PROFESSIONALIZING TEACHER EDUCATION WITH CASE BASED REASONING

Case Based Reasoning is explained by Kolodner (1992) as a reasoner remembers previous situations and solutions similar to the current one and uses them to help solve the new problem. If studentteachers are taught to adopt Case Based Reasoning as an approach in solving classroom management problems and then when they are faced with new problems as beginner teachers this approach will help them to study previous situations and understand how they were solved. Therefore, the idea is to develop in student-teachers with necessary abilities to solve classroom management problems through a Case Based Reasoning approach. This pedagogical intervention in teacher education programme may help in developing quality educators. To successfully adopt this approach, a case library should be constructed. A case library consists of genuine stories about how experienced in-service school teachers have solved classroom management problems. These stories are to be supported with necessary theoretical inputs, prior experiences, expert opinions and worked examples extrapolating how the experienced teacher found the solution to the problem. In a case library the stories are categorised and indexed. These stories in the case library could be accessed and could retrieve similar cases which are then for the perusal of the learner to enrich their knowledge. Taking these prior experiences as a base, the novice teachers can make informed decisions by adopting or adapting or even find another solution to the problem thus promoting Case Based Reasoning.