Exploring novice and experienced elementary teachers' science teaching and learning referents through videocases

In recent years, science educators have become increasingly interested in the use of classroom cases as instructional material, vehicles for inservice education and as raw data for research on teacher cognition (e.g., Abell et al., 1996; Colburn & Tillotson, 1998; Fetters, 1997). Although wide-spread interest in classroom videocases is a relatively new phenomena, case-based instruction has been a tradition in fields such as law, medicine and business for many years (Christensen, 1987; Neufeld & Chong, 1984). In teacher education, classroom cases have been used for more than 50 years. An early text by Waples (1927),Problems in Classroom Method, consisted of 40 cases highlighting classroom problems with solutions proposed by inservice teachers. As the use of classroom cases in teacher education have evolved over the past 50 years, a variety of formats have emerged to illustrate problems or dilemmas in teaching and learning. These formats have included the critical incident, protocols, vignettes, simulations, and more recently, videocases.