Microteaching: An Introduction

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Learning Outcomes

At the end of this lecture you should be able to:

• Define major terms related to microteaching: Teaching, teaching as an art or as a science, and

• Discuss the major components of teacher education: general education, subject-matter preparation, general professional education, and specialized professional education

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What is Teaching?

General believe is that anybody can teach.

Teaching is beyond imparting knowledge to the students it is not just getting across information to the students,

Personalized sharing of one’s knowledge or experience,

establishment of harmonious relationship among the teacher, the students, and the instructional contents to facilitate learning.

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Teaching (Cont.)

• It focuses on students’ learning which is the change in behaviour, brought by activities, training, or experience.

• Is teaching is an art or a science. • Eisner’s (1985) perception of teaching

as an art is an aesthetic experience naturally dependent on the perception and control of qualities.

• The debate based on the following premises.

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Teaching As an Art

Conceptions of Teaching

Premises

As an Art

Teaching skills and competencies’ are in-born, natural talentTeaching can be performed with such skill and grace that, for the student as for the teacher, the experience can be justifiably characterized as aesthetic.Teaching is an art in the sense that teachers, like painters, composers, actresses, and dancers, make judgments based on qualities that unfold during the course of action.Teaching is an art in the sense that the teacher's activity is not dominated by prescriptions or routines but is influenced by qualities and contingencies that are unpredicted.Teaching is an art in the sense that the ends it achieves are often created in process

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Teaching As Science

As a Science

Learned area that requires disciplined knowledge.

Legitimate fields of scientific inquiry and knowledge, offering the underlying basis for ensuing educational theory and practice.Objective methods of the natural sciences have generally been accepted as a standard paradigm

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Teacher Education

Teacher education is the professional education provided for pre-service and in-service teachers. general education, general professional education subject-matter preparation, and specialized professional education

in a given subject matter.

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General Education

Help prospective teachers in taking a suitable place in contemporary society.

Development of knowledge, skills, attitudes and interests that are fundamentally related to the needs and responsibilities shared with contemporaries destined for other vocations.‖

Contents include orientation courses - in humanities, social studies and sciences.

Sometimes they provide introductory courses in separate subjects, and emphasis upon developing communication skills.

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Professional Education

Professional skills and techniques to the teachers under training. Divided into: Theory and practical teaching.Theory: The theoretical aspect of pedagogy is introduced in the years of the 4 – 5 year course. The subjects included in this portion of the curriculum, psychology, test and measurement, sociology, etc. Taught in education departments

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Professional Education

Professional skills and techniques to the teachers under training. Divided into: Theory and practice teaching.Theory: The theoretical aspect of pedagogy is introduced in the years of the 4 – 5 year course. The subjects included in this portion of the curriculum, psychology, test and measurement, sociology, etc. Taught in education departments

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Professional Education

Practical Teaching: Practice teaching is generally introduced in the later part of the professional courses, undertaken by the student teachers, either in the Laboratory School of the University Campus or in the regular Public Schools

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Subject Specialization

Proficiency in the subject or subjects of their choice.

Can be specialization in integrated fields or subjects like social sciences, languages, general science. etc., in consonance with the curriculum of the schools.

Can also be subject specific, mathematics, English language, Yoruba, etc.

Done in college department or relevant cooperation Departments.

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Specialized Professional Education

Special professional courses include: Teaching methods in elementary and

secondary, education for people with disability, assistive technology, adapted physical education, field experiences, and student

teaching, etc. Sometimes, at graduate level.

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Microteaching Clarified

The term microteaching is a compound concept derived from two terms micro and teaching. A technique for providing student teachers with opportunities to master the teaching skills.

Microteaching is defined as a system of controlled practice that makes it possible to concentrate on specified teaching behavior and to practice teaching under controlled conditions.” (Allen & Eve, 1968).

Cooper and Allen (1970) "Micro-teaching is a teaching situation which is scaled down in terms of time and number of students. . . . The lesson is scaled down to reduce some of the complexities of the teaching act, thus allowing the teacher to focus on selected aspects of teaching".

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Microteaching (Cont)

“Microteaching is a scaled down teaching encounter in which a teacher teaches a small unit to a group of five pupils for a small period of 5 to 20 minutes”- L.C. Singh (1977). It is a scaled down practical teaching experience. It is scaled down in terms of:

(i)contents, (ii) time, (iii) teaching skill, (iv) audience

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Microteaching (Cont)

Microteaching has the following characteristics (Allen & Ryan 1969: 1-3) (a) Real teaching situation.(b) Reduces the complexity of the real classroom

teaching situation in terms of the number of students, the amount of time and the amount of learning contents.

(c) Emphasizes training for mastery of teaching activities such as skills, techniques, methods, and curriculum selection.

(d) It offers better control over practicing teaching activities.

(e) Feedback allows student to receive meaningful feedback immediately after his performance

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Microteaching Clarified (Cont)

Microteaching was developed by Dwith Allen and his colleagues in the Stanford Teacher Education Programme in the 1960s. They developed a training programmed aimed to improve verbal and nonverbal aspects of teacher's speech and general performance.

Microteaching is a technique for professional reflection where teachers scrutinize their own teaching so as to discover their strengths and weaknesses. Through the reflection on their own teaching styles teachers focus on certain areas of their teaching for improvement rather than a technique for shaping behavior.

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Advantages of Microteaching It gives opportunities for skilled supervision

and eventual skill development. It provides opportunities for component skills

approach, where the activities of teaching as a whole are broken down for the learning purpose into its individual components (skills).

Provides an opportunity to learn multiple skills that are important for teaching in a short time.

Helps develop student teachers skills to prepare lesson plans and choose teaching goals and objectives.

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Advantages of Microteaching Teachers’ self-confidence grows in a comfortable

environment as they learn to speak in front of a group and to ask questions and use evaluation techniques.

Receiving immediate feedback is a means to determine productivity and using teaching strategies.

Allows for asking questions at various difficulty levels.

Makes it possible to create an environment that involves thinking differently and interaction.

It offers helpful situation for an experienced or inexperienced teacher to acquire new teaching skills and to refine old ones.

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Limitations of Microteaching Involves increased time and effort It is costly It is a passive process of learning by imitation. The various teaching skills cannot be

discriminated and may not be coordinated later. Cannot be used to individualize the learning of

the student teachers. At times, there may be no constructive feedback. There is always the possibility of bad role

models. Required equipment and resources for

microteaching may not be available or used.

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Comparison between Traditional Teaching and MicroteachingS/N Traditional Teaching Microteaching

1 Objectives are general and not specified in behavioural terms.

Objectives are specified in behavioural terms.

2 Class consists of 40-60 students.

Class consists of small group of 5-10 students.

3 The teacher practices several skills at a time.

The teacher takes up one skill at a time.

4 The duration is 40-50 minutes.

Duration time for teaching is 5-10 minutes.

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Comparison between Traditional Teaching and Microteaching (Cont.)

5 Immediate feed-back is not available

There is immediate feed-back.

6 There is no control over situation.

Teaching is carried on under controlled situation.

7 Teaching become complex.

Teaching is relatively simple.

8 The role of the supervisor is vague.

The role of supervisor is specific and well defined to improve teaching.

9 Patterns of classroom interactions cannot be studied objectively.

Patterns of class room interaction can be studied objectively.

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Elements of Microteaching

There are five elements: Teaching-learning laboratory , safe practice ground, microelement and teaching skills, feedback , and modeling Teaching-Learning Laboratory: Simulated

situation for improvement Safe Practice Ground: Experiment, try out,

explore, and fail without being penalized Microelement and teaching skills: Mastery of

components of teaching skills through reduction of the complexity of teaching

Feedback: Communication of information about performance through videotape, audiotape, and written critiques of peers and supervisor

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Elements of Microteaching (Cont)Modeling is observational learning, imitation or

modeling: attention, retention, motor reproduction, and reinforcement (Bandura, 1986). Attention. Learners must attend to what the model is saying (instructor's words) or doing (hand movements). A model characteristics can influence attention. Warm, powerful, atypical people, command more attention than cold, weak, typical people.Retention :Encode the information and keep it in memory so that you can retrieve it. A simple verbal description, or a vivid image of what the model did assists retention. Motor reproduction: Imitating the model's actions. Reinforcement: Seeing a model attain a reward for an activity increases the chances that an observer will repeat the behavior—a process called vicarious reinforcement.

Phases of Microteaching

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Cycle of Microteaching

Plan

Teach

Feedback

Re-plan

Re-teach

Re-feedback

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Mudasiru Olalere Yusuf (PhD)

Department of Educational Technology,University of Ilorin, Nigeria

E-mail: moyusuf@unilorin.edu.ng; lereyusuf@yahoo.com;

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mudasiruoyTwittter: @moyusuf

Blog: http://wordpress.com/#!/my-blogs/

(2013)

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Thank you