Literature Review

Literature review contributed to the theoretical elements in the first design phase of the study.

Kolmos (2014) proposed that literature review should focus on arguments of practicing PBL and the impact of the practice. In this research, the literature review was conducted to gain insights into challenges and issues of PBL implementation in Malaysia and also to determine how PBL affected the learning of pre-service teachers. In addition, this literature review works have informed the researcher on the affordances and barriers of PBL implementations. Since this research adapted a systematic reviewed works, the review process started with a comprehensive searching technique, followed by the standard review process.

To begin the review process, the previous empirical research articles that served as the data sources were searched thoroughly to obtain most of the relevant empirical research articles, if not all. These empirical research articles were retrieved from several key bibliographic databases of education and social science research, such as Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), British

Educational Index, Web of Science (for Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation and Art and Humanities Citation Index), PsycINFO, key research journals (e.g. European Journal of Teacher

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Education and Asia Pacific Journal of Teacher Education) and searches in System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe (SIGLE) for grey literatures.

As stated in the Table 5, the review work focus in two fields; PBL implementation in Malaysia and PBL implementation in teacher education. For review work of PBL implementation in Malaysia, the keywords “problem based learning”, “PBL”, “Malaysia”, and “higher education” were

combined and returns numbers of potential articles to be included in the review work. As the name implies, the articles should reported on the PBL implementation in Malaysian higher education regardless of fields of implementation. The articles also should reported on the impact of PBL on student learning, potential and constraints of PBL implementation in Malaysian higher education.

For review work of PBL implementation in teacher education, keywords “teacher education” and

“pre-service teachers”, the subject headings and keywords based on “problem based learning” and

“PBL” have produced a number of titles. The periodic indices and content table of issues were searched manually by reading the article´s abstracts. The articles should present the empirical data of the PBL implementation in the teacher education domain that may include educational research methodology, psychology in education, pedagogy, philosophy in education, teaching and learning approach in school and sociology in education. A specific PBL definition was also required since PBL can be defined from a variety of perspectives; nonetheless, the definition must be broad enough to represent the central concepts of PBL. For this reason, this study has chosen the widely-accepted de Graaff and Kolmos’s (2003, 2007) definition of PBL. Table 6 summarises the specific criteria for choosing articles for review purposes:

Table 6: Four criteria to select articles for review process

Criteria Description

i. Type of studies: Original and empirical studies with primary data ii. Focus: Employment of PBL implementation in two fields:

a) Malaysian higher education institutions b) Teacher education context

iii. Scope of variable:

Mainly report on the impact of PBL on students/pre-service teachers learning and possibilities and constraints which may include, challenges, affordances, opportunities and barriers

31 iv. PBL

characteristics:

Identification of types of intervention or learning environment which fulfill the PBL learning principles defined by de Graaff and Kolmos (2003, 2007):

i. The cognitive learning approach means that learning is organized around problem and will be carried out in projects. The problem is the starting point of the learning process; it places students to learn in context, and learning is based on students´ learning experiences.

ii. The contents approach concerns with interdisciplinary learning that involves divergent of the subject-related boundaries and methods. The contents approach also emphasisea on linking the theory and practice.

iii. The collaborative or social approach involves team-based learning whereby learning occurs through dialogue and communication between group members. Students learn from each other by sharing the knowledge and organizing the group learning process.

Upon completing the selection process, a snowball method was employed whereby the selected articles were fully read to identify further relevant sources either in the content/ text or in the bibliographic section of the articles. Rickinson (2001) posits this method as a mean to achieve comprehensiveness in a literature search as the search process is continuous until no new citations emerge. Following the selection criteria, each individual article has undergone a standard reviewing process. To ensure commonality and comprehensiveness of the review process, a review framework was established, as demonstrated in Table 7:

Table 7: Review framework for selected articles

Component Description

i. Research aims A summary of the aims of the research study as reported by the researchers in their article ii. Theoretical/conceptual

approach

Summary of the key theoretical/conceptual assumptions that underpin the work reported (but only in so far as these are explicated and

acknowledged by the authors)

iii. Methodology The broader epistemological and theoretical

framework that surround and underpin the method of

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the study (only in so far as these are explicated and knowledge by the authors)

iv. Validity measures A value aim at measuring validity or reliability (howsoever conceived) that are reported by the author (s)

v. Methods Summarized detailed of the reported procedures of data collection and data analysis

vi. Main findings Summary of the study´s main findings as reported by the author

vii. Key conclusions Summary of the main conclusions drawn from the study´s findings by the author(s)

Source: Rickinson (2003), pg.271

The review process began by briefly reading the selected articles based on the components listed in the above table. The research aims of an article are a general description of what a research

intended to achieve. As for theoretical/conceptual approach, the key assumption of theory application or theory generation is the one that underpins PBL, which includes constructivism, active learning and social constructivism. To achieve what is claimed in the articles, the

methodology should sufficiently explain the alignment between the research approach, the data collection and the data analysis. To measure learners (either students or pre-service teachers) knowledge and skills acquisitions, the instrument or tool that was used to collect the data should also discuss the validity measure that may include Cronbach alpha for quantitative measure or validity value for qualitative measure. Entailing the validity measure description were methods, in which the author explained the procedure of data collection and the analysis approach that was aligned with the aims of the research. Next was the main findings that report on how the PBL implementation has affected the learners´ knowledge and skills. Some articles might have other findings that are also helpful to understand more on the impact. The last component to be reviewed was the key conclusions that were drawn from the main findings that may also include implications and suggestions. These review works were reported in the form of two journal articles, which can be found in Appendix I and Appendix J for full articles. Findings summary of both articles can be found in part 3.3.1, in the next chapter.

33 2.4.2 Data Collection and Analysis for PBL Case at AAU

An exploratory research design was adopted for the PBL case at AAU to address the research inquiry since it was deemed appropriate to gain insights, ideas and better understanding of the students’ learning in a PBL environment. Six undergraduate Medialogy students were involved in the study. Their participation were voluntary; the researcher went to their group’s rooms and asked for their willingness to participate in the study. All students were in their first semester–a semester devoted to prepare the AAU undergraduates to learn in a PBL environment. Two students were Danish and they were familiar with group learning since their college and high school education had emphasised on group working and collaborative learning. Another four students were

international (two Lithuanian, one Turkish and one Korean) and they have never experienced group learning or PBL in their previous education. Of the six students, one was an international female student.

Semi-structured interviews (see Appendix A for interview guide for PBL case at Aalborg University) were conducted to obtain data on the students’ learning. This type of interview was deemed appropriate in order to obtain an in-depth outlook of the students´ perspective of their learning. The interview was administered twice for each student: at the beginning of the semester (week 3), and at the end of the semester–after the students have submitted their group projects and were waiting for their group examination (week 15). Since this is an explorative study, the insights obtained during the first interview session were used to develop the interview guide for the second session.

The interview session commenced with the explanations of the interview´s purpose, confidentiality, anonymity and obtained their permissions to audio-taped the whole interview sessions. The

interviews explored the students’ backgrounds, their previous experience of group work, and the PBL learning process including the problem solving process, the facilitation process and the challenges. The interview was loosely structured to allow the students to form the interview from their own views and experiences (Seidman, 1998) and to minimize interviewer´s influence in their responses. Depending on the willingness of the students to share and talk, each interview session had lasted from 20 minutes to 70 minutes. To complement the inquiry on group learning process, the group process analysis reports were also obtained from the students. Group process analysis

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report is a description of the assessment and analysis of the students’ group work within a problem-oriented and project-organized group. It is their own analyses on project management, group collaboration and collaboration with supervisors.

The interview audio were fully transcribed using the NVivo9 software and each interview transcript has received a unique record number for reference purposes. These interview transcripts (see Appendix B for a sample of interview transcript) were analyzed using an inductive analytical approach–a qualitative data analysis technique that uses detailed readings of raw data to derive themes, concepts or model through interpretations made from the raw data by researchers across the interviews (Thomas, 2006). Transcripts were read repeatedly, counting instances of common

important issues to derive themes, concepts or model across the transcripts. The list of categories would lead to the emergence of themes after refinement, particularly by comparatively reading against the transcripts to seek for commonality and contradictions. The group process analysis reports (see Appendix C for a sample of group process analysis report) were also analysed inductively (Strauss and Corbin, 1998), whereby the raw data were read in details to derive concept/theme/model through the interpretations made by the researcher. Subsequently,

concept/theme/model derived from both interview transcripts and student process analysis reports are compared to identify similarities or contradiction in the data. This steps helped to achieve rigour and quality in qualitative data. The PBL case at AAU was reported in the form of a journal article which can be found in Appendix K for full article, and the finding summary of this article can be found in part 3.3.2, in the next chapter.