Mitigating Rural-Urban Educational Gap through IBL Pedagogy using Web 2.0 technologies

Abstract

Quality is an important feature of education and main objective of national education policy of Pakistan. Unfortunately, this target is still tough challenge for Pakistan. Rural and Urban educational disparities are one of the main indication for this dearth. In Pakistan, majority of the population is living in rural zone. Therefore, this issue needs a notable heed from every individual. The primary purpose of this study was to mitigate the rural and urban educational gap through proper pedagogy with the help of technology. Therefore, this study used Inquiry based Learning (IBL) pedagogy and web 2.0 technology (piazza). It is a 2x2 factorial design approach which used “Pretest-post-test control and experimental group study design”. Students from rural and urban class were the participants of this study. The research sample comprised of 52 students, i.e., 30 urban and 22 rural students of 9th class. These students were divided equally into control and experimental group. The intervention spanned was 4 weeks. Tablets were given to all students during intervention. Students performances was measured using pretest and posttest. Motivational Leaning Environment (MoLE) questionnaire were used to measured motivation level. Demographic survey was also conducted to check its effect on student’s achievement. Data was coded into SPSS 2.0 software and statistical tests were applied with a significance value of 0.05. Independent t test and two-way factorial AONOVA was used to analyse the data. The results demonstrate that inclusion of IBL pedagogy and web 2.0 technology can affect students’ performance in rural and urban classes in the same way. Moreover, results also show that use of IBL and web 2.0 technology have significant effect on motivational learning environment (MoLE) of students. Therefore, it is concluded that IBL pedagogy could be integrated in classes to decrease educational difference in rural and urban area.