The affordances of case-based teaching for the professional learning of student-teachers

This paper reports on a qualitative enquiry into the affordances of case-based teaching for the professional learning of student-teachers. The context is a first-year foundational course in a four-year undergraduate teacher education programme, offered by an urban university in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a student enrolment of close to 700 students (divided into two groups of 350 students). Data sources used for this study were focus group interviews with student-teachers, individual interviews with teacher educators, video footage of classroom interaction, first-person reports by student-teachers in the form of reflective essays, student-teachers’ discussions on blackboard and examination scripts. The research showed that case-based teaching elicits engaged learning; assists with developing understanding of the complexities of teaching and enables student-teachers to relate theory-based ideas to predicaments of practice. Furthermore, the research revealed how case-based teaching can provide insights into student-teachers’ preconceptions of teaching. In this study, case-based teaching was used with large class groups. The findings suggest that case-based teaching, as used in the course reported on, could serve as an antidote for some of the issues that plague large course teaching.