Learning To Think Like a Teacher: The Study of Cases.

Abstract

ABSTRACT The reflective inquiry model of teacher education uses case methods to develop a particular professional way of thinking characteristic of expert teachers. Teaching cases play an important role in preparing teachers emotionally as well as intellectually for the problems of multicultural classrooms, and in legitimizing the discussion of crucial educational factors, such as teacher personality, that the positivistic research tradition ignores. Malaise of the Spirit, a case about a teacher's response to the demoralization in a racially divided Alaskan high school, illustrates the way a case can give novices: (1) vicarious experience with the kinds of problematic situations characteristic of teaching; (2) a model of how an expert teacher frames and constructs educational problems; (3) a model of how a sophisticated teacher inquires about and reflects on such problems; (4) a stock of educational strategies for use in analogous problem situations; and (5) a sense that teaching is an inherently ambiguous activity requiring continuous reflection. This paper describes (1) the issues in the exemplary case; (2) the Teachers for Alaska program, which uses such cases to prepare teachers for small high schools in remote Native villages; (3) how the cases were written; and (4) how classes based on cases are conducted. This paper contains 16 r:ferences and a 5-page synopsis of the 52-page exemplary case. (SV)

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