The
micro-teaching device operates on a six-step model:
(i) Exposition of a specific skill:
Student-teachers
are exposed to various skills required in micro-teaching. These skills are
mastered one after the other till they are fully conversant with all of them.
When they go to the class to teach, they disclose the skill to the pupils and
make sure their pupils acquire the skill before going to the next one.
For the
student-teachers better understanding of the skills, video tape models of the
skills should be shown to them. These they must closely watch in order to bring
their own teaching styles closer to those of the models but not sacrifice the
individuality and uniqueness of their own style of teaching.
(ii) The Teach-Lesson:
After
the beginning teacher or student-teacher has mastered each skill of
micro-teaching or preferably all the skills, he organizes a micro-teaching
lesson that will last for about ten minutes with a class of between 3 to 7
pupils. He then teaches a lesson that emphasizes only a particular skill
already learnt. To be fully prepared for a full scale macro-teaching, the student-teacher
must have taught may lessons that have empathized all the micro-teaching
skills.
In each
lesson that empathizes a particular skill, the activities of both the teacher
and the taught are recorded by the video-tape and the supervisor is there to
watch these activities. When the lesson is over, the video-tape is replayed.
Immediate feedback from the videotape supervisor and pupils is made available
to the student-teacher.
(iii) Immediate Feed Back
After the lesson, the video-tape is replayed and is watched by the
teacher the pupils and the supervisor. The areas of strengths and weaknesses
are without reservation identified and discussed. The student teacher is
praised or reinforced for his strong points and suggestion on how to improve
the weak points are given to him. If the weak points are many, the
student-teacher needs to re-teach the lesson in order to incorporate the useful
suggestions given to him.
(iv) The Re-teach Lesson
After the feedback and it is discovered that the first lesson is about
50% and above poorly taught, there is a great need for a re-teach of the
lesson. The student-teacher re-plans and reorganizes the lesson and re-teaches
to another group of pupils or students. Then the playback of the re-teach
lesson is analyzed to see what charges have been effected. With candid
acceptance of the feed back with all the necessary corrections from the
supervisor, students and video tape the student-teacher is mostly likely to do
better in the re-teach performance. Such an assurance was supported by Olivero
who in 1970 found that students who saw the video tapes of their lessons and
discussed them with supervisors showed greater behaviour changes on the
re-teach lesson than those having discussions with supervisors but not seeing video
play backs.
(v) The Mini-Lesson (Mini-Macro)
After
learning and teaching or emphasizing individual skills, the student-teacher
should make his teaching an organized activity that it is. He does this by
bringing together all the skills in order to present a mini-lesson. Without
bringing together in an organized form all or most of the teaching skills a
student-teacher cannot be said to be a fully fledged teacher who has mastered
the art of teaching.
In fact
mini-lessons or mini-macro teaching offer student-teachers golden opportunity
to practice all the skills together. Constant practice in this regard will make
the student teacher pedagogically and professionally qualified. Mini-lesson
situation is not far from the real class-room situation expect that the group
to be taught is a small one.
(iv) Evaluation
Apart
from the evaluation given to the teaching of an individual skill, the actual
evaluation of micro-teaching performance of student-teachers is done at the end
of mini-lessons. In such an evaluation judgment is given to the
student-teachers ability to give adroit manipulation to all the teaching skills
and combine them in an organized manner in a single lesson to make teaching and
learning very effective. It is pertinent to reiterate that for effective
learning very effective and teaching a student-teacher or a beginning teacher
does not learn and teach all the skills are broken into specific ones and
student-teacher learns and teaches a skill at a time. When he shows competence
in the teaches them as an inter-related whole. In mini-lessons. With
progressive competence and advancement in the manipulation of teaching skills
the student-teachers are allowed to go for the real practice teaching in
schools for weeks. Supervisors who are well qualified in teaching go round to
supervise and evaluate their teaching practice and practical teaching.
Student-teachers are therefore evaluated in the micro-teaching, mini-lessons
and in teaching practice and practical teaching.