One way that the editors leverage analytic pluralism is by expanding the notion of case studies into different types, such as historical, experimental design, ethical, societal, media. This helps students to broaden and complicate their notions of scientific method and scientific work.
The case studies are written in a compelling and easy-to-read style, with discussion questions as guided interruptions for sense-making.
One way that the editors discourage analytic pluralism is by grounding their science pedagogy within the skeptic and rationalist style of scientific thought, which promotes an aggressive and confrontational view of the scientific method.
The book contains more than thirty case studies, or "science stories". They are usually introduced in parts, in vein with the "interrupted case method" of progressive disclosure of information and evidence. Each part ends with discussion questions. The case studies included in this volume are newspaper articles, university press releases, hypothetical scenarios, and brief non-fiction style stories.
The case studies are cateogorized into five types:
Besides division into these sub-genres, each case study is accompanied by teaching notes, which have introduction and background, objectives, discussion questions, student misconceptions, and classroom management techniques.
The editors favor the "interrupted case method" to teach case studies as science stories. This involves hypothesis building with limited information and self-correcting when faced with additional evidence.
Elaboration: "The method begins when the teacher gives students (ideally working in groups) a problem faced by real researchers. The teacher asks the students to come up with a tentative approach to solving the problem. After students work for about 15 minutes, the professor asks them to report their thoughts. Then the teacher provides some additional information about the problem saying that the real scientists who struggled with the problem decided to do it in a certain way. The professor tells of additional difficulties and asks students to brainstorm solutions. Again, they report after discussions." p. 23
Good case study teaching would encourage teamwork and accountability.
The pedagogy described here would hold teachers who are not solely relying on the lecture method to teach scientific ideas and conduct scientific investigations with their students, and who are able to relay to students that science is a complex, messy, non-linear, historical, and social process. The ideal teacher would be able to reorganize their teaching and their classroom to be responsive to active learning strategies.
The ideal learner would be receptive to skepticism and in their future professional lives, be able to call baloney, since skepticism is held in this pedagogy as a singular trait of "smart people". The ideal learner would also be able to reflect and make decisions about "real-world" problems, able to evaluate contradictory and competing evidence.
The case study pedagogy advanced in this book aims to reproduce scientists by mimicking the authentic way that science happens and how scientists actually work. Their understanding of the scientific method expands on a linear model by bringing in the notions that scientists work in a community and that science has societal consequences; this "complex science" flowchart is a reference. Further, the humaneness of scientists is emphasized. More specifically, this pedagogy advances the notions of:
Editors argue that case studies:
The case study pedagogy intervenes in the perceived lacunae in training students to be critical thinkers and in "traditional science education" that relies on lectures and perfunctory lab experiments. Instead, a host of more "active" learning tactics are proposed, such as small-group learning, peer learning, collective feedback, etc.
These interventions are imagined to occur at the classroom level for students and at the teacher education and professional development level for teachers.
The editors of this book define science and distinguish it from other ways of knowing using the following arguments:
In summary, the editors discern science as a way of knowing by pointing to its "self-correcting" nature. See this checklist that Understanding Science project has developed to determine if an idea can be examined using science.