An Action Research: How the Use of Case Study Helped Primary Students to

Become Active Learners in Social Studies Class

To motivate primary students to take part in Social Studies class discussions is a common
problem that is faced by the maximum of the teachers. We as Social Studies teachers
always want our students to take active part in classroom discussions but unfortunately,
students feel bored and uncomfortable while sharing their thoughts in the class. Hence, the
environment of the classroom does not remain conducive. As a Social Studies teacher, I
also encountered the same problem and instead of being demotivated, I decided that I will
take it as a challenge and will ensure that my students participate actively in classroom
discussions during Social Studies lessons.
Primarily, I thought to identify reasons that why primary students are behaving in this
manner. For that reason, I designed a questionnaire to identify their learning styles and
asked students to fill it. After the data was collected, I found out that 84% of the students
in class prefer to do their work individually. 11% students of the class opted to do their
work in groups and 5% selected to do pair work. The results show that students are
habitual of working in isolation and this has now turned into a preference. While
discussing these results with the students, I also came to know that students think and
assume that Social Studies lessons are bored, and it does not show any connectivity with
their present so why to study this subject.
This comment made me realized that I must find out some interesting ways that can help
these primary students to be motivated towards studying this subject. I also thought that I
must find out different strategies that can capture students’ interest and persuade them to
enhance their class participation. To develop students’ interest in class discussion it is
significant for a teacher to make sure that each child participates and for this she has to
make them ready by not only sharing the topic but to make them understand exactly what
they will be discussing and why (Killen 2003:102). Discussion will help students to relate
their knowledge with their skills in daily life situations. They must talk about what they
are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, engage themselves in
learning by doing and apply it to their daily lives (Dr. Kumar and Zayapragrassarazan,
2012:3).

For this purpose, I started to research different strategies and then finally, I decided that I
should use case study as a tool to enhance students’ involvement during Social Studies
lessons. Case study helps explain both the process and outcome of a phenomenon through
complete observation, reconstruction, and analysis of the cases under investigation (Tellis,
1997).

Now, this was a challenge for me as this strategy need a lot of hard work to apply effective
planning during the class so that I can ensure that whatever the topics are being taught, it
relates to the real-life situations. It is important to design interesting tasks with effective
lesson planning specially for the primary students because an effective lesson gets
students thinking and allows them to interact and ask questions, tap into their background
knowledge, and build new skills (Ullman 2011: vol. 53 no.10). To further enhance their
 skills, it is important to create questions for discussions because questioning by the teacher
plays an important part in guiding the discussion (Killen: 2003, 248).
To streamline the process, I used rubrics to record my own and students’ observations for
participating during discussions. I focused on the following three areas while discussing
using the case studies:
- students’ contribution during discussion
- level of vocabulary used by them
- student as an active listener who can suggests or argues during class discussion on
the topic provided

Overall, 10 different lessons were planned in which each lesson carried 4-5 varied case
studies. Each of the lessons was assessed by filling rubrics and field notes. After utilizing
these case studies, I also ensure that I assess the impact of these case studies on students’
learning. It is important to evaluate the strategies used for the whole process because it
helps to gather feedback from learners for progression and help them assess what
additional support, if any, they may require (Teal Center Fact sheet # 8:2010). These
rubrics and field notes helped me in analyzing students’ performances.

By using this strategy, I witnessed remarkable change in my students’ thinking behaviour.

Now students were in habit of asking questions not only at school but at home as well and
parents endorsed the same through their observation. These discussions did not only help
students in developing their thinking and verbal abilities in fact, but it was also shown in
their assessments and written tasks as well. Students were able to secure good marks in
assessments as they were able to relate their concepts with real life. However, more hard
work is involved to achieve excellence.

As I was able to achieve success in attaining students’ participation in the classroom

discussions, I also faced challenges while implementing this strategy that can be seen
easily below.

Making curriculum- A lot of time was required

based case studies to prepare case studies.
according to their To relate the case studies
level to their daily lives’
situations with focused
discussion. questions.
Challenges

Due to unforeseen
holidays, it was difficult to
implement it.
It takes more time to carry
out the case study and
Time constrains APPM doesn’t give us
enough time. More periods
are needed.
Thus, students have started taking initiatives in class discussions and have become
responsible enough to give respect to each other’s views. They have started thinking on
logical grounds and can suggest possible solutions to resolve an issue. However, now it is
time to take them step ahead where they themselves can lead discussions and argue with
their colleagues critically through strong rationale and justification.

Bibliography:
Barraso, K. and Pon, S. (2010) Effective lesson planning.Teal Centre Fact Sheet no. 8.
Davis, C. and Wilcock, E. (undated) Teaching Materials using Case Studies. UK: Centre
for Materials Education.
Killen, R. (2003). Effective Teaching Strategies, Lessons from Research and
Practice.Thomson: Social Sciences Press; 3rd edition.
Pope, C. (2000) Analysing qualitative data.BMJ Qualitative research in health care, v.
320(7227):114-116.
Ullman, E. (2011) How to plan effective lessons.Private Eyes, 53/10.
Zayapragassarazan, Z and Kumar, S. (2012) Active learning methods. NTTC Bulletin,
19(1):3-5.
Zaidah Zainal (2007) Case study as a research method Jurnal Kemanusiaan bil.9.

Written By: Anita Saleem

anitasaleemsms@yahoo.com
0334-3744559