Higher Education 42: 139–142, 2001. 139

Book reviews

Maggi Savin-Baden 2000. Problem-Based Learning in Higher Education:Untold Stories. Buckingham: The Society for Research into Higher Educationand Open University Press. viii + 161 pp. (Pb.) £18.99 ISBN 0-335-20337-X;(Hb.) £55.00 ISBN 0-335-203388

This book appealed to me enormously. If you read the title and, as I did,anticipate another sequence of anecdotal accounts of problem-based learning,then you will be disappointed. If you are seeking direct advice, illustratedby helpful examples, then you will not find it here. But if you are at allinterested in problem-based learning (PBL) as an approach to teaching andlearning, and are willing to engage constructively with fundamentals whichhave hitherto been neglected, you are likely to be drawn as I was into engage-ment with a gripping, scholarly, effectively referenced, creative text whichpresents challenge after challenge to thinking teachers in higher education. Itoffers us ideas which are in themselves the thresholds to further challenges,and will leave many of us disturbed and ashamed that we have not engagedwith this approach and its pedagogy as rigorously as we should have done –and inspired by this writer to follow the lead which she gives us.

The prologue is a stirring and meaty introduction in which the writer setsthe scene, and establishes both her goal, which is to assemble rather moreof a theoretical basis for PBL than we have at present – and the pace andrigour with which she expects us, her readers, to pursue that goal if we areto continue effectively in her company. She sets out her stall with a clarityand helpful structure which is a feature of the text which follows; and sheseizes our attention with her list of the themes around which she has basedthe remainder of the text.

From the outset, and while she claims that PBL has been underestimated,she stresses the as-yet neglected need to assemble and analyse data about thenature of the learning experience in PBL, and the factors which contribute todevelopment, or inhibition. Quickly she persuades her reader – or at least thisreader – that learner identity, the learning context, and learning in relation toothers are vital factors in any analysis of, or delivery of, PBL. She only lostme (a pedantic engineer) once, when she committed the familiar solecism

140 BOOK REVIEWS

of referring to our professional bodies as Institutes, when they are indeedInstitutions.

After two chapters of dealing in general concepts whose importance shewishes to establish, she moves on to specific examples; first as scenarios andthen for the data which they provided of multi-faceted learners with diverseexperiences of PBL, and of the features of their learning experiences. Fromthis, she establishes firmly the importance of the way learners in PBL seethemselves: – in relation to context, as learners, and in relationships withtheir peers.

The untold stories of the title (which, like some of the chapter head-ings, I did not find helpful in aligning me with her purpose), amplified thattheme, and led her to consider the deeply significant issues of disjunction– the internal turbulence which so many learners in PBL experience, somecreatively and some destructively; and translation, those shifts in learnerperceptions which emerge from disjunction.

The chapters which follow, on models and on the nurturing of criticalthinking, are all of the same tenor, although I felt that the writer (or was it justthis elderly reader?) lost a little head of steam as we neared the conclusion.

This text deals with rich and fruitful concepts; for that reason, it reliesupon the use of a vocabulary which I would describe as essential for itspurpose, but which less diligent readers may dismiss as jargon. It is not easyto read in a superficial fashion because it has an important story to tell, ameaningful message to convey and a challenge to present which will bringsome of us up short.

I chose to re-read this book before completing my review, while I was ona journey abroad to assist, for the third time, a group committed to trans-late their curriculum into PBL form. I had thought myself, and my newcolleagues, well-established in that purpose and intent. But this book, evenon a re-reading and at this late stage, made me think again and again. If youare at all interested in PBL, buy it, read it carefully from cover to cover, andexpect to wish to return to it, even if as I did, you do so in a chastened andhumble mood, to be helped to face up to challenges we have either not faced,or not recognised, hitherto.

JOHN COWAN

Heriot-Watt University