Case-Based Questions

Prepared by Mark A. Templin, University of Toledo

CASE 6.A

You are about to begin a new school year in a sixth grade science position. Although you will be working in the same middle school as the year before, sixth grade is new to you because you have spent several years teaching eighth grade science. The younger age and generally lower emotional maturity level of these students prompts you to place much more emphasis on planning for collaboration with these students. In the process of developing collaborative activities and strategies for collaboration you ask yourself:

1		What are various types of collaboration and what features are characteristic of each type? (Chapter Learning Performances 6.1)
2		What roles will you need to play in the collaboration and how will these roles change over time? (Chapter Learning Performance 6.2)
3		What are three challenges you foresee that could limit or forestall collaboration in your classroom and why might each challenge arise? (Chapter Learning Performance 6.3)
4		Describe three techniques that you will include in the collaboration plan to help your students learn collaborative skills. (Chapter Learning Performance 6.4)
5		Why is collaboration an important goal and what advantages does it offer your students? (Chapter Learning Performance 6.7)

CASE 6.B

You accept a position as a "continuous improvement teacher" (CIT) within a large urban middle school. A science CIT is charged with providing leadership, guidance, support, and evaluation necessary for science teachers in the CIT's assigned building. Thus, CITs help other teachers improve as professionals. In the building you serve there are eleven full-time science teachers and four part-time science teachers. You decide to begin serving your teachers by getting to know them and their teaching styles. As you soon discover, two teachers are strikingly different in backgrounds and teaching styles.

One teacher, David, is known for content expertise among the science teachers. He has a master's degree in physics and prior experience in an applied physics research laboratory.

Another teacher, Maria, has a Bachelor of Education in Elementary Education. She entered teaching after a career change from a sales position in a household products corporation.

After repeatedly observing both teachers while they engaged in instruction, you notice some patterns in their respective teaching styles. David usually devotes several class periods to teacher-led presentations and discussions before attempting to do a laboratory activity with the class. During the lab activity, his students perform procedures in groups of three or four. Usually, students do the lab using a list of steps outlined on a laboratory worksheet. After gathering the required data and entering it in the data tables provided on the worksheet, each group works together to write responses to several "thought questions" as prompted by the worksheet. Some students are obviously quite bored by the laboratory activities. When you ask David why he does labs this way he says that his methods are "rigorous" and blames students for their lack of initiative and cooperative skills.

Maria typically provides students with lists of twenty to thirty possible activities that relate to a topic at hand. Each group of four students must decide which ten of these activities their group will perform. They also must decide for themselves who works with whom within the group to perform each activity. Maria likes to incorporate a high level of autonomous group work in her instruction, but she feels that student often select the list items that they feel are easiest rather than the ones that are the most interesting. She also sees that sometimes an individual dominates a group or sometimes a group feels that one member does not do his or her fair share of the work.

Your role is to critique the collaborative environments that David and Maria create and work with them to develop a plan to improve collaboration in each of their classrooms.

6		Based on the information provided in the case, what types of collaboration seem to be occurring in David's and Maria's classrooms? (Chapter Learning Performance 6.1, 6.5)
7		What additional challenges to collaboration are likely to arise in David's and Maria's classrooms if no intervention is given? (Chapter Learning Performance 6.5)
8		David is likely to resist changing his teaching style; what arguments will you use to change his mind? (Chapter Learning Performance 6.5, 6.9)
9		If you were to help design a collaborative plan for David, what would you suggest as next steps to collaboration for him? (Chapter Learning Performance 6.5)
10		If you were to help design a collaborative plan for Maria, what would you suggest as next steps to collaboration for her? (Chapter Learning Performance 6.5)