Case Studies in Science— A Novel Method of Science Education Chide Freeman Herreid The following article by Clyde Freeman Herreid, Distinguished Teaching Professor at SUNY, Bufo, is she frst in a series of articles to be published in JCST on the use of ease studies in teaching science. The editor and staff of the Journal hope that this article will stimulate the contribution for publication of other discussions on case methods in science teaching. Schools around the nation are seeking curriculum reform and classroom innovations to aid in rectifying the deficiency in scientific literacy. The case- study method is one innovation that holds exceptional promise. cience education in the United S States has been faulted by politi- cians, laymen and scientists. Comparisons among countries using standardized mathematics and science tests repeatedly shows the United States trailing many European and Asian nations. J. Miller's National Sur- veys of American Scientific Literacy (1983) reveal large percentages of people who believe in astrology, occult experiences, extraterrestrial lant earth, and creationism along with a woeful misunderstanding of basic sci- ence concepts, Our deficiencies in science have been cited as a harbinger of the demise of the United States’ preeminence in technology. Its long-term economic leadership has been questioned, Edu- cators have been quick to point out that science education is not user- friendly, disproportionately turning off large numbers of women and minori- ties, How to correct the many perceived ills of our science education has occu- pied the attention of scientific societ- ies including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Project 2061: Science for All Ameri- cans!) Sheila Tobias says in her book Revitalizing Undergraduate Science (1992), that some 300 reports on the problems of American science and mathematics have appeared since 1983, yet with notable exceptions “it is difficult to show that these reports have had much impact.” Schools around the nation are seeking curricu- Jum reform and classroom innovations to aid in rectifying the deficiency in scientific literacy. One innovation that holds excep- tional promise—yer has had little trial February 1994JCST 221among science teachers—is the case study method. CASE STUDIES AS A‘TEACHING TECHNIQUE Case studies have rarely been used in undergraduate science teaching ex- cept as occasional stories told by an in- structor, perhaps as historical foot notes, to general lectures. James B. Conant of Harvard was apparently the first science educator to try and orga- nize an entire course around this mode of teaching (Conant 1949). However, unlike the current practice in business and most other fields which present cases within a framework of discussion or Socratic dialogue, Conant presented cases entirely in a lecture format Conant’s model did not survive him and other attempts to use the method are not widely known. In concrast, business and law schools have had a long uadition of using real or simulated stories known as cases to teach students about their field. Harvard University has been the leader in developing cases in these sub- jects (Christensen 1986), and has pro- duced faculty who have carried their enthusiasm for the method to other institutions. Valuable case books in the field have been written about the peda- gogy (J. Erskine er al. 1981). Other disciplines such as medicine, psychol- ogy, and teacher’ s education have used the method to capture the imagination of students. The recent monograph Using Cases to Improve College Teach- ing (Hutchings 1993) is the newest ef- fore in the field of teaching. In these disciplines, cases are typi- cally written as dilemmas which give a personal history of individual, insti- tution or business faced with a prob- Clyde Freeman Herreid is Distin- guished Teaching Professor in the de- partment of biological sciences, State University of New York at Buffalo, New York 14260-1300. 222 JCST February 1994 Jem that must be solved. Background information, charts, graphs, tables may be integrated into the tale or ap- pended. The teacher's goal is to help the students work through the facts and analysis of the problem and then consider possible solutions and conse- quences of their actions. For the past four years, we at the State University of New York at Buf- falo have used case studies in three types of situations: m As the core material of a general- education course, Scientific Inquiry. mAs part of two general education “Great Discoveries” courses where three paradigms are discussed in the form of cases in the classical sense of a historical story as envisioned by Conant. mAs an occasional case used in the laboratories and lecture of a large bi- ology course. ‘We draw several conclusions from these experiences. (1) Like case teachers in business, medicine, and law before us, we note that the case method involves learning, by doing, the development of analyti- cal and decision-making skills, the in- ternalization of learning, learning how to grapple with messy real-life prob- lems, the development of skills in oral communications, and often team work. “It’s a rehearsal for life.” (2) Cases have strong appeal for many students who are turned off by tradicional science courses oriented around a lecture format with a concen- tration on facts and content rather than the development of higher-order thinking skills. In a current course of nonscience majors using eases, we have 95 percent attendance while normal lecture courses have 50-65 percent at- tendance. (3) Faculty must be shown how to write and to teach from cases, espe- cially if discussion methods are used. ‘These are techniques not common in the science classroom, (4) A method of dissemination must be established so that teachers across the country can have access to the new material (5) The case method of presentation is extraordinarily flexible as a teaching tool, as I hope to illustrate with a few examples. Robert Merry (1954) has written that the case process is inductive rather than deductive, He adds “The focus is on students learning through their joint, cooperative effort, rather than on. the teacher conveying his/her views to students”, Charles Gragg (1953) wrote a captivating article entitled “Because Wisdom Can't be Told”, in which he seressed that the purpose of case teach- ing is to develop analytical and de sion-making skills. Erskine et al. (1981) noted that students “are devel- oping in the classroom, a whole set of skills of speaking, debating and resolv ing issues. They are also gaining a sense of confidence in themselves and relat ing to their peers.” I would add that the use of case studies in science should encourage students to critically ap- praise stories about science they hear through the media, to have a more positive attitude about science, to un- derstand the process of science and its limitations, and to be able to ask more critical questions during public policy debates. In short, the goal in most of our case-method teaching is not so much to teach the content of science (al- though that does clearly happen) but to teach how the process of science works and to develop higher-order skills of learning. Looking at Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of cognitive learning, wwe focus less on “knowledge” than on comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Cases scem ideally suited to illustrate the relevance of science in society. Cases are equallysuited to the collaborative/cooperative learning format in small groups but can easily be used in large discussion classes, as exemplified in law and busi- ness schools. They can even be adapted for megaclasses of students. How TO WRITE A CASE There are two basic questions that face anyone interested in using the case method. The first is, how am I going to write the case? The second is, how am I going to teach the case? The two questions are clearly related, for the case often will be written differently for different teaching formats. How much work is required in writing the case varies enormously de- pending upon the materials you decide to provide the students. One of my colleagues, Michael Hudecki, uses a single 100-word paragraph from The New York Timesas the basis for an en- tire class period. As class begins, He gives the students this brief announce- ment of an experiment in memory loss in mice. He asks them to write con- cise responses to the following ques- tions: What is the problem being in vestigated? What are the details of the experimental method apparently used? What are the pertinent results? What specific conclusion can you draw from the study? Then, with gentle and prob- ing questioning, he is able to draw out a miraculous number of vital points about the scientific process. Before the students realize it, they are creating control groups, hiting research person nel, spending taxpayer's money, and curing Alzheimer's disease. At the end of the class period, the blackboard is a blizzard of speculations, experiments, and conclusions, and virtually all of the students are eager to read the original research article published in the Pro- ceedings of the National Academy of Sci- enceto see if their suppositions are cor- rect. ‘At the other extreme, cases may take elaborate preparation requiring dozens of pages of text and extensive research. One case-seudy method, “Problem-based Learning,"is faculty intensive, wing one tutor for every four or five students. The group, such as these Health Sciences stu- dents pictured here at Canada’s McMaster University Faculty of Health Sciences, stays together for the entire term, working through a series of case. February 1994 JCST 223