The cases
There are cases for Senior High School (like: Holidays, Drinking Water and Erosion) and cases for Junior High School (like: Food, Clothing and Forest) with an extensive teachers instruction. The other cases have no teachers’ instruction. When you are not used to work in the case-oriented system, you better start with one of these. After that it is easy to use the other cases.
Each package of the titles above consists of a case, Internet sources and a teachers guide. The case and sources are meant both for you and the students. The teachers guide is only meant for you. In this guide you can find tips to make it easier for the students and ideas to help them get going.
The cases that have been added later, have no teachers instruction, because the method is the same. The internet sites needed are added to the student material.
In the classroom
This material is based on the didactical model of POE: ‘Problem Oriented Education’.
This name has not been used with the pupils, since it might give the impression that sustainable development is about problems. Instead we chose to use the more neutral term of COE: Case Oriented Education.
In COE, small groups work on ‘cases’. A small group ideally consists of no more than 6 pupils. Each group can be subdivided into couples. In each group one pupil acts as leader of the discussion. For most of the time the teacher can walk around and help and direct several groups working by themselves.
Allowing the pupils to choose their own groups will simplify the group processes. However the difference in quality between the groups will be larger. On the other hand if you point out the groups, meetings may be more difficult, but pupils will be less tempted to do nothing. Place such groups at a fair distance from each other, otherwise students will call out to friends in other groups.
Working in cases will be done using the so-called “Seven leaps” (named after a Dutch children’s song). The ‘seven leaps’ is a method in which a group of students goes through a POE-module in seven steps. The most important task of the teacher is to try to limit the number of steps that are skipped and to make sure that each student has the opportunity to use and learn skills and knowledge.
Mind the time as well. In COE you can always make more time for everything which usually gives better results. However, it is more important that students work on an optimal result within the given amount of time.