Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines

Volume 24, Issue 3, Spring 2005

Using Case Studies to Promote Critical Thinking

An Electronic Learning Community Partnership Uses Case Studies to Enhance Diversity

Accrediting institutions and state departments of education are requiring descriptions to work together to tie teacher education curriculum to state and national standards. Most state and national accrediting bodies have at least one diversity standard. Principle Three of the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC; 1992) states, “The teacher understands how students differ in their approaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners” (p. 18). This article describes how the college of education faculty at Fort Hays State University in Kansas and the faculty at Stillman College, a historically black college in Alabama, are creatlng an electronic learning community to meet this challenge. The program uses the case study method to lead students to think critically about their own dispositions and the strategies they are using to prepare their future teachers to meet the diverse needs of their future classrooms.