Survey of Case Use 1

Case-based Teacher Education: The State of the Art1 Bonita C. White and Robert F. McNergney Commonwealth Center for the Education of Teachers University of Virginia

Paper presented at The Case Method in Teacher Education: A Working Conference James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, June 21, 1991.

We wish to thank Wilson Marston for his help with this manuscript.

Survey of Case Use

The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of a survey designed to assess the extent and nature of case-based teacher education in the United States. "Cases," "case-method

instruction," "case-based teaching," and similar phrases appear with increasing frequency in discussions and writings about the education of teachers. But despite the attention given to cases, it is

difficult to determine how wide and deep this interest runs in the teacher education community, and what "interest" really means. We think it important to try to describe the state of the art of case-based teaching in teacher education for two reasons. First, we have a personal interest in developing, using, and evaluating cases. People at our own institution and at other colleges and

universities with whom we work in the state, are involved in various ways with case-based teaching. We want to identify others around the Second, it

nation who are also interested so we might share ideas.

is difficult to measure progress, or lack thereof, without benchmarks. If we use Bob Bush's (1954) book, or Lee Shulman's (1986) presidential address to the American Educational Research Association (AERA), or some other standard against which to gauge progress, we have an opportunity
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to observe the pace and viability of curricular innovation in teacher education.2 We can informally assess interest in cases fairly easily. The past several years there have been numerous indications that case-based teacher education is on people's minds: one session at

the annual meeting of AACTE in 1990, four sessions at AACTE this year, two or three sessions per year the past several years at AERA meetings, four or five sessions at this year's meeting of the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE), two stories on case-method teaching in Education Week last year, a small stack of journal articles, papers from a Virginia conference on case methods, several books on the subject, and several others in preparation. These

events and products serve as evidence, haphazardly acquired, of professional interest in the topic. Judging what is meant by teacher educators' "interest," even informally, however, is another matt -. People say they "use" or "teach with" cases, "assign" cases, have students "read and Friedman (1973) estimated it took about 30 years for the case-method to be adopted completely by 12 law schools and partially by another 48 schools. Eventually every major and most minor law schools shifted to case-based teaching. If Bush could have foreseen the pace of curricular innovation vis-a-vis case-method teaching in teacher education, he might have been less sanguine when he wrote: "We are inclined to the view that the case methodlong used in medicine and law, and more recently in public administration and businesswill in the coming decades be relied upon increasingly in the field of education, both in the pre-service and the in-service training of teachers and administrators. That it has not been adopted more rapidly is primarily due to the lack of adequate case records suitable for instructional purposes." (1954, p.vi)
2

Survey of Case Use 4

interpret" cases, and the like.

Even passing familiarity with the

range of materials referred to as "cases," make these contentions sound reasonable if somewhat unclear. If we can clarify why and how

people use cases, and how they judge the success and failure of their efforts, we may be able to encourage true innovation and resist the stultifying brand of institutionalization that has characterized other attempts at programmatic and curricular reform. Method In our efforts to decide what questions to ask teacher educators about case-based teaching, we found five works particularly useful: Christensen (1987), Kleinfeld (1988), Merseth (1990), and Shulman (1986; 1989). These writers suggested in various ways, the

importance of several issues that we, in turn, used to structure the questionnaire. We wanted to learn about teacher educators' sources of case materials. The materials are the heart of case-based teaching, and We

people express concerns about finding suitable case materials. were curious about the purposes for which cases are used.

It seemed

that people can and do use cases for a variety of often overlapping purposes. If cases are being integrated into teacher education, We sought to identify

there are several ways this may be happening. these ways.

Those who use cases contend their approaches to the We wondered how they
Survey of Case Use

material have desirable effects on students. reached these

conclusions, in other words, how they were judging the effectiveness of case-based teaching. Even advocates of case-based teaching admit We asked what, if anything,

there are problems with the approach.

people found troubling about using cases. The ten-item questionnaire allowed people to respond by checking all applicable answers from arrays of possibilities we supplied. We also provided blank spaces for write-in responses. We

mailed the questionnaires on January 18, 1991 with the deadline for their return on March 15, 1991. Sample Questionnaires went to 3,479 people. Of these, 3,175 went to members of Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education) in AERA who resided in the United States and another 38 in Canada or overseas. Questionnaires were sent as inserts in the fall 1990 newsletter of the Commonwealth Center for the Education of Teachers (Herbert and Tate, 1990). We distributed about 200 within Virginia. We sent the

remaining 50 or so to people in the United States who are interested in teacher education. We received and analyzed completed

questionnaires from 128 people. Although our sample does not exhaust the community of scholars who might be using cases, we believe it fairly accurately represents that group. Division K members and

others on the Commonwealth Center News mailing list are involved in teacher education at all kinds of institutions.
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In addition, if the

person who received the questionnaire was unable to respond, we requested that she or he give it to someone else at the same institution who might be better able to respond. We interpret the

low response rate as an indication of the fact that few people are using cases. Respondents' work locations are noted in Figure 1,

along with the locations of others they identified as people "who use cases to educate teachers."

Insert Figure 1 about here

Results Where do people get cases? Most cases in use today are from published texts or are unpublished cases written by professors. (See item #1 in Table 1.)

One person reported using situations from books and novels as cases. Five said they used videotaped cases they had produced themselves. Six indicated they used "real" cases obtained either form practica or clinical situations.

Insert Table 1 about here

Where do cases fit into programs? As item #2 in Table 1 indicates, very few respondents indicated the entire content of a course was imparted via cases. And not many more noted that cases were clustered into units of
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study.

The method of choice was to use cases for single lessons, and When we asked people

only when they fit the content being taught.

to list the courses in their teacher education programs in which cases were used, we found that most often they said cases were used in methods courses (elementary, secondary, science, mathematics, and social studies). In addition, cases were used in about every other kind of professional course imaginable. Why do people use cases? Respondents used cases for a variety of purposes (item #3 in Table 1). Most often people used them with preservice teachers to

practice critical analysis or problem solving skills and to encourage reflection. Many respondents (22%) indicated they used cases for Six said they use cases to bridge

purposes other than those listed. the theory-practice gap.

In addition to indicating they use cases

to practice critical analysis or problem solving skills, five specified the use of cases for further problem solving purposes, either collegially or for diagnosis. How do instructors judge the effectiveness of case-based teaching? Most respondents indicated they evaluated case-based teaching by reflecting on their own performances after teaching a case and by assessing some kind of student output--journals, logs of students' participation, tests, essays on case issues, and student-written cases. Interestingly, although the literature
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suggests that case-based teaching relies heavily on group involvement and student-student interaction, only 15% of the respondents indicated that they asked a colleague to observe a teaching session and to provide feedback. While using teams to solve cases may be

common practice, using teams to evaluate case-based teaching appears to be unusual. What if anything do instructors find troubling about using cases? Nearly 77% of the respondents used the blanks we provided to mention some kind of problem they had with case-based teaching: Cases are too simplistic or too general to provide students with realistic views of life (16%). Obtaining cases is a problem (14%). Students' interpretations of cases caused concern. Most people who raised this issue said students tended to overgeneralize or to go beyond the issues in the case (12%). Either cases are too long or insufficient time exists to discuss and analyze cases adequately given the course objectives which need to be learned by students (12%). Respondents expressed concern about determining what, if anything, students had learned from case-based instruction. They wanted some kind of evidence that

cases worked better than traditional instructional strategies (11%).

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People believed they lacked expertise in planning for and conducting case discussions (10%.

Cases don't work! (3%). Discussion We capitalized on a convenient sample to collect these data, and our one-page questionnaire limited the quantity and quality of information we received. Moreover, the people who responded are We know nothing of those who do

interested in case-based teaching. not share this interest.

If our results are characterized as another

benchmark along the road of curricular progress in teacher education, it might be best to think of them as a scratch on a telephone pole set firmly in sand. Many educational institutions are using cases for a wide variety of purposes. Some of the concerns people raised about case-based

teaching might well be asked about other teacher education strategies, yet they are indicative of what is unknown about case-based instruction in teacher education. What do students learn?

Do cases work better with some kinds of problems and some kinds of content than others? and practice? Do cases actually lessen the gap between theory Do cases help preservice students become

If so, how?

better teachers faster, or is some teaching experience necessary for students to benefit from case-based instruction? If working through

cases is beneficial to preservice teachers, does this kind of activity warrant the time it requires? often as lessons, not
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Because cases are used most

as units or courses, possibilities for evaluating case-based teaching are limited. But trying to answer these questions, however

crudely, should not dampen enthusiasm for experimentation with cases. If anything, a discerning eye will record information that will be useful in shaping case-based teaching for the better.
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References

Bush, R. N. (1954).

The teacher-pupil relationship.

New York:

Prentice-Hall, Inc. Christensen, C. R., & Hansen, A. J. (1987). case method. Boston: Teaching and the

Harvard Business School. A history of American law. New York:

Friedman, L. M. (1973). Simon and Schuster.

Herbert, J., & Tate, P. (Eds.). Center News. Kleinfeld, J. (1988). study of cases.

(1990, Fall).

Commonwealth

Learning to think like a teacher; The

Unpublished manuscript, College of Rural

Alaska, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska. Merseth, K. K. (1990, June). education. The case for cases in teacher

Paper presented at The Role of Case Methods in

Teacher Education, Charlottesville, VA. Shulman, L. S. (1989). Pedagogy. Toward a Pedagogy of Cases or A Case for

Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University,

Stanford, CA. Shulman, L. S. in teaching. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth Educational Researcher, 2, 4-14.

Figure 1. Case-based Teacher Education Nationwide = respondents involved in case-based teacher education

o = other users of cases