's point of view;

6. collaborating productively in groups or teams;

7. identifying own strengths and weaknesses and undertaking appropriate remediation, for example, through continuing, self-directed learning;

8. fostering open-minded, reflective, critical, and active learning;

9. respecting both students and teacher as persons with knowledge, understanding, feelings, and interests who come together in a shared educational process; and

10. reflecting the nature of knowledge--that is, knowledge is complex and changes as a result of responses by communities of persons to problems they perceive in their worlds.

The listed "advantages" can be a disadvantage to those who prefer passive students in circumstances where the teacher has maximum control over what is to be learned, and to see the loss of this control as a loss of personal authority or control. They can also be a threat to those who conceive of education as a largely one-way process of direct information transmission from the knowledge teacher to the ignorant student (in contrast to educative processes of a more indirect, guided rather than didactic, nature).

Process of Problem-Based Learning Approaches

As in situated cognition, the authentic task or "problem" is emphasized. From the perspective of instruction, a teacher can create a problem to ensure that when students attempt to uncover the problem, a "pre-defined" area of knowledge, concept, idea, or technique. Alternatively, students can be asked to define the problem given particular contexts and situations through which difficulties may arise. The form that the problem takes could be an event (or "trigger"), a descriptive situation, or a set of issues. The team / pair of students select a problem and use this problem as a basis to define the area of knowledge to be covered. Within this and relating to the problem, the team expresses the problem as a question, or set of questions and they would also have to define the resources needed, collect these and apply them to the problem. The notion of a problem is relational, in that, it is always part of a problem-situation (as Dewey, 1916, conceived it). A "problem" refers to what is problematic about a situa tion; it is generally shorthand for a cluster, network or set of inter-related problems and related contextual conditions.

Based on our previous studies of process-oriented problem-based learning sessions (for example, see Hung, Chen, & Cheung, 1998), we generalize a typical classroom process using the approach (Table 1).

In essence, the process of PBL requires the following conditions:

1. students' active learning though posing own problems, questions, and seeking the respective solutions;

2. instructors' facilitate integrated learning, that is, learning in a variety of subjects or disciplines concurrently through learning in the context in which learning is applied in real-life situations;

3. instructors can also introduce tools to help students think; mind-mapping (or other epistemic structures) can help students see the relational nature of knowledge, and by actually providing an experience of the way in which knowledge, its applications, and related thoughts and feelings are connected and interwoven. Mind-mapping has other benefits. After a mind-mapping session, people often become more open to and tolerant of others' ideas and beliefs, and more appreciative of creativity and originality. This is important as problem solving requires both convergent and divergent thinking, and mind-mapping is an extremely useful "tool" for exploratory and generative thinking. Provision for problem-solving strategies also help students to focus more effectively and constructively on the task, remain focused, avoid or overcome interpersonal problems within the group, and monitor and evaluate their progress. It can be too risky and unrealistic to expect groups to either generate an effective problem-solving str ategy themselves, or work systematically and constructively through a problem-solving process without a strategy to guide them. The introduction and initial use of a strategy requires careful facilitation. Students can jump to conclusions and avoid clearly identifying their learning needs. If this happens, not only does important content not get mastered, but also the monitoring of progress and assessing of learning are likely to be less than adequate;

4. students go through a process of cumulative learning. Through such a process, students achieve growing familiarity through a sequence of learning experiences that are relevant to the instructional goals;

5. students learn for understanding, rather than for recall of isolated facts, through appropriate opportunities to reflect on their educational experiences, and through frequent feedback from peers and instructors, linked with opportunities to practice the application of what has been learned;

6. instructors need to assess students, particularly at the formative process of learning, for example, class discussions, journal reports, presentations, questions directed at groups, and so forth. Through such a formative process, students also get feedback from instructors and peers. Summative assessment can also complement formative assessment methods;

7. instructors need an acceptance that students will need time to change their assumptions and expectations about learning and to develop and practice new skills;

8. instructional support needs to be provided with realistic and pragmatic goals that can be achieved; and

9. instructors need to adopt a pragmatic and realistic approach. The starting point in planning is the students' workload and the everyday realities and constrains within which they have to work.

Instructional Design and Technology Considerations

According to the tenets of situated cognition, the following changes to traditional instructional design approaches are necessary:

1. instructor's role changes from sage to facilitator. The instructor facilitates multiple perspectives and tries to mediate the different views;

2. instructional plans should be artifacts (resources) of our reasoning about actions;

3. instructional strategies should be oriented for broad and appropriate "real world" situated contexts;

4. instructional systems should also be developed to facilitate discourse and collaboration between individuals;

5. technologies can assist in monitoring students' progress, for example, monitor "inactivity" of particular students and prompt for collaboration;

6. technologies, for example, intelligent agents, can assist by searching for related information from different perspectives to students' problems;

7. tools such as epistemic structures, for example, tree structures, can be incorporated in systems to guide students in planning. These structures can also prompt students when their knowledge structures are problematic;

8. dialog should be encouraged among teachers and students as far as possible, which could be facilitated by technology;

9. students' role conflict from passive learner to active learner. Learning is fostered through active "accommodation and adaptation" of understanding with oneself and with others;

10. transfer of learning needs to be considered through multiple problem contexts;

11. multiple formative assessment, in addition to summative assessment methods, need to be adopted; and

12. adequate time to engage in problem-solving with proper instructional support for students is crucial.

CONCLUSION

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. Albert Einstein

Situated cognition and problem based learning offers a different slant to instructional design and the use of technologies in supporting learning and instruction. The many problems we face resulting from rote learning paradigms and other top-down "transmissional" approaches result in the perceived lack of intellectual thinking among students. On the contrary, PBL methods offer a bottom-up approach relating learning to authentic practices relevant to the students' future pragmatic goals, similar to apprenticeship orientations to learning. At a different level of thinking, we can design curriculum and technological environments to support learning from the perspectives of communities of practice.

Table 1

Scenario of Problem-Based Learning

The Instructional process            The learning goals

The instructor starts the tutorial   The students are encouraged
trying to help students to define    to define a problem
the problem. The instructor          realistic to thefield
provides foundational knowledge      in which they are learning
in order to assist students in
solving their authentic tasks.

The students are expected to define  The students are challenged to
their specific problem and to        begin by applying their existing
identify the factors or aspects      knowledge and experience to the
related to the problem               new situation

After a period of brainstorming in   The students are given constant
relation to the underlying           practice in logical, analytical,
problem, the students are            scientific approach to unfamiliar
encouraged to examine each of        situations
their suggestions or solutions to
the problem more critically

Students share their                 The students are consistently
conceptualizations to others in      encouraged to make overt their
the class and pose questions on      thoughts and to identify what they
issues that they do not understand   do not yet understand or know and
or need to know more about.          to regard this as a challenge to
                                     further learning.

New knowledge and understanding is   The students practice the
applied to the 'original' problem.   application of new knowledge to
The students consider whether their  the original or a similar problem
conjectures or hypotheses can be
reordered, reorganized, or refined.
What kind of further information
is required? Throughout the
discussion, knowledge can come
from tutors of students themselves.
A definitive resolution to the
problem may not be necessary

Before the end of the tutorial,      Students are helped to recognize
the tutor will help students to      that there are different
concentrate on issues and questions  perspectives to learning in a
that are particularly important at   variety of subjects/topics. Also
this stage of their studies. The     that when a great deal has to be
tutor will also give a summative     learned, the task needs can be
review ofthe concepts learned.       shared with other students.
                                     Students are required to reflect on
                                     what they have learned, how they
                                     have learned, and how they have
                                     contributed to the group's work.
                                     Reflection on recent experiences is
                                     an effective method of learning.

The Instructional process            The learning outcomes

The instructor starts the tutorial   Learning in the situated
trying to help students to define    context in which it is
the problem. The instructor          applied.
provides foundational knowledge
in order to assist students in
solving their authentic tasks.

The students are expected to define  Learning is stimulated
their specific problem and to        by applying prior
identify the factors or aspects      understanding to new
related to the problem               problems

After a period of brainstorming in   This facilitates the
relation to the underlying           progressive experimentation
problem, the students are            and application to
encouraged to examine each of        problem
their suggestions or solutions to
the problem more critically

Students share their                 Students construct
conceptualizations to others in      meanings and shared
the class and pose questions on      knowledge with others
issues that they do not understand
or need to know more about.


New knowledge and understanding is   They learn how to obtain
applied to the 'original' problem.   information from various
The students consider whether their  sources, convey information
conjectures or hypotheses can be     appropriately, and recognize
reordered, reorganized, or refined.  the possibilities of
What kind of further information     varying perspectives to a
is required? Throughout the          situation. They learn the
discussion, knowledge can come       strengths and weaknesses of
from tutors of students themselves.  their own arguments compared
A definitive resolution to the       with others
problem may not be necessary

Before the end of the tutorial,      They practice transfer of
the tutor will help students to      knowledge through application
concentrate on issues and questions  in a realistic context.
that are particularly important at   Integration of learning
this stage of their studies. The     assists integrated application.
tutor will also give a summative     Collaboration is fostered
review ofthe concepts learned.       instead of competition
                                     with other students.

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