Over the two years of our USAID-funded project, we have filmed a number of lessons in Kenyan secondary school classrooms. Out of the 19 lessons we have filmed, 16 of them are of mathematics and science lessons. We have made all of these videos into multimedia case studies comprised of lesson videos with embedded transcript, still photos, and facilitator questions.
Today Joanna Masingila (mathematics education professor at Syracuse University) and Peter Rugano (doctoral student in science education at Syracuse University and former physics and chemistry teacher in Kenya) led a professional development workshop with mathematics and science (biology, chemistry, physics) teacher educators to learn about case studies, to hear a rationale for using them, to become familiar with the case studies in their subject areas, and to begin planning for how to use these case studies in teaching prospective teachers. We will have follow-up meetings for more planning and to support implementation.
One of the accusations leveled against our teacher education system is its static nature that has rendered it unresponsive to emerging issues facing our country such as large classes and IT. In order to design meaningful teacher preparation courses, those responding to contextual needs of teachers such as effective pedagogy for large classes and ICT integration, teacher educators need to make informed decisions drawn from real classroom instructions. Multimedia case studies offers teacher educators authentic experiences, within the comfort of the education department, that may initiate intellectual discussions towards designing of meaningful teacher education courses.
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