Chapter 25: A Case of Violet’s GLUT1: What is Wrong with Violet?

The unit is designed to be taught to high school students using an approach known as case-based learning (CBL), which is a “long established pedagogical” approach and is based on real-life patient cases (Thistlethwaite et al., 2012, p. 421). Case-based learning is an effective learning and teaching method to engage learners (Jeong et al., in press). As students take on the role of a health professional to problem-solve and critically think through the patient’s case, they not only learn Disciplinary Core Ideas on protein structure and function but also engage in multiple Science and Engineering Practices and Cross Cutting Concepts (NRC, 2012). A group of science educators, discipline-based education researchers, and teacher-scholars collaborated in a year-long professional development and developed this case and focused on ways to elicit and build on students’ ideas. We know from our previous work that collectively reflecting on pedagogical approaches aimed at eliciting and revealing student thinking leads to improved teaching (Jeong et al., in press). With the goal of foregrounding the importance of eliciting and building on student thinking, the instructional activities were designed to view students’ ideas and resources from an asset-perspective and as strengths that they bring to the science classroom. This case-based unit is intended to be useful for science teachers to effectively teach challenging topics in science such as protein structure and function.