Teaching Partners

Like all of the teachers at the Lawrenceville School, Clare Burchi had plenty of experience in discussion-driven instruction long before she heard of the Case Method Project. Lawrenceville, established in 1810, is a private coeducational boarding school with a longstanding tradition of teaching by the Harkness method, which emphasizes learning through collaborative, student-driven discussion in a roundtable setting. Unlike case discussions, each of which focuses on a single case study prepared for that purpose, discussions in the Harkness method often revolve around the field’s landmark texts, both primary and secondary. At Lawrenceville, for example, Clare and her colleagues planned to structure their trimester-long U.S. History course mainly around a leading history textbook.

At the start of the 2016 school year, however, Clare decided to try a different approach. After attending a workshop on the case method at Harvard Business School, in which she experienced case-method teaching first-hand, she suspected that using case studies might help her increase her students’ engagement still further. Over the course of the trimester, she replaced nearly all of the textbook reading with seven “History of American Democracy” cases, which she then taught in the more decision-focused style of the case method. Her selection of cases spanned major topics such as the Constitutional Convention and Reconstruction as well as more obscure issues, such as the adoption of the secret ballot in the late nineteenth century and the establishment of the initiative and referendum at the state level in the early twentieth. Clare’s observations in class suggested that case-method instruction did indeed increase student engagement, as she had hoped. Perhaps even more important, the end of the term presented her with a unique opportunity to measure the method’s impact on student learning, including both retention and critical thinking. At Lawrenceville, students from all U.S. history sections—including Clare’s case-based section and several other textbook-based sections—took the same final exam, which was scored by a mix of teachers. The essay-format exam required students to present an evidence-based argument in response to a broad thematic question that cut across the chronological arc of the course. After she and her colleagues graded each other’s exams, Clare was delighted to learn that her students, who had used the “History of American Democracy” cases and the case method, had performed markedly better than their peers in other sections.

By using the cases and the case method, Clare had evidently managed to improve performance even among a particularly high-performing student population and at a school with a remarkably high concentration of outstanding teachers. In light of the class’s success, seven U.S. history teachers at the Lawrenceville School have committed to using the case method in 2017-2018—and each is planning to teach an even larger number of cases than Clare did in her first year using cases.