INTRODUCTION TO MICRO-TEACHING

Introduction
You know that the economic prosperity and good quality of any nation depends upon the development of human resources of that nation. The significant fact in the development of manpower resource refers to the competencies and the level on which these competencies are imparted. You also know that it largely depends on those who develop these competencies. Therefore, for this purpose we need highly competent teachers for imparting these competencies. It is essential that teachers imparting these competencies should have the capability to perform their task efficiently. For this, they need to acquire requisite competencies themselves.
In the present Unit we will attempt to understand as to what competencies are essential for becoming better teacher and how these competencies can be imparted.
Teaching : Definition
"Teaching means many different things, that teaching act varies from person to person and from situation to situation. " (Bar, 1961)

"The behaviour or activities of persons as they go about doing whatever is required of teachers, particularly those activities which are concerned with the guidance or direction of learning of others." (Ryan, 1965)
"Teaching is the arrangement of contingencies of reinforcement under which students learn. They learn without teaching in their natural environment, but teachers arrange special contingencies which expedite learning and hastening the appearance of behaviour which would otherwise be acquired slowly or making scene of the appearance of behaviour which might otherwise never occur." (B.F. Skinner. 1968)
"Teaching as an act of interpersonal influence aimed at changing the ways in which other persons can or will behave." (N.L. Gage, 1963)
What is a teaching skill ?
Definition of teaching skill might be one of the following :
* A teaching skill is that behaviour of the teacher which facilitates pupils’ learning directly or indirectly.
* A teaching skill includes all arts and behaviour of the teacher which maximizes pupils’ learning.
*A teaching skill is that art of the teacher which makes communication between the teacher and pupils sufficiently.

Attempts have been made to list teaching skills. Allen and Ryan listed the following teaching skills at Stanford University in the U.S.A.
1. Stimulus Variation
2. Set induction
3. Closure
4. Teacher silence and non-verbal cues
5. Reinforcing pupil participation
6. Fluency in questioning
7. Probing questioning
8. Use of higher questions
9. Divergent questions
10. Recognizing and attending behaviour
11. Illustrating and use of examples
12. Lecturing
13. Planned repetition
14. Completeness of communication

B.K. Passi has given the following list of Teaching Skills in his book “Becoming Better Teacher; Micro-teaching Approach” :
1. Writing instructional objectives
2. Introducing a lesson
3. Fluency in questioning
4. Probing questioning
5. Explaining
6. Illustrating with examples
7. Stimulus variation
8. Silence and non-verbal cues
9. Reinforcement
10. Increasing pupil participation
11. Using black board
12. Achieving Closure
13. Recognizing attending behavior

NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) in its publication Core Teaching Skills (1982) has laid stress on the following teaching skills…
• writing instructional objectives
• Organizing the content
• Creating set for introducing the lesson
• introducing a lesson
• Structuring classroom questions
• Question delivery and its distribution
• Response management
• explaining
• illustrating with examples
• Using teaching aids
• Stimulus variation
• Pacing of the lesson
• Promoting pupil participation
• Use of blackboard
• Achieving closure of the lesson
• Giving assignments
• Evaluating the pupil’s progress
• Diagnosing pupil learning difficulties and taking remedial measures
• Management of the class
Core Teaching Skills
It is not possible to train all the pupil teachers in all these skills in any training programme because of the constraints of time and funds. Therefore a set of teaching skills which cuts across the subject areas has been identified. They have been found very useful for every teacher. The set of these skills are known as CORE TEACHING SKILLSCore Teaching Skills are:
1. Skill of Probing Questions
2. Skill of Explaining
3. Skill of Illustrating With Examples
4. Skill of Stimulus Variation
5. Skill of Reinforcement
6. Skill of Classroom Management
7. Skill of Using Blackboard
8. Skill of Introducing a lesson
Core Teaching Skills and their Components
1. Probing Questions
Components : Prompting, seeking further information, redirection, focusing, increasing critical awareness.2. Explaining
Components : Clarity, continuity, relevance to content using beginning and concluding statements, covering essential points.3. Illustrating with examples
Components : Simple, relevant and interesting examples appropriate media, use of inducts, deductive approach.4. Stimulus variation
Components : Body movements, gestures, change in speech pattern, change in interaction style, pausing, focusing, oral-visual switching.5. Reinforcement
Components : Use of praise words and statements, accepting and using pupils’ idea, repeating and rephrasing, extra vertical cues, use of pleasant and approving gestures and expressions, writing pupils’ answer on the black board.6. Classroom Management
Components : Call pupils bynames, Makenorms of classroom behaviour, attending behaviour reinforced, clarity of direction, check non-attending behaviour, keep pupils in Eye Span, check inappropriate behaviour immediately.7. Use of blackboard
Components : Legible, neat and adequate with reference to content covered.
Concept of Micro-teaching
Micro-teaching is a teacher training technique which helps the teacher trainee to master the teaching skills. It requires the teacher trainee
1. to teach a single concept of content
2. using a specified teaching skill
3. for a short time
4. to a very small member of pupils

In this way the teacher trainee practices the teaching skill in terms of definable, observable, measurable and controllable form with repeated cycles till he attains mastery in the use of skill.
Meaning and Definition of Micro-Teaching
Meaning
Micro teaching is a procedure in which a student teacher practices teaching with a reduce number of pupils in a reduced period of time with emphasis on a narrow and specific teaching skill.Definition
• “Microteaching is a scaled down teaching encounter in class size and time
- D.W.Allen(1966)

• “Microteaching is defined as a system of controlled practice that makes it possible to concentrate on specified teaching behaviour and to practice teaching under controlled conditions.”
- D.W. Allen & A.W.Eve (1968)

• “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)
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.
Micro-teaching Cycle
The six steps generally involved in micro-teaching cycle are Plan , Teach , Feedback
Replan , Reteach , Refeedback. There can be variations as per requirement of the objective of practice session. These steps are diagrammatically represented in the following figure :Diagramatic representation of a Micro-teaching Cycle

Plan : This involves the selection of the topic and related content of such a nature in which the use of components of the skill under practice may be made easily and conveniently. The topic is analyzed into different activities of the teacher and the pupils. The activities are planned in such a logical sequence where maximum application of the components of a skill is possible.
Teach : This involves the attempts of the teacher trainee to use the components of the skill in suitable situations coming up in the process of teaching-learning as per his/her planning of activitieó. If the situation is different and not as visualized(in the planning of tTe activities, the teacher should modify his/her behaviour ás per the demand of the situation in the Wlass. He should have the courage and confidence to handle the situation arising in the class effectively.
Feedback : This term refers to giving information to the teacher trainee about his performance. The information includes the points of strength as well as weakness relating to his/her performance. This helps the teacher trainee to improve upon his/her performance in the desired direction.
Re-plan : The teacher trainee replans his lesson incorporating the points of strength and removing the points not skillfully handled during teaching in the previous attempt either on the same topic or on another topic suiting to the teacher trainee for improvement.
Re-teach : This involves teaching to the same group of pupils if the topic is changed or to a different group of pupils if the topic is the same. This is done to remove boredom or monotony of the pupil. The teacher trainee teaches the class with renewed courage and confidence to perform better than the previous attempt.
Re-feedback : This is the most important component of Micro-teaching for behaviour modification of teacher trainee in the desired direction in each and every skill practice.Time duration for the microteaching is;
o Teach : 6 Minutes.
o Feedback : 6 Minutes.
o Re-Plan :12 Minutes.
o Re-Teach : 6 Minutes.
o Re-Feedback : 6 Minutes.
Phases of Micro-teaching
There are three phases of the Micro-teaching procedure which you have studied in the previous section of this Unit. They are :
1. Knowledge Acquisition Phase.
2. Skill Acquisition Phase.
3. Transfer Phase of Micro-teaching.
1. Knowledge Acquisition Phase (Pre-Active Phase)
It includes the activities such as;
Ø Provide knowledge about teaching skills.
Ø Observe the demonstration of teaching skill.
Ø Analyze and discuss the demonstration of the teaching skill.
2. Skill Acquisition Phase (Inter-active Phase)
It includes the activities such as;
Ø Planning and preparation of micro lesson for a skill.
Ø Practicing the skill.
Ø Evaluation of the practiced skill (Feedback).
Ø Re-plan , Re-teach and re-feedback till the desired level of skill is achieved.
3. Transfer Phase (Post –Active Phase)
Ø Giving opportunity to use the mastered skill in normal class room teaching.
Ø Integrate the different skill practiced
Link Practice (Integration of Teaching Skills)
When mastery has been attained in various skills ,the teacher trainee is allowed to teach the skills together. This separate training programme to integrate various isolated skills is known as ‘Link Practice’
ü It helps the trainee to transfer effectively all the skills learnt in the micro teaching sessions.
ü It helps to bridge the gap between training in isolated teaching skills and the real teaching situation faced by a student teacher.
ü Desirable Number of Pupils :15-20
ü Preferable Duration :20minutes.
ü Desirable Number of Skills :3-4 Skills
• Link practice or integration of skills can be done in two ways;Integration in parts
3 or 4 teaching skills are integrated and transferred them into a lesson of 15-20 minutes duration. And again 3 or 4 skills are integrated and are transferred all the skills to one lesson.Integration as a whole
Student teacher integrates all the individual teaching skills by taking them as a whole and transferred them into a real teaching situation.
Merits of Microteaching
• It helps to develop and master important teaching skills.
• It helps to accomplish specific teacher competencies.
• It caters the need of individual differences in the teacher training.
• It is more effective in modifying teacher behaviour.
• It is an individualized training technique.
• It employs real teaching situation for developing skills.
• It reduces the complexity of teaching process as it is a scaled down teaching.
• It helps to get deeper knowledge regarding the art of teaching.
Limitations of Microteaching
• It is skill oriented; Content not emphasized.
• A large number of trainees cannot be given the opportunity for re-teaching and re-planning.
• It is very time consuming technique.
• It requires special classroom setting.
• It covers only a few specific skills.
• It deviates from normal classroom teaching.
• It may raise administrative problem while arranging micro lessons
Microteaching Vs Traditional Classroom teaching
Microteaching teaching Traditional Class room
· Teaching is Relatively Simple * Teaching is Complex Activity
· Carried out in controlled situation * Carried out in uncontrolled Situation
· The Class Consist of a small of * Classroom consist of less than
Students group of students 35 to 40 students
· takes up one skill at a time * Teacher practices several skill at a time
· Teaching time is 5 to 10 mts. * Teaching time is 40 to 50 mts
· Student teacher provided immediate feedback * No immediate feedback
· Provision for reteaching * No provision for reteaching
· Students gains confidence in teaching * Students usually tensed and before
actual scared
Origin and Development of Micro-teaching
The idea of micro-teaching originated for the first time at Stanford University in USA, when an Experimental Project on the identification of teaching skills was in progress under the guidance and supervision of the faculty members (Bush, Allen, McDonald Acheson and many others). This project was aided by Ford Foundation and Kettering Foundation. The team of experts was assigned the development of testing and evaluation tools to measure the attainment of teaching skills. At this juncture Keath Acheson, a research worker was investigating the utility of video tape recorder in the development of technical teaching skills. This instrument could be used for recording the class interaction and the behaviours of the trainee vividly and accurately. This lead to the development of a systematic and accurate method of giving feedback to the teacher trainee. All the steps of micro-teaching technique :
Teach → Feedback → Replan → Reteach → Refeedback were formulated. Thus the name of micro-teaching was coined for this method of developing teaching skills in 1963. Since then this technique of teacher training has been widely used in almost all Colleges and Universities of Europe and Asia. In India, it is being used with great emphasis in all the teacher training programmes of developing teaching skills and competencies among teacher trainees.Microteaching in India
• The department of Teacher education in the NCERT designed a project to study the effectiveness of Microteaching in 1975 in collaboration with the Centre of Advanced Study in Education (CASE) Baroda.
• Research and training programmes for teacher educators were also initiated in collaboration with the department of Education, University of Indore.
• Passi, Singh and Jangira developed instructional materials which were used to train teacher educators.
REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS
1. ALLEN, D.W. et.al. Micro-teaching – A Description. Stanford University Press, 1969.
2. ALLEN, D.W , RYAN, K.A. Micro-teaching Reading Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1969.
3. GREWAL, J.S., R. P. SINGH. “A Comparative Study of the Effects of Standard MT With Varied Set of Skills Upon General Teaching Competence and Attitudes of Pre-service Secondary School Teachers.” In R.C. DAS, et.al. Differential Effectiveness of MT Components, New Delhi, NCERT, 1979.
4. PASSI, B.K., Becoming Better Teachers. Baroda : Centre for Advanced Study in Education, M. S. University of Baroda, 1976.
5. SINGH, L. C. et.al. Micro-teaching – Theory and Practice, Agra : Psychological Corporation, 1987.
6. SHAH, G. B. Micro-teaching – Without Television, Nutan Shikshan, 1970.
7. SHARMA, N. L., Micro-teaching : Integration of Teahing Skills in Sahitya Paricharya, Vinod Pustak Mandir, Agra, 1984.
8. VAIDYA, N. Micro-teaching : An Experiment in Teacher Training. The Polytechnic Teacher, Technical Teacher, Technical Training Institute, Chandigarh, 1970.