Chapter 12: Playful Encounters with Problematic Paradoxes in Problem-Based Project Work: An Impressionist Expeculation in Three Parts

This chapter is about problem-based learning (PBL). More specifically, it is about a particular kind of PBL that we shall call problem-based project work as it is practiced in a specific geographical and educational context, namely Aalborg University in Denmark, at a specific point in time during the second decade of the 21st century.

The purpose of the chapter is twofold. Thus, while the first purpose is to contribute to bringing about a more nuanced understanding of how the dynamics of problem-based project work function, the second purpose is to illustrate how such an understanding may be brought about by employing an alternative strategy of creative meaning-making inspired by posthumanist thinking. To deliver on these promises, we use an abductive bricolage methodology that entails combining participation, conversation, and observation with experimentation and speculation in order to produce/create/cultivate three impressionist tales about three incidents inspired by the experiences the first author had while involved in an ethnographic study of how students learn via problem-based project work in the specific institutional context of Aalborg University.