The Use of Case Study in the British Civil Service
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1957.tb01187.x |
| Published date | 01 June 1957 |
| Date | 01 June 1957 |
| Author | Miss Avice Turnbull |
The
the
Use
of
Case Study
in
British Civil Service
By MISS
AVICE
TURNBULL
Miss
Turnbull, a Tutor in the Training and Education Division
of
the
Treasury, has been closely concerned evlth the development
of
the use
of
‘‘
cases
”
as a method
of
training.
WRITE
as a tutor in the Training and Education Division of H.M. Treasury.
I
The job of
this
Division is described by
Mr.
D.
F.
Hubback, until very
recently its Director, in the
first
article. My part in
it
is to help civil
servants
to
become effective instructors. In the last two or three years we
have introduced case study as one of the major training techniques we teach
our apprentice instructors. In this article
I
shall try to explain why we look
on
it as a valuable technique, for what purposes we use it in the British Civil
Service, and what variations in its use have sprung
up
in Departmental
training.
The
Value
of
the Case Study Method
One of the
skills
of an instructor
in
the Civil Service must be to capture the
concentration of his students. This task is not always easy
;
in many fields
of work, instructors are dealing with groups of mature people who do not have
a strongly felt and compelling motive to learn. For instance, the course
may deal with supervision or management, or with the improvement
of
written
work, or the increase of individual efficiency. The listeners may consider
themselves already to be satisfactory supervisors, good managers, effective
writers or efficient workers. If the instructor is to make any impression
on
them, he must arouse their interest, stimulate their thought and keep them
thinking actibely and purposefully about the subject. Some students may
be
open-minded, receptive and co-operative-the apple of the hard-working
instructor’s eye
;
but others may be more sophisticated, and more ready to
question any apparent over-simplification of ideas, any
‘‘
steering
”
by an
instructor to predetermined conclusions, any suggestion of being bulldozed
inro compliance, or taught to suck eggs.
In
these general fields of study, there
is a danger of an instructor’s uttering pious platitudes which
will
fall
on
deaf ears and leave minds closed.
As
Professor Charles Gragg says in his
article
“
Because Wisdom Can’t Be Told,” published in
The Case Method
of
Teaching Human Relations and Administration*,
“it
can be said flatly
that the mere act
of
listening to wise statements and sound advice does little
for anyone. In the process of learning, the learner’s dynamic co-operation
is required. Such co-operatior? from students does not arise automatically,
however.
It
has
to
be provided for and continually encouraged.’’
Apart from the danger
of
boring the listener, there is also the danger
of dealing with subjects of this kind in terms
so
broad that they fail to make
*Edited by
Kenneth
R.
Andrews. (Harvard University Press,
1955,
distributed
in
England by
Oxford
University
Press.)
125
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
any contact with the everyday realities of people’s jobs. Professor
Roethlisberger in his article
“
Training Supervisors in Human Relations,”
published in the same book, gives some realistic examples of the mere playing
with words which can result from so-called
“
discussion
”
of abstract principles
of conduct. The same remoteness can characterise talks about
“
clear
expression
”
in writing, or
‘‘
the exercise of judgement and discretion
”
in
case work in offices. The Civil Service instructor must always
try
to bridge
the gap between the apparent artificiality of the training centre room and the
reality of the job itself. Civil Servants, in my experience, are mainly hard-
headed practical people, who eschew the academic or theoretical as a waste
of time, and the barriers which they put
up
against what they consider purely
theoretical teaching may be justified, for the real need is not
so
much to implant
principles or standards of administration in their minds, which might lead
to
a woolly discussion of generalities, as to help them to be more alert to the
implications
of
their work, more self-critical of their own standards, and
more
alive to the possibilities of improvement.
Where an instructor is imparting facts, or explaining law
or
procedures,
or giving people practice in handling specimens of work, the older teaching
techniques can be used
:
straightforward exposition, questioning, visual aids,
films,
tests, exercises, practical work. These are well tried, and an instructor
who is competent can usually rely
on
teaching effectively by them.
In
general, in the Civil Service,
“
vocational
”
training courses, which teach
people their jobs, or
“
background
”
courses telling them about the work
and organisation
of
their Ministry, run smoothly and are well received. The
need to learn is evident to the student. Case study is seldom used in these
courses.
It
comes into its own in the less clearly defined subjects.
In common with
industry, the British
Civil
Service is aware
of
the need to improve the standards
of its first-line supervisors and its managers. The first main drive towards
this
was the adoption of the Training Within Industry programmes, Job
Relations, Job Instruction, and to a much lesser extent, Job Methods. Civil
Service instructors were trained at T.W.I. Institutes for Job Relations and
Job Instruction, held at the Treasury until 1952. The T.W.I. Manuals were
followed
;
their contents were slightly altered to include clerical as well as
industrial examples, but
the
teaching technique was
as
laid down in these
Manuals, that is the
“
controlled
”
discussion of general principles, illustrated
by examples, chosen to highlight one aspect of their subject.
In 1952 the Treasury discontinued these T.W.I. Institutes. For a
short time, some Departments worked out their own programmes for super-
vision training, some using the T.W.I. material or part
of
it, and others devising
their
own
material. Other Departments, because of their particular needs,
still continue to use this as part
of
their training for first-line supervisors.
The Training
and
Education Division then decided to replace the T.W.I.
Institutes by
a
training course for instructors of supervision subjects, designed
for Civil Service needs, Instead of very simple
“
principles,” a broader-based
discussion
of
human relations problems and of staff management generally
was introduced. The use
of
free discussion, syndicate discussion, case study
and of r6le-playing was demonstrated in the course. Shortly after the
introduction of this new course, the Ministry of Pensions and National
126
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