Field Experience Case Study
Learning from What Children Show & Tell Us

Rational. As teachers, you will need to lean to be good observers and listeners of the students with whom you work in order to be able to assess their understanding of the concepts that you teach and to set your curricular goals. Knowing each child in your class as an individual is especially critical in early childhood education in which the goal is to address the developmental and learning needs of each child within a group. Additionally, being a good developmental and learning needs of each child within a group. Additionally, being a good observer and listener is important to that teacher who strives to be a “guide on the side” one who views each child as a learner who actively constructs mathematical and scientific concepts rather than as one who is a passive recipient of knowledge. This assignment is designed to help you develop your skills as a keen observer and listener of children.

Requirements. You will be writing a 4- to 6- page, word-processed, double-spaced, size 12-font case study of one child from your M201 field experience. Your paper should be written in a narrative or essay style rather than as a research paper. The focus of the paper is on how well a particular child understood the mathematical concepts that you present to her/him this semester. Additional supporting material/artifacts from your experience may be added to the paper (e.g., examples of children’s work, photographs, etc.), but this is in addition to the 4- to 6-pages of text. For a case study to be most effective, information about its subject(s) must be gathered over time. During your first visit to your M201 field placement site, you will be introduced to the small group of children with whom you will work for the remainder of the semester. Select at least two children in your group who interest you in some way. You will be writing this paper about ONE of these children, but it is safest to follow at least a two children in case one is not present at all lessons due to illness or other unforeseen circumstances.

What to Do

In summary, you may structure your case study paper however you wish, AND you need to have the following elements: (a) context of setting; (b) developmental level of child; (c) brief description of the lessons or tasks you had your children do; and (d) specific examples/evidence collected that provides documentation of your child’s level of understanding about the content you presented. You may also include information about the child’s background and general behavior and you may attach specific samples of work or other artifacts. If you have never read a case study, I have copies of a case study of a boy in a combined 5th and 6th grade classroom [or see: Wasserman, S. (1993). Getting down to cases. NY: Teachers College Press.] A word of caution, not all of the elements that I am looking for in your case study exist in this example, but it is a good example of a case study in mathematics done on a single child. If you would like to see a sample of work that was similar to what I’ve assigned here, several high quality papers are on reserve in the School of Education Library under Kloosterman, E343. I recommend that you refer to Case Study Rubric when editing the final draft of your paper. Students often find it very useful to have another student from outside of education read their case studies and give you feed back about how clearly they have communicated, both what this assignment is all about, and the information about the target child. Also check to see that your paper meets my high standards—review the Writing Tips before handing it in.

Grading Rubric. NOTE: Due dates and project points will be decided on jointly during the first class meetings. Once the decision is made, a grade rubrics for this assignment will be posted here.

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