What can we learn about learning from how problem-based learning students talked about it in PBL tutorials?
Terry Barrett

Although students’ talk in problem-based learning (PBL) tutorials is the pivotal learning site, few studies have involved conducting a discourse analysis of this talk. A critical discourse analysis approach was used to analyse how students talked about learning in PBL tutorials. This paper focuses on what we can learn about learning from listening to how PBL students talked about it in the naturally occurring talk in tutorials. The concept of hard fun is used to capture the notion that the PBL students talked about learning in PBL as being both fun and hard at the same time. The implications for practice of conceiving of learning as hard fun are explored.