At the university level, case-based education is a significant feature of professional training programs conducted for law, medicine, and business studies. Cases take various forms including real and imagined scenarios, critical incident analysis, case studies, vignettes, and anecdotal accounts of professional practice. Although case-based education has played a relatively minor role in teacher education, there is evidence of new interest in this approach. This interest is associated with growing concerns about the limitations of traditional teacher education programs and an increasing recognition and acknowledgement of the ambiguity and complexity of teaching and learning. In an attempt to portray the multi-faceted nature of teaching, the National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning has chosen to use cases to illustrate the Framework for Competency Standards for the Teaching Profession. This paper reports on issues that emerged when developing cases for the project. Further, the paper links this study with current interest in case-based teaching for teacher education and examines the potential, possibilities, and practicalities of using case-based approaches for professional development. A sample vignette is appended. (Author/LL)