A Moodle Based Case Library to Foster Ability to Solve Classroom Management Problems for Beginner Teachers

Abstract

Knowingly or unknowingly, teachers use problem solving skills in the classroom for a range of ill-structured problems as that of classroom management. The researcher was interested to find out whether Case Based Reasoning to foster Ability to solve Classroom Management Problems hosted on a Moodle based virtual learning environment is beneficial to the in-service teacher training of beginner teachers or not? In the present study the Case Library consists of prior experiences as Cases in the form of stories enriched with scaffolds which include cartoons, hint questions, excerpts of underlying theory and expert solutions that help the learner to understand the problem and design their own alternate solutions to the problem. The present study is an experimental study in which pre-test post-test non-equivalent group design is used. The population for the present study is high school teachers teaching in Government and Government-aided schools of Kerala, India. To conduct the experiment, 46 teachers with an experience of 10 years or below were selected conveniently. Out of which 20 teachers were in the control group and 26 were in the experimental group. The teachers in the experimental group were required to take part in an online course on Case Based Reasoning using a Case Based Library on a Moodle platform. The findings of the study revealed that, there was a significant mean difference in Ability to solve Classroom Management Problems between experimental and control groups. The present study suggests the use of Case Based Reasoning instructional module for solving Classroom Management Problems.