Barrows’ Integration of Cognitive and Clinical Psychology in PBL Tutor Guidelines

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, Mar 2013

Scholars have noted PBL is consistent with John Dewey’s educational theories and with constructivist philosophies. This paper explores the similarities between the assumptions within Howard Barrows’ principles for the PBL tutor’s actions with Dewey’s theories that address teacher behaviors and with Carl Rogers’s conceptual frameworks that support the therapeutic behaviors of the client-centered therapist. In doing so it recognizes Barrows’ integration of the educational and cognitive psychology concepts of two psychologists who have influenced the psychology of education and provides an additional conceptual and theoretical anchor for PBL tutor facilitation skills.

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Barrows’ Integration of Cognitive and Clinical Psychology in PBL Tutor Guidelines

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem Barrows' Integration of Cognitive and Clinical Psycholog y in PBL Tutor Guidelines Kareen McCaughan Dr. 0 1 2 0 McMaster University 1 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact 2 IJPBL is Published in Open Access Format through the Generous Support of the Teaching Academy at Purdue University, the School of Education at Indiana University, and the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education at the University of Oklahoma , USA - The Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning • volume 7, no. 1 (Spring 2013) Howard Barrows’ problem-based learning (PBL) tutor guidelines were built on a strong educational and cognitive psychology conceptual framework. Similarities have been noted between PBL and the educational theories developed by John Dewey (Koschmann, 2001; Neville, 1999) and the tenets of constructivism (Colliver, 2002; Miflin, 2004; Savery & Duffy, 1995; Whitman, 1993; Windschitl, 2002) . This paper examines conceptual consistencies between the nondirective PBL tutor role described by Barrows (1980; 1988; 2000; 2007), the client-centered therapist, and the actions of the teacher using Dewey’s educational theories. Dewey’s theories addressed the behaviors of teachers that promoted student inquiry, problem-solving learning experiences, and self-direction. Rogers’s client-centered therapy applied similar theoretical concepts to a therapeutic context. Barrows integrated the concepts, purposes and skills of facilitation held by Dewey and Rogers in his recommendations for PBL tutors. A PBL tutorial consists of small-group, collaborative, self-directed learning. Ideally the group size is limited to seven students plus a tutor. The number of tutorials and their length varies with the curriculum. In a typical health science curriculum tutorials occur twice a week for a three-hour period. The term“tutor”is used instead of teacher to underscore that the role is to facilitate the learning process. The focus of the tutorial is to engage students in a self-directed learning process that will help them uncover their learning issues using a problematic situation as a trigger. For example, in a typical health science PBL curriculum, PBL tutorial groups are presented with a clinical case, and the tutor is a clinician. In the process of discussing a case, students shift back and forth between individual and group learning. They identify individual learning issues (what they know and what they need to know), develop group learning objectives, engage in higher order thinking skills, such as analysis, hypothesis generation, decision-making, problem-solving, and evaluation, in tandem with communicating their thinking verbally to group members. The focus in this paper is on the techniques that the tutor, teacher or therapist uses with the individual student and between students in a small-group setting. PBL Tutor Guidelines Barrows was one of the first PBL experts to provide guidance on facilitating the educational concepts of PBL, at a time when the literature focused on the PBL student and compared student success using PBL with traditional learning methods. He wrote extensively on the attitudes, beliefs, characteristics, and actions a teacher would need to be a successful PBL tutor (Barrows, 1988; Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980; Barrows & Wee, 2007; Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2006) . The combination of Barrows’ background as a physician and educator resulted in tireless efforts to convey the importance of the PBL tutor role. As a neurologist, he was an expert on the neurological system including how the brain processes information when learning. As an educator, he was keenly aware of the impact of teacher behaviors in learning situations. As an individual, Barrows cared deeply about building teachers’ knowledge of cognition and learning, as well as their facilitation skills. Barrows was not only a scholar who wrote about nondirective facilitation, he epitomized the ideal nondirective facilitator. His ability to do so may have resulted from his training in therapeutic communication skills during his graduate medical education. The role of the PBL tutor was first published at McMaster University as part of a practical monograph on how to operate a small-group PBL tutorial in medical education (Small Group Learning in Medical Education, 1972) . In his PBL works, Barrows emphasized the role of the tutor as critical to PBL success. He was mindful that most new PBL tutors were unaccustomed to the tutor role and considered the nature of tutoring as an unplanned variable in the quality of PBL that acts as a major determinant of the method’s success (Barrows, 1986) . Even though students are expected to behave differently from traditional students in PBL, new PBL educators often expect to use the same communication techniques, actions, and strategies as traditional teaching methods. They carry conceptions of (...truncated)


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Kareen McCaughan Dr.. Barrows’ Integration of Cognitive and Clinical Psychology in PBL Tutor Guidelines, Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 2013, pp. 4, Volume 7, Issue 1,