leaving students with little room to develop their own approaches to answering the question
See previous note.
The danger is that students might often need coaching on specific skills, which can be very difficult for a teacher to managce in one setting. As a result, many opt for the more recipe-based result.
They require a question or problem that serves to organize and drive activities; and these activities result in a series of artifacts, or products, that culminate in a final product that addresses the driving question.
Everything is working toward answering the driving question. The problem is that schools often dilute those questions or potential solutions to align with "the content" rather than allowing students to explore authentically.
Drawing analogies from everyday learning, researchers argue that knowledge is contextualized; that is, learners construct knowledge by solving complex problems in situations in which they use cognitive tools, multiple sources of information, and other individuals as resources
When we're solving problems out of school, we have several contexts which play into our understanding. Using this idea, we can structure learning experiences in school the same way - to engage students in multiple contexts for learning complex ideas.