Cases of Teaching and Learning Across and Beyond K–12 Settings

Table Of Contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• About the author(s)/editor(s)
• About the book
• Advance Praise for Cases of Teaching and Learning Across and Beyond K–12 Settings
• This eBook can be cited
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Cases of Teaching and Learning Across and Beyond K-12 Settings (Natalia Collings)
• References
• Part 1: Summaries of Core Theories for Gaining Insight Into Cases of Teaching and Learning
• 1. Early Childhood Predispositions for Lifelong Development: Theories of Temperament and Attachment (Natalia Collings)
• Temperament
• Attachment Theory
• Notes
• References
• 2. Theories of Dynamic Interactions Among Personal and Social Factors of Development: Erikson and Bandura (Natalia Collings)
• Erikson and Stages of Biopsychosocial Development
• Bandura and Social Cognitive Theory
• Parenting and Teacher Interaction Styles
• References
• 3. Is Human Development Biological and Universal or Cultural and Historical? Theories of Piaget and Vygotsky (Natalia Collings)
• Piaget: Stages, Schemas, and Age-Specific Limitations
• Vygotsky: Zones, Tools, and Cultural-Historical Limitations of Conceptual Understanding
• Notes
• References
• 4. Perspectives on Motivation: Theories of Vygotsky, Piaget, Bandura, Ryan and Deci, Maslow, and Dweck (Natalia Collings)
• Vygotsky’s Insights Into Motivation
• Piaget’s Idea of Intrinsic Motivation
• Bandura’s View of Motivation
• Ryan and Deci’s Self-Determination Theory (SDT)
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• Dweck’s Growth Mindset
• Note
• References
• Part 2: Cases of Teaching and Learning and Their Analyses
• 5. A Small Class Size and Supportive Classroom Environment (Jamie Deitz)
• Analysis
• Note
• References
• 6. A Veteran Teacher (Chris Stowe)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 7. A Hole in the Paper (Eleanor Krzyzaniak)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 8. Diamond Shines (Diana Edwards)
• Analysis
• Note
• References
• 9. The Child Soldier (Will Jumper)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 10. The Crisis of Kwan (Kimberly Fleming)
• Analysis
• Notes
• Reference
• 11. Classroom Economy (Alexander Talmadge)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 12. Class DOJO (Jaclyn Trahan)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 13. I Didn’t Do Anything! (Tina Hamel)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 14. Belle’s Homework (Andrea Inman)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 15. Bathroom Breaks (Janel Takacs)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 16. Not a Team Player (Steffon Jones)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 17. The New Student (Daniela Scherman)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 18. Humans Versus Machines (Tiffany Peng)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 19. The Honor Roll (Shawn Peklo)
• Analysis
• Note
• References
• 20. Do You Know Why I Took Your Phone Away? (Marissa Jarrett)
• Analysis
• References
• 21. Study Club (Ronald Barranco)
• Analysis
• References
• 22. Short Temper (Tiffany Rogers)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 23. From A to D (Betsy Eschtruth)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 24. Online Freedom (Melissa Nedved)
• Analysis
• Note
• References
• 25. Unmotivated Online Student (Jane Halcrow)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 26. Be the One (Kory Stevens)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 27. The Fidget Basket (Kelly Boone)
• Analysis
• Notes
• References
• 28. Promotion Board (Pakiesha Argo)
• Analysis
• References
• Contributor Biographies

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Central Michigan University’s College of Education and Human Services for providing me with a grant of a course release that helped me focus on bringing this collection to life, and especially the Associate Deans Betty Kirby and Megan Goodwin, who encouraged me to apply for this grant. I would also like to thank my husband, Casey Collings who has been incredibly supportive through the process of creation of this book, and my children, Sergey and Constantine Collings, who accommodated to my intense writing and editing schedule. Last but not least, I would like to thank my colleagues who encouraged the idea of the book, especially Shane Cavanaugh, who was my cheerleader throughout the process, and Lynn Laskowsky, who provided reassurance and excellent feedback.

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Introduction: Cases of Teaching and Learning Across and Beyond K-12 Settings

NATALIA COLLINGS

The purpose of this introduction is to provide some information on the case method in general and its presence in teacher education specifically, describe how the cases that constitute the majority of this book came to life, explain the structure of this book, and give some ideas for using this book.

A case is a story from the field. Cases lively present typical situations in practice. They are invaluable tools for engaging students in courses with limited or impossible access to practice in the filed. When cases are consistently incorporated into instruction, we can describe it as case method, or case pedagogy. Case method is highly popular in such disciplines as business, law and medical education. These fields not only have well established didactic materials for the case method instruction, but also entire periodical publications dedicated to supplying a constant stream of new cases. Instead of reciting a textbook, students of business, for example, study cases that portray histories of important decisions in real companies and collectively problem-solve solutions to the issues that these decisions produced. Students of law apply their knowledge of jurisprudence to the cases that describe various court hearings. In medical education, learning from cases of patients with various conditions is one of the primary ways to prepare for apprenticeship.

In teacher education case method is a less common pedagogy, however, it is consistently developing and has its authoritative audience. This can be demonstrated by an edited volume published in 1999 that featured strong support for case method from such renowned voices in teacher education as Michael Pressley, Nel Noddings, Elizabeth Moje, Susan Florio-Ruane, and many others (Lundeberg, Levin, & Harrington, 1999). The authors of the ← 1 | 2 → volume advocated for the power of working with cases in terms of presenting a realistic picture of the complexities of teaching, motivating students to learn about psychological theories and research, making it easy for instructors to engage in student-centered practices and culturally relevant teaching. They stressed the importance of class discussion in the context of case pedagogy and helping students develop skills of critical analysis and problem solving, generation of multiple pedagogical techniques, and reflection. Last but not least, they shared stories of working with various types of cases in many courses and instructional contexts.

In my experiences of teaching educational psychology and assessment for over 13 years now, I found that cases are sometimes included in textbooks in the beginning or in the end of the chapters in order to demonstrate the application of key concepts. In addition, I found a few stand alone collections of cases for educational psychology and methods courses that could be flexibly adopted for instruction in the educational psychology courses (Adams, 2001; Dunn, 2010; Ormrod, 2005; Ormrod, McGuir, Pallock, & Harper, 2007). In fact, my interest in case method started with using a little book that was published as a supplement for a textbook on educational psychology by Jeanne Ormrod (Ormrod et al., 2007). Today, video cases are becoming more and more popular. For example, Pearson offers a Video Analysis Tool in MediaShare, that includes sets of course-specific video clips from actual classrooms for illustrating particular theories and strategies, with accompanying rubrics that are designed to direct students’ analysis of them. Another resource of video cases is ATLAS (Accomplished Teaching, Learning and Schools, http://www.nbpts.org/atlas). It features videos of teachers who submitted their classroom footage as a part of digital portfolio for accreditation by National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which is a measure of distinguishing accomplished teaching.

Cases vary in their content and purpose. While the videos of exemplary lessons are visually rich snapshots of teaching and learning, written narratives have more power for capturing the history of how a certain situation developed. Videos and brief written scenarios can model certain teaching strategies, but the purpose of the cases such as those that are included in this book is to problematize teaching and learning, to serve as rich moments for conceptual exploration of ill-structured problems. Working with these types of cases asks students to develop heuristics instead of algorithms in problem-solving. As Helen Harrington, the editor and author of the volume that I mentioned above put it, teachers “must be prepared to work not only in schools of today and in the schools that will be significantly different in the future, but to initiate change in today’s schools as well” (Lundeberg et al., 1999, p. 30). ← 2 | 3 →

Cases can be authored in many ways. Inside of the textbooks they are often provided without an author, with authorship tracking back to the creator of the textbook itself. When one author publishes a book of cases, they often are limited in terms of diversity by the experiences of one person who produced them. Sometimes instructors write their own cases, or ask student contribute theirs. Susan Florio-Ruane, for example, saw her students in an introductory course to teacher education as full of potential young ethnographers, with the role of ethnographer writing a mini-case study being most appropriate for their place in the journey of becoming a teacher. She developed a manual that allowed students to dive into the qualitative research, learning it by doing (1999, pp. 201−224). In my courses, where students did not have time to go into the classroom and spend hours observing, but at the graduate level had plenty of teaching experience to reflect on, I adopted a different practice.

The cases that constitute the second part of this book were written by practitioners pursuing their Masters degrees and enrolled in an online graduate course. The course was dedicated to the study of advanced educational psychology and its applications in various instructional settings. Students who enrolled in the course represented diversity of these settings, including elementary, middle and secondary teachers in traditional public, charter, and private schools, brick-and-mortar as well as virtual. There were also students from professional settings such as military, police training and other types of adult instruction. As the instructor of the course, I turned to case method to help students grasp most general critical concepts of educational psychology, and at the same time see their instantiations in various educational scenarios.

In the first part of the course students engaged theory to analyze cases selected by me. As I already explained, my resources were very limited. Being dated, the sources I mentioned above did not showcase the rapidly changing landscape of education, nor did they offer wide selection in grade levels and various perspectives on learning described in the cases. Nevertheless, the cases from these sources allowed me to gradually familiarize my students with the case method. In the second part of the course, to overcome limited selection of cases in published sources, I asked the students to author their own cases. They used their familiarity with case method acquired in the first part of the course and a checklist that I developed based on review of case writing literature (Naumes & Naumes, 2012).

I guided the authors to create cases that were based on factual events, such as personal experiences of learning and teaching or an observation of someone else’s teaching or learning. I asked for creating stories that had histories spanning over a time period that allowed for an in-depth look into them. ← 3 | 4 → I encouraged to situate the stories into cultural and historical contexts and to avoid representing neutral or universal problems, highlighting the details that made cases contemporary now and in the future could make them historic. The characters had to represent real people, teachers and learners, who spoke their own words and had their local features. Authors had to describe their actions as reporters: objectively, without value-laden statements. All proper names had to be made up to protect the identities of the real people.

When the cases were written, the authors analyzed them, creating new meanings of the past events that they described using learning theory and research we had focused on in the first part of the course. This turned out to be not only a chance to review the material, but an endeavor of further generalizing its meaning and value. Because all case analyses vividly illustrated and extended theories and research of educational psychology, I decided to include both the summaries of them that I wrote for the first part of the course and the authors’ analyses of their own cases in this book as valuable learning materials.

The experience of using case method described here overall was very well received and successful. It was amazing how much the students enjoyed taking a critical, multidimensional perspectives on cases, treating them as complex and unstructured life problems with unpredictable outcomes. Everyone in the class seemed to really appreciate engaging in the process of insightful and pluralistic thinking. No one demanded a polished product of a final verdict on what happened in cases. This is the critical point in why I think this book will be valuable among the rapidly expanding abundance of video cases that model teaching specific strategies or research recommendations in a clear-cut fashion of exemplary practice.