ENHANCING TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING THROUGH MULTIMEDIA CASE-BASED INSTRUCTION **

In re-designing teacher preparation programs to bridge the gap between what is experienced as a student and the reality of classroom teaching, teacher educators are searching for new instructional methods and materials that provide students more authentic learning experiences to enable them to ‘think like a teacher ’ about problems of practice. Instruction using multimedia cases is one method to engage students in a realistic environment by embedding problem-solving activities into authentic contexts. Case developers in education have described case methods, designs for cases, and best practices. To date, there have been no empirical studies that evaluated the effectiveness of multimedia case-based instruction (M-CBI) under different instructional models to facilitate conceptual development of pre-service teachers. In this two-year multi-site study, M-CBI was implemented in 20 different higher education courses with varying instructional andragogies. Multi-method naturalistic research was conducted with 251 pre-service and practicing teacher education students from 5 different universities. Learning outcomes were measured using quantitative and qualitative methods