Flipping the Class for Students to Learn to Teach Economics

Abstract

The current debate at colleges of teacher education about introducing and redesigning learning programmes by including flipped classroom pedagogy emerged as a technology-integrated teaching strategy as a means to support students in an open distance learning approach. The flipped classroom pedagogy (FCP) is a student centeredness teaching strategy that the lecturer and student teachers interact through in-class or out-of-class activities. This chapter explores to what extent does a Flipped Classroom Pedagogy enhances student teachers' learning as compares to Direct Instruction method when learning to teach Economics at an open distance learning university. The study adopted quasi-experimental design, encompasses a pre-test, post-test and Flipped Classroom Pedagogy Questionnaire. A purposive sampling of Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) and Batchelor of Education (BEd: Senior and Further Education and Training phase) student teachers (n=371) was selected. Results showed that the used of Flipped Classroom Pedagogy in the quasi-experimental design and on the online survey influenced student teachers' performance as compared to the Direct Instruction method in the course. Further research is needed with larger samples including other teacher teaching methodology courses that will yield different results.