Does Knowledge Development Originate From Education?

Abstract

The Maastricht Faculty of Economics and Business Administration started in 1984 and has adopted a problem based learning (PBL²) approach. As the core activity of a PBL system can be considered the work of students in small groups (10 – 12 persons) under the guidance of a member of staff. As usual, an academic year consists of a number of periods. During each period students work on two courses simultaneously. For every course the staff construct a number of problems, which must be solved by the students. This is only possible if the students look for relevant literature and read this material carefully. During the meetings students brainstorm about the variety of possible explanations and discuss the results. At the end, they have ‘solved’ the series of problems designed by the staff by brainstorming and analysing the knowledge produced by the groups before and after reading relevant academic texts.

This study is conducted under supervision of a project group consisting (apart from the authors) of Erik W. Driessen, Wim H. Gijselaers, Hans D.P. Kasper, Gaby J. Schröder and Mien S.R. Segers