[4] PBL Core Values
PBL Core Values describes the core values that are embedded in all the processes and experiences of Project-based Learning (PBL) as a way of growing people. The framework is applied to both the macro and mirco elements of PBL. For example: on the macro-level, each of the three main zones — Inquiry, Praxis, and Contribution — should cycle through emphasis on the four values in order, totaling twelve values emphasized at the highest level throughout the whole project. On the micro-level, for example, the Debrief questions at the end of each project session cycle through the four values.
PBL Core Values is an adaptation of [4] The Four Rules — a framework built upon [4] The Quad, the fourth systems shape of the Semantic Ontology Framework (SOF). It also bears strong similarity to [4] The Science Cycle, an adaptation of a simplified Scientific Method.
PBL Core Values System
Values for Creative Tension
(α) Self-expression: People have a fundamental human desire to make their internal experience visible to others and to interact with the external world in transformative ways. This is the Alpha or Push of PBL — the driving force behind the learners participation in the growing process. PBL seeks to reform educational experiences that are passive or domineering because they tend to exclude self-expression or limit it to predetermined acceptable forms. On the other hand, PBL seeks to connect self-expression to the real-world context through direct experience so that the outer reality can help clarify the inner reality and vice versa.1
(β) Real-world Context: When self-expression happens in dialog with the real-world context in which people live, both reality and the learner are clarified and real, valuable growth (learner) and change (world) can occur. This is the Beta or Pull that deepens and enriches PBL. People development outside the context of the real world — for example, if conducted exclusively in the “academy” of the Standard Education model — has been proven to be inefficient since our brains naturally forget information that is not used. Also, without the context of the real world, information cannot be connected properly to skills in order to produce holistic capacity in people and the systems they create. This is especially true as the evolution of technology and its impacts on human society create an environment of complexity through rapid, continuous, unpredictable change (something called “The Storm of Complexity”).
PBL uses to the creative tension between Self-expression and Real-world Context to create a space for true growth and synergizes a learner’s intended contribution and real situations to provide more radically useful and sustainable transformation to both learner and world. This flows from the value of all Learners as Creative Producers (⊙), with the hope of the end product of Distributed Holistic Good (Ω)2 for humanity and our world.
Linking (x) idea and ({ }) knowledge base
PBL intends to create space for fresh, new ideas (Divergent Thinking) even by learners who are new to a subject matter or field of knowledge. Rather than proclaiming an idea that must be accepted in order for the learner to be approved, PBL seeks to educe an idea (x) from the learner so it can be compared to, tested by, and, when refined, contribute to the knowledge base ({ }) of the subject matter or field. The point of PBL is to use an idea educed from the learner to brings them to the knowledge base in a fully creative and productive way, then, from their encounter of the knowledge base, produce new or refined ideas that need creative experience and testing.
Four Core Evolutionary Values
(1) eduction
Eduction is the process of uncovering interests, information, and capacities. All learning should be a process of discovery, whether of new experiences, latent potential, or real need.
(2) real story
Learners should see their growth as essential to their own self-directed story and the story of the things they care about. Rather than fiction, that story must be a real lived experience, only using simulation as an allegory of but not a replacement for real life.
(3) micro innovation
The time for progress and positive change is always now, and even a small change of value is a good change. Learners grow most when the produce seed-shaped change that they can see has real impact on their work and world.
(4) open-sourcing
The challenges of the human condition and our current times require rapid innovation, localized and sustainable solutions, and open sharing. Therefore the benefits of any learning, no matter how small, must be accessible as broadly as possible.
Media
References & Notes
- Within consumerism has been a trend to produce identity-products (entertainment, fashion, meta/virtual reality, etc.) which allow consumers to “transcend” their identity without supposed reference external reality. However, these identity products then require the industry to manufacture a context — an artificial external reality — that then enslaves the consumer to a cycle of continuous redefinition by the manufacturer. Authentic self-definition is instead derived from a dialectical conversational within the real, shared reality that is non-derivative.
- This is most clearly articulated in the Jewish/Muslim concept of shalom — holistic well being and peace.