Describe the concept of Micro-teaching. How it helps to improve the competences of teachers, provide example.

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Ans: Micro-teaching is a teacher training and faculty development technique whereby the teacher reviews a recording of a teaching session, in order to get constructive feedback from peers and/or students about what has worked and what improvements can be made to their teaching technique. Micro-teaching was invented in the mid-1960s at Stanford University by Dwight W. Allen, and has subsequently been used to develop educators in all forms of education.

In the original process, a teacher was asked to prepare a short lesson (usually 20 minutes) for a small group of learners who may not be have been their own students. This was then recorded on video. After the lesson, the teacher, teaching colleagues, a master teacher and the students together viewed the videotape and commented on what they saw happening, referencing the teacher's learning objectives. Seeing the video and getting comments from colleagues and students provided teachers with an often intense "under the microscope" view of their teaching.

A review of the evidence for micro-teaching, undertaken by John Hattie as part of his Visible Learning project, found it was an effective method for improving student outcomes.

Objectives of Microteaching

• To enable teacher trainees to learn and assimilate new teaching skills under controlled conditions.
• To enable teacher trainees to master a number of teaching skills.
• To enable teacher trainees to gain confidence in teaching.

Characteristic of Microteaching

• Microteaching is a highly individualized training device
• Microteaching is an experiment in the field of teacher education which has been incorporated in the practice teaching schedule
• It is a student teaching skill training technique and not a teaching technique or method
• Microteaching is micro in the sense that it scale down the complexities of real teaching
• Practicing one skill at a time
• Reducing the class size to 5 – 10 pupil
• Reducing the duration of lesson to 5 – 10 minutes
• Limiting the content to a single concept
• immediate feedback helps in improving, fixing and motivating learning
• The student are providing immediate feedback in terms of peer group feedback, tape recorded/CCTV
• Microteaching advocates the choice and practice of one skill at a time

Steps of Micro-teaching: The Micro-teaching programme involves the following steps:

Step I Particular skill to be practiced is explained to the teacher trainees in terms of the purpose and components of the skill with suitable examples.

Step II The teacher trainer gives the demonstration of the skill in Micro-teaching in simulated conditions to the teacher trainees.

Step III The teacher trainee plans a short lesson plan on the basis of the demonstrated skill for his/her practice.

Step IV The teacher trainee teaches the lesson to a small group of pupils. His lesson is supervised by the supervisor and peers.

Step V On the basis of the observation of a lesson, the supervisor gives feedback to the teacher trainee. The supervisor reinforces the instances of effective use of the skill and draws attention of the teacher trainee to the points where he could not do well.

Step VI In the light of the feed-back given by the supervisor, the teacher trainee replans the lesson plan in order to use the skill in more effective manner in the second trial.

Step VII The revised lesson is taught to another comparable group of pupils.

Step VIII The supervisor observes the re-teach lesson and gives re-feed back to the teacher trainee with convincing arguments and reasons.

Step IX The ‘teach – re-teach’ cycle may be repeated several times till adequate mastery level is achieved.