An experience of using the case method in continuing teacher education

Abstract

The use of the case methods in continuing teacher education is especially relevant in that it can enable teachers to evoke and narrate real work situations, share their narrative with other colleagues in training and with trainers, collectively reflect on each case and about the set of cases under analysis. This article aims to describe an experience of continuing education of teachers (two for each school or group of schools) invested with the mission of becoming the training and monitoring section of a given inter-school training center. Within the training strategy that was outlined, the use of the case method took place in the initial phase of the project, which should be concluded by the production, by the participants, of teacher training plans, properly contextualized, to be integrated in the educational project of each school. The developed project was inspired by personalist and inquiry-oriented teacher education models, as defined by Zeichner (1983) and rooted in the accumulated scientific knowledge about the use of the case method in teacher education. In addition to the productive value that the use of the case method had, we observed its formative value for the constitution and dynamics of a group of trainees who did not know each other previously and among whom it mattered to develop trust, collaboration, peer training capacity and reflexivity.