Student performance on this case analysis was exceptionally strong. Table 2 contains the percentages of adequate answers to the five case analysis questions for two sections of the PBL class. The large majority of students used relevant concepts and principles to describe and explain different aspects of the seventh graders' learning.

In response to the first question (Compare Andrew's and Sharon's learning strategies), nearly all of my students adequately described the learning strategies "Andrew" and "Sharon" used (89% and 100% in fall and spring, respectively).

In response to the second problem (How do Sharon and Andrew compare in terms of their mental management?), about 90% of the students in both classes adequately analyzed Andrew's and Sharon's metacognitive abilities, and concluded that although Sharon was not very sophisticated, she was more aware and better able to manage her thinking than was Andrew.

These are insightful answers. What stands out is that the students think with relevant concepts to evaluate the seventh graders' learning. For instance, Student 1 speculates about Sharon's future performance, "Yet I still believe that if she were given a new situation to the material, such as the coyote, she would not be able to relate it to what she has learned. She has not reached this step in learning yet." This student has a sense of what to expect from Sharon and Andrew based on her understanding of how people create meaning from text.

In the fourth task, (Why do Sharon and Andrew do poorly on the transfer task?), the transfer question was more difficult, but more than 60% of the students answered it adequately (63% and 69%, in fall and spring, respectively). Good answers focused on the idea that transfer depends upon understanding the concepts and that transferring knowledge entails more complexity than does free recall.

The final case analysis question asked students to explain what they would do if they were the teachers of these seventh graders. My previous experiences with this type of question have been disappointing. Given an opportunity to talk about how they would teach, students resort to stock phrases and cliches. This should be less likely in a PBL format since ideas are grounded in the facts of a specific problem situation. That is, students have to think about teaching as a response to a problem, rather than simply describing a preferred way to teach.

A majority of students developed reasonable ideas about how to teach Andrew and Sharon more effective ways to understand text (67% and 96% in the fall and spring, respectively). None of the students had taken a course in reading so they did not have formal knowledge of reading processes upon which to base their answers. On a positive note, most of these students did not resort to generic or popularized ideas about learning. Instead, they tried to propose strategies or activities consistent with their notion of how people construct meaning.

Many students indicated they would use reciprocal teaching as a way to deal with these seventh graders. This is not surprising since the class had worked on a problem related to reciprocal teaching the previous week. Even though reciprocal teaching was potentially the "easy answer" to the question, most students still explained how or why reciprocal teaching would be beneficial. For example, students said that Andrew needed more direct help than Sharon, but that she too could benefit from RT in particular ways. However, the fall 1998 class did have more superficial answers about reciprocal teaching, which accounts for the difference in percentage of adequate answers for the two classes (67% vs. 96%). Again, the large majority of students identified strategies or activities based on the idea that the learner constructs meaning from text, and that the interaction between old and new information and the reader's self management skills are important in this process.