Problem based teaching has been on the agenda in higher education for at least the last twenty years and is embedded in professional educations often to prepare students for real life problem solving. However, in when higher education rather aim to provide deeper theoretical and reflective competences promoting the students capacities to address unpredictable challenges in different contexts, there might be other ways of applying and using problem based educational tools. In this paper we describe and discuss our experiences of such attempts in three different higher educational programs.

The three educational settings are a Master of European and International relations, teacher-training courses on master level and Master of Political Science. The work on our new curriculums and pedagogical approaches has taken place within a development project and we have shared ideas and experiences throughout the project. The approach has been differently designed into the three programs but the common focus has been that we do not take off in the problem, but the students have to find the problem and explain how it fits to the theories they learn. We conclude, so far, that a key for success is to present and introduce the students to the model of teaching to be successful.