Characteristics of Classroom Cases

• In Event: 29.050 - Engaging Beginning Teachers in Classroom Management: A Discussion on Case Analysis

Abstract

This paper describes classroom cases used in this study. It provides a discussion of cases in general followed by cases used for the teaching of Classroom Management (CM) to Beginning Teachers (BTs).
A case or case study is a puzzle that has to be solved. It is a narration of a problem in a real situation. Information about the situation is given, without analysing it. Cases may come in different formats depending on the objectives to be fulfilled. There are those requiring just one correct answer, while others with multiple perspectives may require numerous solutions. Some may be quite straightforward, just requiring the reader to answer a question like, “What would you do in this situation?”, while others may provide a detailed description of the situation with accompanying data for the reader to analyse. Various disciplines, including education, have employed case studies as a teaching tool to show application of theory to real life contexts (Shulman, 1992).
Generally, good cases tell a good story about actual realistic problems faced by real people who are confronted with the need to make a decision to solve a dilemma. The case information could include dialogue, are relevant to the reader, and serve a teaching function. Similarly, good classroom cases or problem-centred stories will have these features – a good narrative of what took place, containing main characters, dialogue, presents a dilemma for which a solution needs to be found, and is situated in the context of a real classroom (Silverman, Welty, & Lyon, 1996).

In this session, we are examining classroom cases meant especially for teaching BTs about CM. Six cases were extracted from 43 written by teachers about their actual classroom experiences as part of a previously funded research at the National Institute of Education, Singapore (Quek & Wang, 2014). In these cases, the setting included several characters – the teacher, and one or more students who are misbehaving, one or more problems occurring in the classroom, and how the teacher tried to manage the problems, both successfully and unsuccessfully. The problems in the cases could be caused by one or more of the following (Quek, 2009):
1) Teacher - due to a lack of planning, poor communication, failure to establish appropriate teacher-student relationships
2) Student - due to unmet needs, personal problems, special needs, or are simply ill disciplined
3) Classroom system - due to unclear expectations, failure to establish rules and routines

It is hoped that this classification will help BTs identify the cause(s) of the problems in the cases that they are working on, and realize that in a real classroom setting, problems arise from a combination of causes. An example of such a case and how the problems are identified and classified will be shared in the presentation.

Based on the description of how classroom cases are viewed in the present study, we will now share how the Case Analysis of Classroom Cases (CACC) approach was used to engage BTs in a CM professional development course.

Author

• Angela Foong Lin Wong, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University