Gazi Md. Abdur Rashid :
Micro-teaching 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. Micro-teaching is a scaled-down, simulated teaching encounter designed for the training of both pre-service and in-service teachers. Its purpose is to provide teachers with the opportunity for the safe practice of an enlarged cluster of teaching skills while learning how to develop simple, single-concept lessons in any teaching subject. Micro-teaching helps teachers improve both content and methods of teaching and develop specific teaching skills such as questioning, the use of examples and simple artifacts to make lessons more interesting, effective reinforcement techniques, and introducing and closing lessons effectively. Immediate, focused feedback and encouragement, combined with the opportunity to practice the suggested improvements in the same training session, are the foundations of the micro-teaching protocol. In the last few years, micro-teaching as a professional development tool is increasingly spreading in the field of teacher education.
Importance of Micro-teaching in teacher education program
Micro-teaching is an excellent way to build up skills and confidence, to experience a range of lecturing/tutoring styles and to learn and practice giving constructive feedback/remedial assistance. Micro-teaching gives instructors an opportunity to safely put themselves “under the microscope” of a small group audience, but also to observe and comment on other people’s performances. As a tool for teacher preparation, micro-teaching trains teaching behaviours and skills in small group settings aided by video-recordings. In a protected environment of friends and colleagues, teachers can try out a short piece of what they usually do with their students, and receive a well-intended collegial feedback. A micro-teaching session is a chance to adopt new teaching and learning strategies and, through assuming the student role, to get an insight into students’ needs and expectations. It is a good time to learn from others and enrich one’s own repertoire of teaching methods. Micro-teaching is an organized method of practice teaching which involves a small group of preceptors/instructors who observe each other teach, provide feedback and discuss with one another the strengths of their presentations and potential areas for improvement. Micro-teaching is so called since it is analogous to putting the teacher under a microscope so to say while he is teaching so that all faults in teaching methodology are brought into perspective for the observers to give a constructive feedback. It eliminates some of the complexities of learning to teach in the classroom situation such as the pressure of length of the lecture, the scope and content of the matter to be conveyed, the need to teach for a relatively long duration of time (usually an hour) and the need to face large numbers of students, some of whom are hostile temperamentally. Micro-teaching also provides skilled supervision with an opportunity to get a constructive feedback. To go back to the analogy of the swimmer, while classroom teaching is like learning to swim at the deeper end of the pool, micro-teaching is an opportunity to practice at the shallower and less risky side.
Advantages of Micro-teaching
o It focuses on sharpening and developing specific teaching skills and eliminating errors.
o It enables understanding of behaviors important in classroom teaching.
o It increases the confidence of the learner teacher.
o It is a vehicle of continuous training applicable at all stages not only to teachers at the beginning of their career but also for more senior teachers.
o It enables projection of model instructional skills.
o It provides expert supervision and a constructive feedback and above all if provides for repeated practice without adverse consequences to the teacher or his students. It promotes analysis of behaviour of the teacher It is an effective way of instilling confidence in the teacher in planning and implementation of the lesson plan.
o It helps create a conducive ambience in the classroom .It can be used in the school/college. The student-teacher needs not to go to any school for the training of teaching skills.
o It focuses on gaining teaching skills through participation and observation. The number of students as well as duration of teaching is less.
o It empowers teachers with diverse teaching methods. The content is divided into smaller units which makes the teaching easier.
Micro-teaching makes the teacher education program, more purposeful, goal oriented and helps to decide common objectives for the program. It provides individualized training with more realistic evidence to students. This enables them to develop competency in using specific teaching skills in view of their unique needs. It provides a democratic type of behavior among faculty members and student-teachers. It also provides a facility of supervision which is not critical on threatening type, but is of helpful and suggestive types which equip them for transition to school teaching. It is a system of controlled practice that makes it possible to concentrate on specific teaching behavior and to practice teaching under controlled conditions.
(Gazi Md. Abdur Rashid, Research Officer, District Education Office, Secondary and Higher Education, Munshiganj)
