USING THE CASE METHOD IN INTERFAITH STUDIES CLASSROOMS
Ellie Pierce
In 2005, Diana Eck and I began an experiment: Could we creatively apply the case method to the dilemmas and disputes of multireligious America? How might this change the way we teach about interfaith engagement, and how students learn?
This chapter begins with the opening of our first case study, “A Mosque in Palos Heights,” to illustrate the form and function of a case study. Then I step back to explore the origins of the case initiative, the fundamentals of the case method, and Diana Eck’s reflections on using this pedagogy. Finally, I examine the wider use of the case method in interfaith studies, bringing in perspectives on practice from the field.
CASE STUDY: FORM AND FUNCTION
Dean Koldenhoven has the large, weathered hands of a former bricklayer, the long, distinct name of his Dutch ancestry, and the colorful bolo ties of a man who likes to do things his own way. Koldenhoven enjoyed being mayor in a city with a small-town atmosphere, where people know each other by their first names. Many people in Palos Heights, Illinois, referred to him simply as “Mayor Dean.”
After many years of working in construction, Koldenhoven was appointed to serve as the city’s zoning commissioner. He knew the construction trades and had a straightforward, no-nonsense attitude. After eight years working with an increasingly divided city council, Koldenhoven ran for mayor. He was elected in a close race: the margin was just 156 votes. As Koldenhoven joked, “It only takes one vote to win.”
In March 2000, Mayor Koldenhoven started hearing some talk around town, rumors mostly, that “Arabs” were going to buy the Reformed Church of Palos Heights. It wasn’t clear who exactly these people were, but it was clear from the rumors that they were not welcome in Palos Heights. Koldenhoven began receiving phone calls and letters from concerned citizens. They asked: “What are you going to do about this?”1
Decision-based case studies ask us, like Koldenhoven was asked, “What are you going to do about this?” and challenge those engaged in the field of interfaith studies to prioritize skills and action over theories and abstraction. As the above opening suggests, a case is fundamentally a story: it has characters, setting, tension, and a narrative arc. In a case study workshop, readers and discussion participants are asked to make an imaginative leap in order to inhabit the particulars of the case in time and place. While the scope of this chapter does not permit the inclusion of the full text of “A Mosque in Palos Heights,” this section will walk through some of its elements as an example case, offering a glimpse of how the text is designed to elicit discussion through the case method.
After the case introduces the characters and the conflict, it establishes the context. Palos Heights is a small bedroom community outside of Chicago and with a population of just twelve thousand. Many of its citizens are of Dutch ancestry, and all of its eleven houses of worship are Christian. In this predominantly, if not presumptively, Christian town, the Al Salam Mosque Foundation plans to purchase the Reformed Church of Palos Heights. Yet local opposition is strong, and angry. Mayor Koldenhoven grows concerned over the rumors and fear arising in his community.
Even with limited information, the character—and by extension the reader—begins to explore the issue. Key questions related to assessment, diagnosis, and action help unpack the case and facilitate class discussion: 1) Assessment: “How serious is this?”; 2) Diagnosis: “What is the most significant challenge Koldenhoven faces?”; and 3) Action: “What would you recommend to the mayor?”2
As the case continues, Koldenhoven recognizes that he needs to learn more about the Muslim community and reach out to religious leaders for support. Again questions arise for the character and the reader: What does Koldenhoven need to know about Islam? How might he research this? What risks might he face? Is this a question of religious literacy or of civic responsibility? Does he really need to know anything about the religion to support the Muslim community’s right to purchase a building? What should he do next?
The story is told as it unfolded for him at the time, without the case writer’s analysis but with the limited information and suboptimal conditions that often characterize real-life decision-making. Primary and secondary materials, such as quotes from newspaper articles or from transcripts of city council meetings, help establish the chronology and move the story forward. At the same time they suggest some of the complexity and competing values and help engage the reader in both the facts and emotions of the story. The controversy intensifies, and tensions build for Koldenhoven. Some residents in Palos Heights are angry and afraid that the proposed mosque will change their city; others are shocked by the vitriol of the opposition to the mosque. Both sides are distressed to read newspaper coverage of the dispute, which includes a new label for their small city: “Palos Hates.”
After weeks of debate, the city council offers $200,000 to Al Salam to walk away from the real estate offer. Koldenhoven is deeply disappointed by the offer—and with the fact that Al Salam accepts it. At the same time, Koldenhoven’s son passes away after a long illness. The case concludes at a low moment, which is also the point of decision: at the next regular city council meeting, Koldenhoven must decide whether or not to veto the buyout offer, and he must decide how to move forward.
“A Mosque in Palos Heights” follows the traditional decision-based case structure: the (A) case presents the problem and the (B) case details the resolution. In between, there is ample space for reflection and discussion. Again, both the protagonist and the reader are called upon to assess, diagnose, and act. Students might be asked to draft the speech for Koldenhoven to deliver at the next city council meeting, or they might imagine themselves as citizens of Palos Heights and draft a letter to the editor of the local paper expressing their own perspective.
Context-specific and rich in detail, “A Mosque in Palos Heights” is also generalizable: How might the challenges faced by Mayor Koldenhoven, or, indeed, the Al Salam Mosque Foundation that is planning a mosque, be emblematic? How might the themes of this case—fear, change, courage, and managing crisis—inform our training of interfaith and civic leaders? What do we need to know? How do we get this information? How do we find our voice and the courage to speak? What do we say? And, fundamentally, in the field of interfaith studies, how do we teach about the interfaith encounter in such a way that builds the skills and capacities to effectively assess, diagnose, and act?
ORIGINS AT HARVARD
Diana Eck first encountered the case method in the 1970s at a seminar for new teachers at Harvard University. Led by Chris Christensen and Bill Poorvu, esteemed faculty at the Harvard Business School, those cases described classroom and pedagogical dilemmas. Eck was drawn to the participant-centered methodology and wondered how it could be translated to the study of religion. As she began her teaching career, she could not find anyone in the field who was using the case method. Yet, in the discussion sections of her classes, she would experiment with the method by setting the agenda for discussion with provocative study questions.
When Eck’s academic focus expanded to the multireligious America, she developed the Pluralism Project. From the very beginning, the project took what might be broadly understood as a “case study” approach. As researchers, we in the Pluralism Project documented the changing religious landscape of the United States. Each in-depth study of a mosque, temple, or gurdwara (Sikh place of worship) served as a specific, situated example of a larger phenomenon. These narrative cases were at the foundation of Eck’s books On Common Ground: World Religions in America (1997) and A New Religious America (2001).
Eck and I continued to follow media coverage of the encounter across lines of difference through the Pluralism Project’s Religious Diversity News, an online compendium. Eck recalls, “Over the years we had a series of what we thought of as micro-histories of the transformation of American cities and towns through the struggles and creativity of Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh communities. This was the archive that seemed worth mining for teaching material—and this field of teaching seemed just right for the case method.”3
After some fifteen years of researching religious pluralism, we were witnessing an ever more complex and contested religious reality. With the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, came an emerging interfaith movement and interfaith studies field, along with the will to manage change, contend with conflict, and build effective forms of collaboration, but what about the skills? Indeed, if pluralism is understood as more than “mere diversity,” perhaps we needed more than “mere stories” to teach and learn about religious diversity.4 Together, Eck and I wanted to dive a bit deeper into the stories of encounter and explore the case method.
The case method originated at Harvard Law School in 1870. It has been the dominant pedagogy at the Harvard Business School (HBS) for more than a century. Today, more than 80 percent of HBS classes are built on the method, and some 85 percent of class time is spent on student discussion.5 The school’s first dean referred to it as “the problem method” and understood its value for training agile, adaptable leaders.6 The case method is now regularly and successfully used at all of Harvard’s professional schools—of Law, Business, Medicine, Government, and Education—but rarely at the Divinity School or in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, where the Pluralism Project is based.
CASE AS TEXT AND METHOD
We began our exploration of the case method in 2005 by asking questions of colleagues at other schools at Harvard. We sought the expertise of HBS faculty, attended case classes, and pored over cases and teaching notes. We observed how, through case discussion, students practiced varied skills such as analysis, decision-making, applying frameworks, oral communication, time management, and interpersonal interaction.7 We learned that the case method also fosters critical thinking; encourages student responsibility for learning; transfers information, concept, and technique; develops a command of a body of material; blends affective and cognitive learning; enlivens the classroom dynamic; develops collaborative skills; and teaches questioning and self-directed learning.8
The HBS case study “An Introduction to Cases” explains, “The case method is built around the concept of metaphors and simulation,”9 Although a case describes a unique, specific situation, it serves as “a metaphor for a particular set of problems.” The HBS case study continues: “The best way to learn a skill is to practice in a simulation-type process. Thus, the swimmer swims and the pianist plays the piano. The swimming novice might drown if thrown into deep water after reading a set of books. And few of us would want to hear a concert pianist who had never before touched a piano, but who had attended many lectures on piano playing.”
Within the field of business, definitions of “the case method” often refer both to the form and function of a case study: “A case is a description of an actual situation, commonly involving a decision, a challenge, an opportunity, a problem or an issue faced by a person (or persons) in an organization. A case allows you to step figuratively into the position of a particular decision maker.”10 The “case method” we sought to adapt for our field included these two inextricable aspects: (1) the decision-based case-study text and (2) the participant-centered case discussion pedagogy.
As Boehrer and Linsky write in The Changing Face of College Teaching, “The relation between the artifact of a case and its functional purpose is a crucial aspect of the case method. To grasp this, it is useful to think of a case in several ways: as a document or text, as a story, as a vehicle for discussion, and as an event.”11 Indeed, as we witnessed in person at HBS, the case method in practice functioned like an event: although highly structured, the discussion was new each time the case was taught. And the students were engaged in ways one rarely sees in a religious studies classroom.
Taking the HBS cases as a model and using their resources as a guide, we took the stories of encounter in multireligious America and began developing decision-based cases.12 At the same time, we started integrating the case method more intentionally into how these materials were taught, beginning with Eck’s classroom at Harvard.
A CASE-STUDY COURSE
In 2007, when the Pluralism Project developed enough decision-based cases and proto-case material to create the spine of a curriculum, Diana Eck launched her first formal case-study course: Religion in Multicultural America: Case Studies in Religious Pluralism. A General Education course, open to both Harvard undergraduates and graduate students, it carried forth our ongoing experiment with the case method. It was Eck’s first class that used case discussion as the primary pedagogy and decision-based cases as the primary texts. Among these texts, then and now, was “A Mosque in Palos Heights.”
While Eck enjoys lecturing, she notes, “I realized over the years that as the one who gets to put my thoughts together and present them to students, I was the one who was learning the most in the class, not the students. They might be inspired by what I said or the energy and passion I bring to it, but this is not the most effective learning experience for students.” She explains, “While I do lecture for five or ten minutes occasionally at the outset of a case discussion, I really have learned to step back and enable students to take an active part in the classroom experience. I ask questions. I write on the board. I referee a discussion, but I don’t take the authoritative teacher role.”13
The case-study course has evolved since its inception, integrating new cases and scholarship, including essays from Martin Marty, Robert Bellah, and Martha Nussbaum. The course has shifted from a tradition-based approach to one in which thematic “sites of encounter” structure the course. In its seminar form, the course also integrates field visits, and students develop four papers: one on an encounter with a person of another religious tradition (or, if the student does not identify as religious, an encounter with someone who does); reflections on site visits to a local gurdwara and mosque; and the analysis of a news article related to the issues of the course. For the final paper, students choose between writing a research paper or developing a case study.
Eck explains, “The primary challenge is making sure that students understand the nature of the class. They will have to come to class prepared to think on their feet and talk. For students who are used to taking notes on a lecture, this is a new format. In many cases, the background work required to enter into and ‘inhabit’ a case will mean learning more about Islam or the Sikh community.” She continues, “In many cases, the dilemmas presented in the case are quite new, and they can’t just rely on their wits or their bravado. They need to learn, to think, and to express themselves—out loud. This is an experience that can be quite unsettling, especially for reticent students. It is active learning because the students have to take a very active role in their own learning. One of the other challenges is getting students to inhabit a case, to enter into it, rather than just talk about it and discuss it.”
Jennifer Howe Peace joined Eck in the teaching of her 2016 seminar, as well as a 2014 summer program for seminarians. Peace had begun integrating cases into her courses at Andover Newton Theological School years earlier after she recognized their value for helping to cultivate both the skills and the qualities needed for religious leaders engaged in interfaith work. These skills, Peace explains, include “critical thinking, flexible thinking, ability to analyze sources of authority within their own faith tradition, [and] religious literacy.”14 Beyond skills, she adds, cases also cultivate qualities such as “an increased tolerance for ambiguity, self-reflection on one’s own hierarchy of values in order to weigh choices, and empathy, as students are asked to put themselves in the shoes of the protagonist.”
Peace considers the case method to be a signature pedagogy for interfaith studies: “A key dimension of interfaith studies is a balanced attention to both theory and practice—it is focused on understanding across religious lines/religious literacy not for its own sake but because it is essential for the healthy functioning of a religiously diverse democracy. Our understanding or ignorance of each other religiously has profound implications in the civic sphere—which case studies illustrate beautifully.” Yet Peace cautions that cases are not simply documents to add to a syllabus: “Case studies are a tool for teaching, and, like any tool, the key to using them well is to focus on the learning goals—what skills and knowledge are you looking to cultivate? How can you organize a case discussion to serve your goals?”
Peace notes, “I also like teaching with cases because they provide rich data without being didactic or prescriptive. They leave plenty of room for creative teaching.” The case classroom is a dynamic one, and both Peace and Eck explain that they learn more about the text and the method each time they teach a case.
THE CASE STUDY IN PRACTICE: NOTES FROM THE FIELD
In decision-based case studies, dilemmas and problems are generative: they structure the narrative, engage the reader in problem solving, and enliven the discussion. While this chapter has focused on the promise of the case method, it is also important to consider the problems that emerge in the practice of teaching with cases. Three perspectives from the field of interfaith studies follow.
Reverend Marcia Sietstra
When the Reverend Marcia Sietstra encountered the case method in Eck’s graduate seminar, she describes having “an aha moment.” “I finally found a way to work with my congregation on interfaith issues.”15 Sietstra, a minister with twenty-eight years of congregational and community experience, explains, “I wanted to find a way to teach people in rural South Dakota something about other religions so they would not be so afraid.” She developed her own curriculum, brought in speakers, and used books and videos, but she found these methods lacking. Many South Dakotans couldn’t visit a mosque in their hometowns, and few local speakers were available to speak in a nuanced way about their differing traditions. Cases, Sietstra feels, brought some of the richness, complexity, and empathy that she wanted to offer her congregation and community.
When Sietstra started teaching with cases, she found that her biggest challenge was “overcoming the personal need as a pastor to take an advocacy position.” At times, she wanted to steer the class toward a particular theological position or civic response or was too eager to cover a particular issue. “I don’t want to shut them down or disagree. I just need to wait and see what they bring up. . . . It was about letting go of advocacy and my own need to make sure the participants recognized every important aspect of the case.” Instead, she found the key to case teaching was simply “good questions” to help structure the discussion and unpack the case.
In congregational settings, Sietstra found mixed success. “Few congregants were prepared to read in advance. While many were eager to discuss the case, some were uncomfortable with the large-group discussion format or expressed the need to have more time to think about their responses before being asked to participate.” Sietstra observes that the case method proved most effective in courses with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), where highly motivated learners over the age of fifty were eager to prepare and discuss. She adds, “I’m thrilled when people come away from case discussions feeling empowered to be engaged and to become problem solvers in their communities.”
Matt Hoffman
Matt Hoffman’s first exposure to cases was in an emerging leaders seminar with Shoulder-to-Shoulder, an interfaith group working to counter anti-Muslim sentiment. After discussing a Pluralism Project case with a Muslim protagonist, Hoffman was eager to use cases in his new course on interfaith dialogue at Warren Wilson College. “Our student body is mostly white: 70 percent don’t identify with a religious tradition.” Hoffman recalls, “I was hoping it would allow a different set of voices to be present.”16 Like Sietstra, he was motivated by his context: “There is not a lot of religious diversity on our campus, which is located near Asheville, where there is not a lot of religious diversity.”
Hoffman’s students were bright and engaged, but their perspective on religion was profoundly different from the interfaith leaders from Shoulder-to-Shoulder. Some students tended to take a “legalistic” approach, rather than inhabiting the perspectives of others. Another complicating factor was a lack of religious literacy. When students discussed my case study “A Sign of Division,” in which a rabbi is asked to remove a sign supporting Israel from his synagogue lobby for an interfaith event, his students thought the decision was simple: take it down. “They didn’t have an understanding of the central, complex relationship of the American Jewish community with Israel to be able to understand why the decision was complicated.”
Although Hoffman was disappointed with his first experience with case teaching, he notes, “I will try a case again. . . . Students are hungry for practical use and ready to think about these issues in a practical sense.” He found the case studies engaging and enjoyable to teach, and they were highly rated on student surveys of the class. Hoffman will continue to experiment and will choose different case topics now that he better understands his student population.
Brendan Randall
When Brendan Randall enrolled in Diana Eck’s case-study course as a master’s student, he sought ways to apply the case method to his high school history classroom. “It wasn’t just about being a better teacher but to have students who are more capable of living in a pluralistic society.”17 He recalls that, in traditional history classes, students would often ask: “Why do I need to know this?” Cases provided an answer: “You are going to be living in this diverse community. While this scenario might not be exact, do you want the first time you encounter it to be real-life, or do you want practice?”
Randall went on to become a teaching fellow in Eck’s class and led case workshops in community settings. Over time he recognized the potential risks of using cases with self-selected interfaith audiences, including “groupthink” and not representing more exclusivist positions. He explains, “People can start to reaffirm each other and form an echo chamber. You need someone who puts on another persona as a pedagogical tool . . . imaginatively and with empathy.” Otherwise, he warned, those who don’t share the dominant view may be uncomfortable sharing their dissent. He adds, “This doesn’t occur in business school cases because they can be less politicized, with questions like: ‘How do we turn around a struggling company?’”
Yet Randall also recognizes the value of the case method in teaching interfaith studies: “It touches on not just cognitive, knowledge-based skills, but [also] affective skills, dispositions, and ways of thinking.” He notes that “the benefits are less qualifiable and tangible . . . and the outcomes are difficult to assess accurately, as the results occur longitudinally.” Randall adds, “It may not even be that class, that semester . . . but it happens when the student finds [oneself] in one of these dilemmas.” Later, Randall used the case method on college campuses across the US in his role as director of campus engagement at the Interfaith Youth Core. “With faculty, we introduce them to research about why the case method is an effective pedagogy for developing flexible expertise, not just concrete knowledge.” He concludes: “We are not giving students answers but tools.”18
As Sietstra, Hoffman, and Randall suggest, the case method in practice brings its own challenges: How to adapt the method for the teaching context? How to engage exclusivist, nonpluralist, or humanist perspectives? How to balance the need for depth, complexity, and ambiguity with the need for short, simple, accessible cases that need not be studied in advance? And, fundamentally, how do we ensure that students still learn content and build theoretical understandings and frameworks, and that the study of cases enhances, rather than replaces, other methods of teaching?
AN ONGOING EXPERIMENT
The experiment continues at the Pluralism Project and well beyond. Our cases are now regularly—and creatively—integrated into interfaith studies courses, as Kevin Minister describes in his chapter above; in Salma Kazmi and Yehezkel Landau’s Interfaith Peacebuilding course at Boston University; in Hans Gustafson’s Interreligious Dialogue course at the University of St. Thomas; and in Barbara Brown Taylor’s Religions of the World course at Piedmont College, to name just a few. Some may use the case study but not the discussion method. Others may use the method but not a formal case. Broadly speaking, news articles, brief scenarios, films, and literature can be taught using the case method. Ideally, these would have some of the essential elements of a teaching case, including context, complexity, ambiguity, and relevance.19
The case method has proven suitable for a broad audience, which might include theologians, civic leaders, and negotiators, as well as teachers and students in a religious studies classroom who no longer see the world religions approach as sufficient or relevant. The wider adaptation and integration of the case method signals—and supports—this shift to the new field of interfaith studies, which is interdisciplinary in nature and seeks to be innovative in its approach.
Colleagues from many fields have been partners in this work, including Willis Emmons at the Harvard Business School, Rabbi Justus Baird at Auburn Seminary, and Wendy Cadge at Brandeis University, as well as those quoted in this chapter. We continue to develop new cases and refine our approach, together with students, colleagues, and the community leaders who help us to craft their stories into case studies. After ten years of experimentation, Diana Eck reflects, “For the Pluralism Project, this is certainly a signature pedagogy.” More than “mere stories,” she observes, “it is a dialogical method of teaching in which context matters, listening is critical, and learning to speak in one’s own authentic voice is essential.”