MICRO – TEACHING
Micro—teaching is a teaching technique, first adopted at
Stanford University, USA in 1961, by Dwight w. Allen and his co-workers. This
technique is now followed in many countries. It is a training procedure for
teacher preparation aimed at simplifying the complexities of the regular
teaching process.
Micro-teaching is a scaled down sample of teaching in
which a teacher teaches a small unit to a small group of 5 to 10 pupils for a
short period of 5 to 10 minutes. Such a situation offers a helpful setting for
a teacher to critique new teaching skills and to refine old skills. Micro
teaching is a new design for teacher training which provides trainers with
feedback about their performance immediately after competition of lessons.
There are many specific teaching skills that can be inculcated by
micro-teaching techniques.
Definitions
Micro-teaching is
defined by Allen, as “a scaled down teaching encounter in a class size and
class time”
It is also defined as
“a teacher training procedure which reduces the teaching situation to simpler
and more controlled encounter achieved by limiting the practice teaching to a
specific skill and reducing time and class size.”
Micro-teaching is called “micro” for several reasons.
First of all, the teacher gives practice to a small group for a short duration.
Moreover, it involves only a very small piece of content and it concentrate, at
a time, on a single subskill of the major skill which is magnified. The
micro-teaching attempts to reduce the complex teaching into manageable
proportions.
Objectives
Ø To
enable teacher-trainers to learn and assimilate new teaching skills under
controlled conditions.
Ø To
enable teacher- trainers to gain confidence in teaching and to master a number
of skills by dealing with a small group of pupils.
Characteristics
ü It
is a scaled down teaching.
ü It
is less complex than regular teaching.
ü It
involves fewer numbers of students usually 5-10.
ü It
involves a short duration about 5-10 minutes.
Advantages
of Micro-teaching
o
Flexible and adaptable to different
needs and purposes.
o
Teacher- trainers trained through
micro-teaching are found to perform better than those trained by traditional
method.
o
It employs real teaching for the purpose
of developing skills.
o
It helps to accomplish specific teacher
competencies.
o
The teaching practice gains a higher
degree of organization because, factors such as time and number of students etc
could be controlled.
o
It helps to gain deeper knowledge due to
feedback and re-plan, re-teach cycles.
o
It is more effective in modifying teacher
behaviour.
o
Helps in developing important teaching
skills such as questioning, reinforcement of a student participation etc...
o
It is an effective technique for
transfer of teaching competencies to classroom.
o
It provides many oppurtunities to
trainees to build up desired patterns of behaviour in a non threatening set-up.
Limitations
Ø It
is skill oriented; content is not emphasized.
Ø It
emphasizes specific skills, but neglects integrated skills.
Ø It
covers only a few specific skills.
Ø It
may raise administrative problems while arranging micro-tensions.
Steps
in Micro-teaching
Ø Defining
the skills to be developed in terms of specific teaching behaviour.
Ø Demonstration
of the skill by the teacher educator by taking a lesson.
Ø Based
on the model, preparation of a lesson plan by the teacher trainer, for a
suitable topic which calls for application of the skill anticipated.
Ø Teaching
of the lesson by the teacher trainer in a simulated set up, in the presence of
the observers.
Ø Providing
of immediate-feedback to the teacher trainer by the observers with a view to
help him to improve the skill.
Ø Arranging
re-planning. Re-teaching and re-feedback sessions.
Ø Repetition
of plan, teach, feedback, re-plan, re-teach and re-feedback cycle till the
skill is acquired.
Phase
in Micro-teaching
Micro-teaching procedure involves 3
phases. They are,
·
Knowledge acquisition phase:
Observing
the demonstration of the skill and analyzing it and discussing about the class.
·
Skill acquisition phase
Preparing
the micro lesson involving the skill and practising the skill while teaching.
·
Transfer phase
Evaluating
performances through feedback, replan, re-teach and transfer of skill to actual
class teaching in macro sessions.
Micro
teaching skills
Teaching
skill is a set of related overt behaviours of the teacher which are observable,
definable, measurable, demonstrable and refinable through practice. Teacher
uses teaching skills in pre-instructional, instructional and post-instructional
stages for achieving pre-determined specific objectives.
Some
skills are extensively used in routine teaching by all teachers. These skills
are known as core teaching skills. Here, we mention about 3 such skills.
ü Skill
of Reinforcement
ü Skill
of fluency in questioning.
ü Skill
of stimulus variation.
·
Skill
of Reinforcement
Skill
of reinforcement involves the use of positive reinforcers more and more and
decreasing the use of negative reinforcers so that pupils participate to the
maximum possible. Positive reinforcers are of two types.
Positive verbal reinforcers- the teacher
gives positive reinforcement through various verbal expressions like well,
good, go ahead with what you say, well that’s an interesting point, well done,
splendid etc.. and expressions like ‘uh-uh’ and ‘hm-hm’.
Positive non-verbal reinforcers- includes
nodding of head, smiling, moving towards the responding pupil, keeping eye on
the pupil, writing the response of pupil on the black board or any other non
verbal action indicating pleasure at the pupil’s response.
Try
to avoid negative verbal and non verbal reinforcements. It is often painful to
the students.
Try
to involve all the pupils and encourage their participation. Teacher should use
a wide range of reinforcing statements regardless of the fact that the answer
given by a pupil is brilliant or mere reproduction of facts. Do not use the
reinforcing statements again and again for each and every response of the
pupils. The situation becomes artificial and ineffective.
·
Skill
of fluency in questioning
A good teacher through her meaningful
questions make the pupils think and learn themselves. Ability to ask meaningful
questions fluently is a skill which can be developed through practice. By
fluency in questioning, we mean the rate of meaningful questions put per unit
time. Those questions are meaningful which have proper structure, process and
product.
A well structured question needs
ü Grammatical
correctness
ü Conciseness
ü Relevance
ü Specificity
A
teacher should not be too slow or too fast while asking questions to the
pupils. He should give a short pause after a question, so that the pupils can
understand it. The questions must be posed to the whole class, and after giving
enough time to comprehend it and think about the answer, call one by name and
ask for the answer.
Voice
is a good gift. A clear and pleasing voice of a teacher sustains students’
interest in the class. A teacher must put the questions in a pleasant tone in a
friendly manner and in clear loud voice.
A
teacher must not repeat his questions unnecessarily. Questions repeated in
different ways confuse pupils. They are likely to develop a habit of waiting
for the teachers to ask a question a second or third time. This hinders pupils’
thinking ability and they may not give correct response.
It
is not wise to repeat the response of students unnecessarily. This might result
in more teacher talk and less pupil participation. Meaningful questions should
have proper structure, process and product. Product refers to pupils response.
Sometimes, the structure and the process may be intact. Even then the students
donot give any response. Some of the reasons for this are:
Ø Higher
order questions.
Ø Average
and below average.
Ø Lack
of interest.
Ø Lack
of previous knowledge.
Ø Lack
of rapport between pupils and teacher.
The
teacher must locate the cause of problems and should remove non responsive
behaviour of the pupils.
To
develop well structured questions some hints are there below. As far as
possible:
Avoid Yes/No type questions: though it develops
fluency, it encourages guess work and do not stimulate deep thinking.
Avoid suggestive questions or echo questions: these
types of questions reproduce the facts presented. They donot develop any
thinking or reasoning ability in students.
Avoid rhetorical questions: these are statements
with interrogative phrases. Usually a teacher puts this type of questions to
give emphasis on a particular point. Pupils get confused whether they have to
reply or not. So much statement is to be avoided.
·
Skill
of Stimulus Variation
A
teacher, using hand gestures, head and body movements, verbal statements
etc...tries to draw the attention of her students and to sustain it. Each
behaviour of the teacher is a stimulus to the pupils. The teacher must be
skilled, for securing and sustaining attention of her pupils. She should know when,
how and what to change, so that her students are attentive. Such a skill is
called ‘Skill of Stimulus Variation.’ The main behaviour included in the skill
of stimulus variation are:
·
Teacher movements.
·
Gestures.
·
Change in speech pattern.
·
Focusing.
·
Change in interaction styles.
·
Pausing.
·
Oral—Visual switching.
Teacher movements-
There is a natural tendency to lose attention from an object, which we observe
continuously for along time. The same thing occurs in classroom too. Inorder to
secure and sustain attention in pupils, the teacher must judiciously move about
in a class.
Gestures-
Can be a movement of head, hand, parts of the body to direct attention, to
emphasize importance and to explain emotions. Using gestures, the teacher can
be more expressive and dynamic.
Change in speech pattern-
A sudden or radical change in tone, volume or speed of the teacher’s speech is
effective in drawing attention of the pupil. A sudden change in the pitch of
the voice will make pupils attend to the idea being told to them.
Focusing-
Using gestures, focusing, verbal focusing or both, a teacher can focus pupils’
attention to a particular point, which they have to notice or observe. ‘Look at
this picture’, ‘Listen here’, etc… are examples of verbal focusing. Whereas
pointing to something on the blackboard or diagram using finger or pointer is
gestural focusing.
Change in interaction style-
in a classroom, there are mainly 8 types of interaction styles.
·
Teacher-pupil interaction
·
Teacher-group interaction
·
Pupil-pupil interaction
A
teacher using only any one of these styles continuously for a long time fails
to sustain pupils attention. Inorder to avoid this, she must deliberately
change the interaction styles.
Pausing- it is a meaningful
stop. It is a deliberate silence during talk. If in a class, a teacher becomes
silent suddenly during teaching. It draws students’ attention towards the
teacher and the topic. Even without completing the sentence, after a pause, the
teacher can make the idea clear.
Oral- Visual switching- If there is a change in the
medium through which a teacher gives information; pupils’ attention will be
drawn towards it.
Link
Practice
It
is a step in the process of integration of the subskills of teaching. Having
armed with a battery of teaching subskills, the next stage to be done by the
teacher trainers is to integrate those subskills into the major skill. A
deliberate programme for the integration of subskills is called Link Practice
or link lessons. There are many methods for the link practice. One of the
methods is that, after practising 3 subskills separately, the trainee combines
all the 3 subskills in a lesson of 10 minutes. Then, the trainee practices
another set of 3 subskills separately and links them. He then combines all the
6 subskills in a single lesson of 15 minutes. This sequence is continued till
the entire sub-skills are combined in a macro lesson of 40 minutes and teaching
a full class
·
Link Practice involves 10-15 pupils.
·
Time duration is about 10-15 minutes.
·
Consists of 2-3 skills.
·
Includes broad concepts
Bibliography
Methodology of Teaching and Pedagogic Analysis- Dr.
K.Sivarajan, T.V Ramakrishnan, K.
Mridula
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