The rest of the story: Understanding small-group case interpretation performance and capability in middle-school project-based inquiry classrooms

Abstract

Learning from use of cases has been the hallmark of several approaches to education. From the perspective of learning, the ability to interpret and apply cases is a skill that is key to successful transferable learning. Our study explored the development and transfer of case use skills in middle-school project-based inquiry classrooms. Contrary to our expectations, group performance and capability did not improve uniformly over time, but fluctuated from episode to episode, leading us to examine what seemed to influence this fluctuation. We discovered that the character of group discussions and the impact of those discussions on the group's reasoning about the case were strong indicators of group performance and capability. In this paper, we describe case use and examine the character of group discussions reasoning about expert cases from episode to episode of case interpretation, exploring how these factors indicate or predict group interpretation performance and capability over time.