Research Study, Practice And Research

The Ministry of Education demands that the Problem-based Learning (PBL) be required in every high school all over China in autumn,2002. As I am working at the grass-roots level, I've had a knowledge of the situation, including the understanding of the PBL from teachers and headmasters, the proportion of the schools offering a course in the PBL and how it is being implemented in the schools. I'm not optimistic about its prospects. For a school, it's an extremely urgent matter how the PBL can be well implemented. The study focuses on a key high school subordinate to the province at a county seat in a less developed central area, where two rounds of experiments have been being carried out. It is trended to reply to the matter.What's the PBL ? Why and how should it be implemented in middle schools ? How should it be evaluated ? These must be got to know and made clear in the first place for any school where a course will be given in the PBL. Therefore, the first part of the paper exerts itself to expound the connotation of the PBL, the teaching objectives of the PBL and their comparative research, the characteristics and material requirements of the PBL, the thought origins between the PBL, Dewey's Problem-based Teaching, Kilpatrick's Project-based Teaching, Bmner's Discovery Learning and Schwab's Inquiry Learning, and the cause and practical significance of the PBL. The second part and body part consists mainly of the two practical problems "how to implement" and "how to evaluate" . This part first does some comparative research on the practical strategies of the PBL of some schools in the developed areas, the middle-level developed areas and the less developed areas of our country. And then based on the two rounds of experiments , the five phases in implementing the PBL are put forward, which are organizing, training, publicizing and launching, guiding to select problems and engaging tutors, task reasoning and program appraising, self-investigation and instruction, fruit expression and exchange.These five phases embody a core thought--Guided Discovery Learning. As for thecurriculum evaluation of the PBL, the paper first recommends the newest international curriculum evaluation viewpoints, then analyzes the value tropism of the curriculum evaluation of the PBL, finally introduces a practical program of the PBL from our school.The second part has another important section--the managing text development forthe PBL, which is the greatest harvest in the experiments, including six texts. These six texts are developed for school leaders, grade leaders, head teachers, tutors, research group and student individuals, which are designed with reason , work well and have three functions: guiding, noting and evaluating. The third part of the paper gives some profound thinking and revelation.