Know Micro Teaching in Details - Definitions, Importance, Planning, Advantages, and Disadvantages

Microteaching is derived from the two words, they are micro and teaching, which means teaching every small and minor part of teaching skills to the teachers. It is introduced in 1963 at Stanford University which is in California, U.S. by an American professor whose name was Dwight W. Allen.

What is Micro Teaching?

Microteaching is the training process in which students are not trained, but the teachers are the one who is getting training in teaching and faculty development techniques. It is a training technique for teachers for learning different teaching skills like the skill of explanation, blackboard writing, problem-solving, and many more. It is an innovative and very effective technique for teaching several teaching skills to teachers. Microteaching is considered real teaching, which helps to shape teachers' behavior and inner skills by providing them so many kinds of benefits.

Nature of Micro Teaching

• It is the process of establishing the most understandable form of establishing a mutual relationship between the students and the teacher.

• It is a cyclic process of training, which means it keeps on rotating from different steps.

• It helps in achieving changes in students' behavior.

• It concentrates on improving teaching skills in the teachers.

• It helps to learn new teaching skills.

• It is a very effective way of teaching.

• It is a very reasonable and logical process.

Characteristics of Micro Teaching

Some of the characteristics of micro training are as follows:

1. At a time, only one type of teaching skill should be considered first and most important.
2. The trainee teacher is observed carefully and his/her every mistake is noted properly to give accurate feedback.
3. Teach only a small group of people or students like eight to ten.
4. The teacher should teach a short topic or lesson within six to eight minutes.
5. This situation is not real.

Process of Micro Teaching

Micro Teaching is the process in which a teacher teaches a small or a micro topic in a short period of time usually six to eight minutes, to a small group or class usually of eight to ten members which includes a group of supervisors and peers who gives feedback at the end which helps the teacher to analyze and find his/her strengths and weaknesses of teaching skill and to work on them.

Several stages of Micro Teaching

There are several stages of micro-teaching which are as follows

Planning

Firstly, when teachers are asked to arrange and conduct a class for a small group of people like eight to ten, then they have to do planning according to the instructions of the superior and trainer, for the topics and lesson about what they are going to conduct in the class.

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Teaching

Here, the next step for the trainee is teaching the whole group or class in accordance and in proportion to the plan. This helps a lot to the teachers to learn several new techniques and skills of teaching.

Observing

Now the superior observes the class conducted by the teacher who is in the training period and gives his/her feedback about the class,

Re-planning

After listening to the feedback from the trainer and superiors, the teacher who is in training does re-planning, it could be of communication style, giving presentation styles, or may relate to any other teaching skills.

Re-teaching

Now with the new plan, a teacher who is in training teaches the group of people again with new methods and ways.

Re-observing

Now the trainee teacher has observed again and then feedback is provided according to the presentation. The trainee teacher repeats his process and learns different teaching skills with that, which helps him to teach a class full of students face-to-face with confidence and powerful skills.

Some skills of Micro Teaching

For micro-teaching, there are some skills that are required such as:

• The skill of solving different questions

• The skill of writing on the blackboard in a systematic and organized manner.

• The skill of stimulating variations accordingly.

• The skill of introducing.

• The skill of explaining something in the most exact and appropriate way.

• The skill of questioning something to someone or anyone.

• The skill of achieving a good closure.

Role of peers and supervisors in Micro Teaching

In the whole process of micro-teaching, the peers or superiors, or trainers play a very important role for the trainee teachers by attending their class and observing them in detail, while they are giving presentations. At the end of the presentation, they give feedback to the trainee teachers about the likes and dislikes of their presentation, with this the trainee teacher came to know about his/her teaching skills strengths, and weakness on which he/she has to work.

Importance of Micro Teaching

As micro-teaching is such a useful technique that plays a significant role in the training process of teachers that’s why it plays so much importance for us which are as follows:

1. Helps to design, develop and improve teaching skills among teachers.
2. They can get an experience of real situations in a fake world.
3. This technique is used in various fields of life.
4. Give motivation and improves the confidence of the teachers.
5. Helps in obtaining and bringing good communication skills with innovative techniques and methods.

Principals of Micro Teaching

There are various principles on which micro-teaching is based on are as follows;

1. Principal of one skill at one time only.
2. Principal of immediate feedback.
3. Principal of self-observing opportunities.
4. Principal of practice.
5. Principal of small scale of content or topic.

Advantages of Micro Teaching

There are so many benefits or we can say advantages of micro-teaching, some of them are as follows:

• Helps the trainee teachers to learn and practice their training skills.
• Very useful method for trainee teachers to enhance their overall personality.
• It is a budget oriented form of training.
• Gives confidence of teaching so many students.
• Motivate them and increase their moral.
• Bring positive attitude in them which helps them to achieve their goals effectively.
• This technique encourage them a lot to provide quality education to the students by different teaching methods.

Disadvantages of Micro Teaching

As everything has its advantages and disadvantages at the same time, micro-teaching has also some disadvantages which are here:

• For training, we required time, hence it is a time-consuming process.
• It needs a huge cost for the training of the teachers, sometimes it could be so costly.
• In this type of training, personalized learning is ignored.
• This technique only focuses on the development of the teachers.
• The development of the students does not play any important role here, in this method of training the teachers.

Conclusion

Micro teaching helps the most in learning several new techniques of teaching skills at any age very effectively and conveniently. It brings positive changes in the behavior of the teachers through different methods of training and providing experience to the teachers which helps in the overall development of the teacher in so many ways. It increases the morale of the teacher, develops several important qualities like self-confidence, best teaching skills, and communication skills, and motivates the teacher in the most favorable way. We hope this article helps you a lot and after reading this article your all queries are clarified.

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