The case method of instruction has been a trademark of graduate professional education at Harvard University since it first developed at the Harvard Law School in the 19th century. It is predicated on the belief that discussion focused on real-world situations and guided by skilled instructors will better prepare students for professional life than would lecture and theory alone.

In legal education, this approach led to a focus on specific legal decisions, the reasoning that underlay them and the ways decisions might change were the facts of a situation at issue to change. In other types of professional education the case method has taken other forms.

At both the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School, the "teaching case", whether used in management or policy analysis, is a narrative that describes a specific situation--whether a marketing decision in business, a policy decision in government, or an operational decision in a nonprofit organization--and describes conflicts and decisions students must discuss. Cases, in other words, put students in the shoes of real-life decision-makers in order to prepare for them for their own lives of decision-making. They do so through what Harvard Business School professor David Garvin has called the "facilitated discussion", wherein the instructor combines skilled questioning with summaries of the differing views and approaches expressed in the conversation--toward the goal of helping participants both to see the full complexity in a situation and to develop methods for making the best choices possible.

It is important to note that the case method does not make a claim to be a superior substitute for other instructional approaches. Rather, it is viewed at Harvard as a complement to other approaches. At the Kennedy School, our cases strive to capture the problems faced by governments and not-for-profit organizations throughout the world. They are based on interviews with the decision-makers themselves and written by skilled and experienced researcher/writers. Each case takes its place in a syllabus based on specific teaching goals for a specific class--often in conjunction with readings and lecture. Each has been commissioned by a specific faculty member, who, whenever possible, contributes a "teaching note" to help others learn how the case might best be used.

The history of the case method at Harvard has been well-told by Professor Garvin in his September-October, 2003 Harvard Magazine article, Making the Case, where he writes:

"All professional schools face the same challenge: how to prepare students for the world of practice...A suprisingly wide range of professional schools, including Harvard's law, business and medical schools have concluded that the best way to teach these skills is by the case method."

(Click here to link to David A. Garvin's article, Making the Case.)