The first sign that a baby is going to be a human being and not a noisy pet comes when he begins naming the world and demanding the stories that connect its parts. Once he
knows the first of these he will instruct his teddy bear, enforce his world view on victims in the sandlot, tell himself
stories of what he is doing when he plays and forecast stories
of what he will do when he grows up. He will keep track
of the actions of others and relate deviations to the person
in charge. He will want a story at bedtime. --Kathryn Morton
Cases are stories with a message. They are not simply narratives
for entertainment. They are stories to educate.
Humans are story-telling animals. Consequently, the use of
cases gives a teacher an immediate advantage; he has the attention
of the audience.
The best way to start this essay is with a glance at the
history of case study teaching in academia. I do not propose
to start with Homo erectus in my search for the origin
of cases, but you can be sure that those of us interested
in historical antecedents and animal behavior might pick up
the elements of story telling even in bee hives, where workers
return from their flower hunts and dance out messages to their
apian colleagues. Avoiding such temptations, I leap ahead
to the Harvard Law School at the turn of the twentieth century,
where the formal use of cases entered the academic scene.
I am helped in my historical musings by a 1991 article by
Katherine Merseth, "The Case for Cases in Teacher Education,"
an AAHE publication.
Law as a discipline is essentially composed of criminal and
civil cases. New decisions, new cases, and new laws are built
upon old decisions. Students learning the profession must
study the cases of the past and use them as examples of judicial
reasoning.
Students come to appreciate that there is a correct answer
to many of the cases they see in the classroom. Socratic interrogation,
as seen in the popular movie and television series, "The
Paper Chase," is a common method of instruction. We witness
Professor Kingsfield leading, nay browbeating, his law students
through cases leading to predetermined correct answers. The
cases are closed ended.
The use of the case method in medicine is not much different.
The life of a physician is nothing if not a succession of
cases--particular examples of general physiological systems
gone awry. His job is to reason deductively from general principles
to reach the solution of a particular problem. Correct diagnoses
exist and "woe be unto you" (and lawsuits) if you
make mistakes.
Modern medical education in the United States prepares students
for their awesome responsibilities by having them spend two
years taking basic courses in anatomy, physiology, embryology,
and biochemistry before unleashing them into the clinical
setting where they are allowed contact with patients. Recently,
a couple dozen medical schools have revolutionized their curricula
and set up physician education completely around the study
of cases. Small groups of students and faculty tutors work
through one case after another as they learn about medicine.
This is the Problem-Based Learning curriculum pioneered by
McMaster University in Canada.
Thus, in both medicine and law, cases are real stories dealing
with people in trouble. Students attempt to figure out what
went wrong and how to fix it. The cases are chosen because
they serve to illustrate general principles and good practices;
correct answers and facts have a high priority.
In the 1940s, after the ravages of World War II, chemist
James Conant returned from the Manhattan Project to life as
a professor at Harvard convinced that our educational system
in the sciences was flawed. He realized that laymen and politicians
did not understand how scientific discoveries were made. Determined
to correct this academic oversight, Conant began what he called
"case study teaching" using the lecture method.
Conant would take an important historical event such as the
discovery of oxygen and the overthrow of the phlogiston theory
and painstakingly describe the steps and misadventures of
the protagonists in the setting of the time. His book, On
Understanding Science, describes his case method as he
reveals scientists in action, following false leads, stumbling
upon correct ideas, having brilliant insights one minute and
making stupid errors the next, and serendipity always popping
up unexpectedly.
Once again, cases are real stories--examples for us to study
and appreciate, if not emulate. Facts and principles have
importance but the value of the case is to show great scientists
in action. Since these are historical lessons, the student
is not an active puzzle solver but an observer of human nature.
The instructor is a story teller. The student is the audience.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have the cases used
in business schools. Harvard professors introduced cases for
the first time to give students practical experience for use
in the real world. For instance, businessmen were invited
into the classroom to tell students about actual problems.
The students held discussions and offered solutions, thus
the start of "The Case Method." It has become a
model that is emulated around the world with thousands of
cases now offered for sale. A typical business case may devote
fifteen pages plus appendices documenting a business dilemma
(e.g., a marketing decision by Coca Cola to change its classic
formula). The student would be expected to prepare for the
class discussion by closely analyzing the background data
leading to the decision. The class would then discuss the
case in an organized way with the instructor moving through
various critical topics as he outlined the problem on the
board with help from the students.
Business cases employed in today's classrooms are real and
told in narrative form. Instructors give the cases to the
students in an incomplete state, and have the class analyze
and discuss them to determine what action should be taken.
Like cases in medicine, they are puzzles to be solved, but
unlike the latter there is no predetermined correct answer.
The purpose of the method is to produce managers who both
know and act. Harvard business school professor C. Roland
Christensen states: "When successful, the case method
of instruction produces a manager grounded in theory and abstract
knowledge, and more important, able to apply those elements."
Cases allow the student to deal with situation-specific dilemmas.
Consequently, a business school instructor never expects a
discussion to go the same way twice; there are always novelties
and unexpected turns in the conversation.
Two characteristics distinguish the use of cases in law (and
medicine) from business, according to Merseth. The first is
that law and medical practice depend upon a well-defined knowledge
base as a starting point whereas in business much of the knowledge
is in flux. Conditions are always changing in the business
environment. Second, business education stresses the human
condition and the subjective view.
According to Christensen, "any problem may well be understood
differently by individuals and groups and that perception
changes." In law and medicine, deductive logic and lines
of precedent make the individual or specific context of a
case less compelling. Merseth concludes "to a remarkable
extent, the purposes and uses of the case method turn on the
nature of the body of knowledge that exists in the professional
field."
Given this historical preamble, what can we say in summary?
First, it is evident that in all instances cases are stories,
usually real stories. Second, it is evident that teachers
using cases are not all delivering these stories the same
way. There is no "case method" (except perhaps in
business). Conant used cases with the lecture method. Law
school teachers use Socratic questioning. Business school
instructors use discussion leading. Medical school tutors
use small group cooperative learning called problem-based
learning. Third, the subject matter definitely determines
the nature of the cases and their expected conclusions. Some
cases (and perhaps the method of teaching) are fact driven
and deductive, i.e., there is a correct answer. Other cases
are context drive, i.e., multiple solutions are reasonable.
The best answer depends upon the situation at the moment.
Depending upon the case, instructors might employ different
types of teaching methods. So where does this leave us on
the matter of using cases in science? My answer is that we
are in the catbird seat.
Science is a body of facts, concepts, principles, and paradigms
that forms the core of scientific knowledge. This is textbook
science. We want our students to know a substantial amount
of information, such as how the heart works, the definition
of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, what pH is, the concept
of plate tectonics, and so on. Instructors traditionally teach
these subjects through lecture and need substantial work and
creativity to come up with cases dealing with these scientific
topics.
On the surface, the situation appears to demand close-ended
cases with correct answers. This is not necessarily the case.
Instead, many fact-driven cases are open-ended and have multiple
solutions because the data are inadequate or emotions are
involved, and ethical or political decisions are at stake.
Consider, for example, a case involving a mother trying to
decide whether to enroll her child in an experimental program
to cure a genetic disorder such as muscular dystrophy. Or
think about cases involving government decisions on global
warming, pollution control, human cloning, or NASA space probe
funding to find life on Mars. All such cases can be loaded
with facts but many of the decisions to be made are necessarily
open-ended. Moreover, all cutting edge science, "frontier
science," is necessarily contentious. Science philosopher
Stephen Cole put it this way: "In frontier knowledge
different scientists looking at the same empirical evidence
can reach different conclusions. Frontier knowledge is accepted
by scientists not as true but as claims to truth of particular
scientists." So all kinds of case structures should be
available to us depending upon the goals at the moment.
Personally, I feel liberated knowing that I do not have to
conform to a particular method or someone else's vision about
what a case is. Nor do I feel obligated in any way to always
use cases in my teaching. Surely there are moments when the
standard lecture approach is appropriate, inspirational, and
superior to other methods. Surely it makes sense to mix and
match our teaching techniques to reach the best arrangement
possible. Using cases is simply another arrow in our pedagogical
quiver. But when we do choose to use cases, we are responding
to the child in all of us, who once demanded there be heroes
and heroines and mysteries galore in our stories at bedtime.
This article originally appeared in the November 1997 issue of the Journal of College Science Teaching (pp. 92-94). It is reprinted here with permission from NSTA Publications, Journal of College Science Teaching, 1840 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22201.
