Verbal interactions in CASE lessons in Malawi

Abstract

The paper discusses a study of verbal interactions in “Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE)” lessons. CASE is an intervention which aims at accelerating the cognitive development of secondary pupils in the context of science lessons. A lesson observation schedule was developed in such a way that it would be used to estimate the frequency of the type of verbal interactions advocated by the CASE method. The categories in the schedule thus reflect the main phases in a CASE lesson, namely; concrete preparation, cognitive conflict and construction, meta-cognition and bridging. The schedule was used to compare CASE lessons with regular science lessons in Malawi. In general CASE lessons were observed to have higher frequencies of the type of verbal interactions sampled by the lesson observation schedule than regular science lessons. However there were lower frequencies of verbal interactions pertaining to meta-cognition and bridging in CASE lessons than would be expected from the method. Reasons for this observation are briefly explored.