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Published on: 4/20/2006
Last Visited: 3/7/2007
Judith Shulman quotes Jenlink and Kinnucan-Welsch as saying,
Stories give meaningful form to experiences educators have already lived through and enable others to share and learn from their experience (706) [as] catalysts for pedagogical conversations among members of school communities. (Shulman, 1992, xv)
Stories are records of lived experience.Whether used as parables, fairy stories, myths from the ancient Greeks, or instructions from parents to prepare children to cope in society, stories present models of normative behavior because people remember and pass on their knowledge through stories (Bruner, 1986).By crafting stories into cases, teachers have found an avenue of expression for their lived experiences at school, in contrast to mass media portrayals of their work.
Judith Shulman, director at WestEd laboratories in California, has been involved for many years in using cases as a way to connect the overarching principles of practice to specific dilemmas described in teacher-written stories.
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By discussing, evaluating, or vicariously experiencing another's practice through authentic stories, teachers develop an awareness that teaching stories exemplify a larger pattern and that cases are a case "of" something (Shulman, 1987), be it classroom management, professional knowledge, or insights into student development, for each dilemma resonates with a principle that changes according to the contextual elements of a particular educational setting.
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Shulman, J. (Ed.). (1992).Case methodology in teacher education.New York: Teachers College Press.
Shulman, L. (1987).