Ill-structured problems and discrepant events create opportune learning experiences

I began work on this module by reading McCain cover to cover. I’ve been waiting since the beginning of the course for my book to arrive, and when it finally did I plopped down and tore into it, underlining and highlighting. I had to put it down at intervals to digest and think about how this would apply to the class I’m teaching (New Testament Bible). How would I start using this approach to teach a very content-rich course with lots of information and not lots of application? Maybe I would have to change the approach, focusing on the content and ignoring the direction, approach, and conclusions the text leads to.

It seems like a silly question – the point of the Bible is not to be a fact-book, but rather a book to provide answers to life’s biggest questions. It should be easy to apply the PBL model to the content! The problem is that our students spend lots of time immersed in these sorts of situations – in youth group or Sunday School they talk about the application stuff more than the historical background of the books and people in the Bible. And while I doubt they ever dig into it as deeply as they might with a McCain type of problem, or a highly thought-out PBL lesson, they spend lots of time talking about how to apply principles, not learning facts and details. I volunteered to teach the course because I feel there’s an enormous hole in Christendom – we are very disconnected from our history, we don’t know our history, which means we really don’t know who we are. I want my students to be top-notch scholars – I want them to understand the application, but I believe to do that they have to understand the context(s) in which the book(s) was written in order to be ably to really apply the stuff. If they learn how to approach the historicity of a book, how to discern what the book is teaching based on its historical context, then apply that to their lives, they can take that with them anywhere. The problem is twofold: the textbook is full of facts and historical background (with some application), and the class meets twice a week. Each “chapter” of the text is easily processed in one class period. This means the temptation to simply waltz in, start the next ‘chapter,’ and neatly wrap it up at the end of 45 minutes is VERY strong. In fact, one could teach the class with very little prep (provided you have a decent grounding in the subject matter). And the students are well-behaved and moderately interested, plus I’m a good classroom manager, so you could bore them to tears and not have any evidence of it.

However, I decided that for the remaining weeks before Easter, we will depart from the “chapter to chapter” approach and look at the broad theme of Acts 12-28: Paul’s missionary journeys and the growth of the church beyond Palestine to the Gentile world. Having taught social studies for seven years, plus two more years of 6th grade self-contained, I immediately thought of planning a trip – let’s retrace Paul’s missionary journeys! OOOHH!! Lots of pictures, fun stuff – then I thought, “Wait a minute. I don’t even know where all he went on those journeys. I have a map in the back of my Bible to show me that. Besides, what’s the point of knowing it, other than winning a Bible trivia contest or something? No, that is not what I want them to learn.”

Then I had to wrestle – what did I REALLY want them to learn?
• Paul is largely responsible for spreading the Gospel beyond Jerusalem to the Roman world
• Paul’s writings form the basis for much of what we teach in churches today
o What we are to believe about Jesus and God
o How we are to function as believers in a local body

What was the enduring understanding I wanted them to keep with them forever?
• Christians in the time of Paul faced many of the same problems we face today

Knowing that the material after Easter Break is going to deal with how the book of Ephesians specifically addresses problems of past and present, I wanted to lay a strong foundation for the students to understand the historical context of that book. I also wanted them to understand that Paul wrote to a bunch of different churches, and that each of them was different and had similar yet different problems and situations. So I began crafting, and came up with the following list of specifically what I want them to know:
Choose one of the cities Paul wrote to and know:
-modern-day state of the city-why a church probably developed in that city (geographical etc)
-what that church was like (ethnicity, size)
-what problems that church faced and why (historical)
-how Paul encouraged / advised the church to deal with their problems
-how that advice or those principles apply to us today
I want a paper product (or a PowerPoint) and an oral presentation

Here’s the ill-structured problem, presented as a role play:
“Hello, I’m Pastor Dan. Several of the members of my congregation want to take a trip and visit cities the Apostle Paul wrote letters to. So I’m coming to you as travel specialists to request some information. I want each of you to choose one of the cities Paul wrote to. I want to know what that city was like when Paul wrote to it. I find that if someone can step into the shoes of someone who lived long ago, then they have a much better appreciation for what that person went through, what they wrote, and what they experienced, which means they can much better apply what that person has to teach us to their lives. That’s what I want. Any questions? Or is there anything else you can suggest you should tell me?”

Of course this is ill-defined, as McCain suggests, and after 15 minutes or so of Q&A they’d hit all the points of what I wanted them to do in the first place – but THEY came up with is, so it’s THEIR project.

Then “Pastor Dan” left, and Mr. Penn returned. At that point I asked what Pastor Dan had to share with them, if they wrote down details (some had), and explained, as McCain does, how they can “have power” over me by recording details specifically. So they spent the remaining few minutes comparing notes. Next time Pastor Dan will be back to clarify and verify, signing the contract.

OH – I forgot to mention the forms. Since we’re 2/3 of the way through the year I decided to provide them with the “Define” and “Design” forms. I’m not sure about the time sheet. I told them they could use another form to do their work if they liked, but the form I provided contained the information they needed to be sure they had.

EXPECTATIONS
On Tuesday I expect to see several fairly complete definitions of the project, some will be extremely vague. None will be complete entirely. However a couple of the students will remember enough to know what to ask to clarify (“Did you say you wanted…?”). I expect several will be raring to get to work on the project without actually defining & designing – and I expect to get complaints about having to go through the process. But I expect at the end of it several at least will see the value in it. I will need to build in a period to process the experience with them. Since I wanted to give them maximum time to work, I made the due date March 13. I may offer extra credit to those who present on the 11th so we can have time before break (March 17-21) to process. Otherwise we’ll just have to process after. I plan to force them to come up with the 4 steps, the 4 Ds, before I post anything spelling out the steps.

I expect the research part of this project will be the easiest for them, and probably the best – the pictures, the facts – the stuff you can Google. The application part / lessons you can learn, those may be trickier. Maybe what I need to do is modify the project – “Confer with Pastor Dan” and decide that the application piece should wait until after break so we have time to really dig into that… I’ve got to think more about this.

This is in process – we’ll see how it goes!