I really like Diving Questions. In fact, I like them so much more then Essential Questions. You might ask why? I think it just might be my affection for the revised Bloom's Taxonomy. You may remember that in the revision the different levels were changed into action. In fact, I strongly believe that learning is a verb and is based on action. Take away the word "Question" and Driving is a verb loaded with action. The word "Essential" standing alone is only a word devoted to describing… a colorful but inactive adjective.
In this first three-part post, John Larmer describes how he and co-author Susie Boss answered the question in their newly published book, 'PBL for 21st Century Success: Teaching Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Communication, and Creativity'. In the next post, Deborah Esparza will review the book from "the field". For the final post, co-author Susie Boss has been invited to explain why she and John choose this topic.
"What boosts PBL from a fun and engaging exercise to a rigorous and powerful real-world learning experience? Researchers have identified four key components that are critical to teaching successfully with PBL (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2008; Ertmer & Simons, 2005; Mergendoller & Thomas, 2005; Hung, 2008). All of these play a role in the curriculum-design process."
We do not need to teach creativity, but rather inspire its daily practice. Somewhere along the way, we simply forgot to honor this innate gift and how to access its power. Our role as educators is to encourage learning experiences that increase the ability to recognize and listen to our inner voice.