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The concept of micro-teaching was developed in the 1950s-60s by educationist Dwight Allen at Stanford University. Micro-teaching is an innovative technique where aspiring teachers can receive immediate feedback on their teaching skills and style. It focuses on practicing teaching under controlled conditions, which helps the teacher acquire specific skills and lessens the complexities in the teaching process. Micro-teaching entails presentation and reinforcement abilities and enables new teachers to quickly learn the skills of teaching. This not only helps in strengthening teaching skills, but also helps the student-teacher improve their soft skills like teaching behavior, communication and class management.
In this article, we will discuss the advantages, disadvantages and importance of micro-teaching.
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How Micro-teaching Works
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Micro-teaching Examples
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Advantages And Disadvantages Of Micro Teaching
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Importance Of Micro-teaching
How Micro-teaching Works
A micro-teaching session focuses on enhancing one specific skill of the teacher. The student-teacher conducts a short session with a small group of people. One session may host three to five students or peers and last from five to 20 minutes. Every session is recorded or supervised (or both), so that the student-teacher can get feedback on their strengths and weaknesses. This helps the teacher self-evaluate, measure their performance and work on their skills accordingly.
Micro-teaching works in a cyclical manner: planning the session, teaching the students, getting feedback from the supervisors, replanning after the feedback, reteaching, and finally receiving more feedback. This process is called the micro-teaching cycle.
This cycle is repeated so that they learn and hone their teaching skills as they prepare to face a real class with confidence.
Micro-teaching Examples
The strategy of micro-teaching is designed to promote teaching and active learning, provide teachers with real-world classroom experience, improve intellectual skills and interaction, introduce instructors to new teaching methods, and boost their confidence.
Micro-teaching examples include real-life situations where a teacher demonstrates their ability to teach students in a classroom.
In a micro-teaching demonstration, teachers are given a small batch of students to teach a topic,
During the demonstration, the teachers will have to present their ability to manage students in the classroom, show teaching creativity in explaining the topics, plan educational activities and programs for students and create effective lessons and unit plans, among other skills.
The teachers are then reviewed by experts and given feedback.
As any micro-teaching example will show you, teachers need to prepare a small topic of their choice that can be covered in a short duration of time. The teachers are mostly evaluated on their communication skills, their teaching methods, and the students’ feedback.
Advantages And Disadvantages Of Micro Teaching
Like two sides of a coin, there are both advantages and disadvantages of micro-teaching.
Advantages Of Micro-teaching
Micro-teaching helps student-teachers practice their skills with a small group of students before teaching a bigger group. It focuses on sharpening and developing specific teaching skills and eliminating errors. This helps them build confidence and be prepared for a variety of classroom scenarios. Through the micro-teaching cycle, aspiring teachers can get instant feedback, which they can apply in the next round of teaching. This helps in strengthening not only their skills but also their teaching methods, and modify and improve their classroom behavior in the desired direction. It improves their self-confidence and gives them an opportunity for self-evaluation.
There are many benefits of micro-teaching:
- Practice elasticity: Micro-teaching aids in the development of a variety of abilities in both trainees and current teaching personnel. It aids in the development of a teacher’s handling abilities.
- Personality enhancer: Micro-teaching is also a confidence booster. Micro-teaching entails a variety of activities and practices that increase a teacher’s confidence significantly.
- Cost-effective: Among other advantages of micro-teaching, it is cost-effective. Teachers can practice in the classroom or at any other location.
- Focus on learning: The micro-teaching method is limited to three-four students at a time. As a result, you will be able to gain more teaching experience. It also reduces the likelihood of errors.
- Positive attitude: Having a positive attitude helps you achieve better results. As a result, one of the goals of this program is to help trainees develop a positive attitude toward criticism. This is an important advantage of micro-teaching.
- Encourages systematic lesson preparation: One of the skills that a teacher must acquire is lesson planning. Within a specific curriculum, a micro-teaching program assists the trainee in developing methodical lesson plans.
These were some of the advantages of micro-teaching.
Disadvantages Of Micro-teaching
Micro-teaching comes with its drawbacks. If not planned right, it can convey unrelated concepts. The techniques applied in the micro-teaching sessions may fail in some situations while handling a large group of students. The training program overall is said to be time-consuming because of the multiple cycles being repeated. In some cases, micro-teaching can reduce the creativity of the teacher. While micro-teaching helps in mastering some skills, it can’t be used for all teaching skills: Only basic skills such as questioning and explaining can be developed.
The disadvantages of micro-teaching include:
- The training program is time-consuming and can be costly at times.
- Personalized learning isn’t emphasized in this skill.
- The curriculum usually focuses on teacher development and occasionally overlooks students’ social-emotional development.
Importance Of Micro-teaching
Micro-teaching is a versatile teaching technique. It has been used in various fields such as life science, business, psychology and many more. It focuses on ‘how to teach’. Furthermore, it emphasizes practicing teaching under controlled conditions with specific teaching behaviors.
Every teacher would agree that micro-teaching is critical to their professional growth since it helps them develop their knowledge, abilities and professional attitudes.
The importance of micro-teaching cannot be ignored as it helps an educator gain the required skills.
One of the major benefits of micro-teaching is that the student-teachers concentrate on practicing a specific, well-defined skill. Through the micro-teaching cycle, the teachers get immediate feedback, which they can implement instantly. Another factor that underscores the importance of micro-teaching is that it will not put students in danger if the teacher fails to teach.
If you are looking to improve your teaching skills, Harappa’s stellar faculty will help you to develop and enhance them. With our Inspiring Faculty Program, you will sharpen your communication skills, learn innovative teaching techniques, practice collaboration techniques to enhance interactivity, and much more.
