Social
Constructivism: Case-based Instruction
A case is a written or video summary of an activity, situation, event,
or process. For example, many business schools and law schools use cases
heavily in their programs. To illustrate the way a certain aspect of international
business law works, for example, the professor might assign a case that
describes a particular lawsuit in which the points of law under discussion
were crucial. Students study the case then discuss it in class. In a similar
way, teacher education students studying something like how long to pause
after asking a question might watch a video case of one or more teachers
asking questions in their classrooms and then discuss that teacher's approach.
The links below provide much more information on case-based instruction.
Examples
Project Cape Town is a multimedia teaching case to take advantage of the
World Wide Web as a medium to make cases available to teacher education
centers worldwide. Although this case is for preservice teacher training,
the same format can be applied to other areas in education.
Different data types, including text, still images, sound, and full
motion video, have been used to describe four actual teaching scenarios
in schools in Cape Town, South Africa. Three schools undergoing a transition
from apartheid to racially integrated student populations provide the material
for the case. Users may click on the buttons on next screen to see
other perspectives on the case.
This Web project also offers exercises designed to develop or enhance
one's approach to educational problem solving. Throughout the case, the
web project urges the reader to consider the following as they reach conclusions:
-
What issues are involved
-
Different perspectives and values represented
-
Relevant knowledge and research
-
Possible courses of action
-
Predicting results of actions
Each event ends with a section called "Professional Practice Questions"
that provides opportunities
for individuals to record their ideas various aspects of the case.
Teachers in this new integrated system in Cape Town are facing children
whose cultures are different from their own. Understanding issues these
teachers have been challenged may help teachers in the U.S. to view
multicultural issues in a new light.
URL: http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/capetown/intro.html
Additional
Information
This web page from the Engines
for Education (http://www.ils.nwu.edu/~e_for_e/nodes/I-M-INTRO-ZOOMER-pg.html)
mentions two central issues in case-based reasoning:
This first issue in case-based reasoning is that a case should be important
either because it
contains important facts (perhaps it changed history), it is unusual
(there is little to which to
compare it), or it is paradigmatic (it represents a class of things
that occur repeatedly).
The second issue is labeling. We cannot find what we haven't properly
labeled. The significance of a case is an important part of the labeling
of that case. Labeling determines what case will be found to be most relevant
when we might need it, so how we label what we experience is critical to
any future reasoning.
Other case-based teaching related pages on the Engines for Education site
include:
URL: http://www.ils.nwu.edu/~e_for_e/nodes/NODE-192-pg.html
This on-line article explains case-based instruction as following:
Case-based instruction uses cases or problems as anchors for learning.
It emphasizes collaborative student-centered learning rather than teacher-directed
learning. In CBI, students solve the problem and justify their solution
process. This may require the use of theory, causal models, or other appropriate
evidence. The problems used in CBI are ill-structured. The data are embedded
in the problem itself and are often emergent as the problem is explored.
URL: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cogsci/edutech/cases&problems/philo_mcbagel.html
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