Importance of microteaching

Dr. Sailen Das

(sailendas.das@gmail.com)

The microteaching concept is new for our education system. The question is how microteaching would give extra mileage to the students. Microteaching is a significant development in the teacher education programme. The primary objective of microteaching is to make teacher education programmes scientific, effective, and very meaningful. The concept of microteaching was developed in the 1950s and 1960s 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 in a particular class. It focuses on practising teaching under controlled conditions, which helps the teacher acquire specific skills and lessons in speedway. Micro-teaching entails presentation and reinforcement abilities and enables new teachers to quickly learn the skills of teaching. This not only helps in acquiring teaching skills but also helps both the student and teacher improve their soft skills like teaching behaviour and effective group communication within the class.

Basic characteristics of microteaching

Microteaching is a highly individualistic training approach.

Getting feedback is very fast during the class.

It is skill-based teaching.

Students can grasp the concept of the lesson very easily.

It is effective communication.

It is designed to prepare an effective teacher.

Microteaching involves both students and the teacher during the particular class.

It is a proven, successful model of teaching.

Basically, micro-teaching classes focus on enhancing one specific skill of the teacher at a time with a smaller number of students, and the time involved is also comparatively short. One session may host three to five students or peers with nearly the same level of understanding and may continue for five to twenty minutes. Every session or class is recorded so that both the student and teacher are able to get feedback on their strengths and weaknesses. After studying the weaknesses of the students, the teacher and the academic team can evaluate the students’ performance. Microteaching helps the teacher self-evaluate, measure their own performance, and work on their skills accordingly.

Basic components of

microteaching:

Before going to microteaching, we need to take care of some important components to ensure that microteaching is more effective and successful.

Extra micro-teaching classroom, where the teacher can take the class, especially in a better environment. The facilities of using posters, pictures, and online examples for teaching can help students learn.

Teaching skills are a very important factor in microteaching. Therefore, teachers have to be trained and professionally skilled based on attitude.

Feedback device: We know very well that quality of communication is very important in micro-teaching, so there has to be a system in place that can help collect the feedback easily.

The student-teacher relationship is also an important factor in the microteaching process. During the microteaching process, teachers are to acquire the capacity to handle all questions as well as queries.

Microteaching group making is a primary yet important task for the teacher and academic team. Because classifying the group with the same IQ is important. Fixing the time for class and teaching methods plays a significant role in micro-teaching.

The year 2022 marked the 75th anniversary of India’s independence. With the passage of time, we are seeing some changes in its policies and environment despite the snail’s pace of implementation, as we are known for the popular adage ‘land of lahe lahe’. However, the ideas in the education sector from a hundred years ago imposed by our British rulers are still considered valid today. According to the latest news, following the new National Education Policy adopted by the government, the High School Leaving Certificate Examination (HSLC) will be history from the next year, that is to say, 2023 onwards. But, this is a very serious question for the government and department of education: whether there is any provision to introduce microteaching classes for high school leaving students or any planning to change the syllabus apart from just churning out some job seekers copying the method of predecessors? According to the great scientist Albert Einstein, “The supreme art of teaching is to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge”. We can hope that microteaching will play a vital role in students’ uplift, and at the same time, students will enjoy their syllabus with the methods of microteaching.

We believe that the quality of life depends on the quality of communication. The meaning of ‘quality of communication’ in relation to education is effective teaching. Effective teaching can give extra boost for educational uplift. Therefore, nowadays the government is also putting such a clear focus on effective teaching for nation-building and skill-based learning. Actually, teaching includes all the activities involved in providing education to others. Teaching as a profession also gives us a way to develop our skills.