Balancing Real-World Problems with Real-World Results

Enthusiasm for real-world learning needs to be balanced with the realities of real-world classrooms, Mr. Gordon notes. Through thoughtfully designed authentic learning experiences, students can develop the understandings, skills, and beliefs needed for success in school and beyond. Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities.(1) Authentic learning, real-world problems, constructivist class-rooms, performance assessment. Engaging students in "authentic' performance situations seems to be the latest wave to wash over the schools. On the surface, this is a most appealing contrast to the decontextualized, rote learning typified by "traditional" education. As Jacqueline Brooks and Martin Brooks exclaim in describing the benefits of constructivist classrooms, "They free students from the dreariness of fact-driven curriculum and allow them to focus on large ideas; they place in students' hands the exhilarating power to follow trails of interests, to make connections, to reformulate ideas, and to reach unique conclusions."(2) Without doubt, the possibilities are great and the language lofty when addressing this latest wave. As one who comes to this movement with long experience engaging students in real-world problems, I feel that it is important to warn against the all-too-familiar tendency in education to be enamored with new ideas while losing sight of the grounded perspective needed to make things work in real classrooms with real students. The program I work with, Education by Design/Critical Skills (EBD/CS), pioneered "Learning by Real Problems" in the early 1980s. Directed to come up with educational practices that would allow children to develop the knowledge and skills needed for success in school and beyond, EBD/CS originally focused exclusively on real-life problems. In six-week summer institutes, teachers were engaged in real-world problems so that they could directly experience the power of this mode of learning. The response to this approach was consistent - participants found it to be among the most compelling learning experiences of their lives; they felt engaged, challenged, energized, and overwhelmed. It was this last factor that proved most problematic. How Realistic Is Real? Real-world problems, by their nature, are messy - involving uncertainty, complexity, and nuanced judgment.(3) These characteristics tend to clash with the norms that are prevalent in most schools. Real-world problems often don't mesh well with mandated curricula, textbooks, standardized tests, state standards, and the seven-period day. Teachers who actually tried using real-world problems with their students tended to be those renegades who thrive on change and risk-taking. A more typical response of institute participants was that, while they found the summer experience invigorating, they were daunted by the prospect of attempting to implement this approach in their classrooms. Where would they find resources? How would they assess student work? What would parents and administrators say? Finally, there was the omnipresent concern about "covering" the curriculum and ensuring students' exposure to the content at the heart of a teacher's subject area. For many teachers, real-life problems, despite their promise, seemed incompatible with classroom realities. Stepping Back to Step Forward As a program, we have stepped back from this solitary focus on real-world problems to consider what are the essential elements of "authentic" learning. What is it about real-life problems that make them powerful and engaging, and how can this be re-created in an environment, such as the classroom itself, that often has relatively loose ties to the "real world"? Here is what we have found. 1. Authentic learning demands that students actively solve problems. …