Case Studies and Scenarios develop reasoning and discipline.
In Management and Leadership courses students are best challenged to "observe and reflect" situations requiring a solution. I have found that students can learn to be disciplined, questioning, and make reasoned judgments when allowed time to think, interact, research, and then form conclusions associated with these "life-reflecting" teaching tools.No feedback from employers has ever suggested that the graduates are asked to define terms or conclude a "true-false" fact.
Tom,
Like the way you outline your approach to developing critical thinking skills. You are right about the need for a level playing field in terms of experience so the focus will be on the process and not the specifics of the situation. Once the skills have been developed then students can start to use their knowledge and experience to think and problem solve situations with which they have extensive information.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
I like case studies as well but I disagree with Mr. Camp's distaste for facts and defining terms. I teach foreign affairs/military strategy type courses and defining terms is a vital step in developing and evaluation possible courses of action. To take an example from current events, it makes a huge difference whether the Obama administration is trying to "destroy" ISIS or "disrupt" ISIS or "defeat" ISIS or "delay" ISIS or something else, precisely because those terms have different definitions. In such cases we don't even know what we are trying to do until we define our terms. I also find the collection of facts in a case study to be enormously valuable because it levels the playing field in class discussion. For example, if we discuss US relations with Nigeria then the student who lived in Nigeria the longest will probably dominate the discussion, but if we assign a somewhat obscure case study, say US involvement in Central America in the 1920s, then everyone starts with the same set of facts provided by the case study and the discussion turns on better critical thinking rather than better data.
