Abstract:

Teacher educators are urged (Zeichner, 2010; Hulya, 2010; MoES, 2011) to adopt interactive-learning strategies for large classes and other alternatives to the lecture method. to model the teacher educations’ pedagogy, philosophy and strategies so as to develop teacher trainees’ pedagogical competence, professional and content knowledge, and also to provide opportunities for teacher trainees to learn how to use interactive methods for large classes in secondary schools. The use of interactive learning strategies still remains an uphill task for teacher educators given the large-classroom enrolment contexts that still predominates undergraduate course at the School of Education, Makerere University but also in majority of developing country Universities. Using the Basil Bernestein theory of pedagogic practice, this multi-method qualitative case-study explored what teacher educators know about large-class interactive strategies and what large-class interactive strategies they actually use to facilitate teacher trainees’ development of pedagogic competence, and professional knowledge. This is an on-going research, but provisional results show that teacher educators do not practice such interactive pedagogy and not likely to pass it on to the teacher trainee as evidenced in this academic year school practice currently going on until August 2013. Recommendation, all teacher educators should have an orientation course to expose them to the interactive strategies suitable for training teacher trainees.

Keywords:

Interactive learning strategies, large classes, Initial teacher education.