Teacher educators reflecting on case-based teaching – a collective self-study

Abstract

The current study is a collective self-study on how we as 15 teacher educators at a university in Norway tried to improve our teaching through working with cases with the aim of better supporting student teachers in making links between theory and practice. We wanted to address the common criticism in teacher education concerning a perceived gap between practice and theory. Our presupposition was that one way to prepare student teachers for work and bring together theoretical and practical knowledge would be through case-based teaching. We agreed that we wanted to try different ways of working with cases and to follow our own actions with research and conduct a self-study. Throughout the project, each teacher educator experienced to learn about case-based teaching, but our joint learning was limited due to practical issues and lack of time. With teacher education as a shared responsibility, our conclusion is that teacher educators need time to develop as a team, not only as individual teachers.