Redesigning the curriculum: Applying Problem Based Learning in a new Context

This article presents a case-based study in which we explore how experience with PBL in Danish universities seems to work in a Ugandan context and whether it is expedient and possible to translate pedagogical approaches from one context to another? Funded by the Danish Development Agency, Danida, and motivated and framed by a partnership between universities in global North and South, the process of pedagogic translation is discussed from a postcolonial perspective as we explore to what extent we manage to create a partnership with mutual respect. To elucidate this overarching question, we discuss how participants in a learning situation construe potential challenges in implementing a new learning approach. For this purpose we combine post-colonial analysis with Critical Discourse Analysis, following Fairclough (2003) and Martin and White (2005), to uncover implicit attitudinal positions. Our findings indicate that Problem Based Learning seems productive in a Ugandan context as the participants construe the introduction of PBL in overall positive terms. This finding invites a discussion of post-colonialism and to what extent the participants manage to challenge naturalized post-colonial discourse patterns residing in traditional educational practices. Our findings indicate for instance that although we start the process as colleagues, together we construct a well-known and respectful institutional relationship between professors and students as a way of avoiding a colonizer/colonized relation.
Keywords: Problem Based Learning, postcolonial theory, decolonization, discourse theory, appraisal