Chapter 9-: Micro Teaching
- What is Microteaching
- Peer Assessment in Microteaching
- Benefits of Engaging in Peer Review of Teaching
What is microteaching?
Why wait for student evaluations to receive feedback on teaching practices? Microteaching provides an opportunity for faculty and instructors to improve their teaching practices through a “teach, critique, re-teach” model. Microteaching is valuable for both new and experienced faculty to hone their teaching practices. It is often used in pre-service teacher training programs to provide additional experience before or during the clinical experiences.
Microteaching is a concentrated, focused form of peer feedback and discussion that can improve teaching strategies. It was developed in the early and mid-1960s by Dwight Allen and his colleagues at the Stanford Teacher Education Program (Politzer, 1969) The microteaching program was designed to prepare the students for their internships in the fall. In this early version of microteaching, pre-service teachers at Stanford taught part-time to a small group of pupils (usually 4 to 5). The pupils were high school students who were paid volunteers and represented a cross-section of the types of students the pre-service teachers would face during their internships.
Why use microteaching?
Microteaching has several benefits. First, because the lessons are so short (usually 5 to 10 minutes), they have to focus on specific strategies. This means that someone participating in a microteaching session can get feedback on specific techniques he or she is struggling with. In a pre-service or training situation, participants can practice a newly learned technique in isolation, rather than working that technique into an entire lesson (Vare, 1993).
Microteaching is also an opportunity to experiment with new teaching techniques. Rather than trying something new with a real class, microteaching can be a laboratory to experiment and receive feedback, first (Kuhn, 1968).
How does micro-teaching work?
In the classic Stanford model, each participant teaches a short lesson, generally 5 to 10 minutes, to a small group. The “students” may be actual students, like in the original Stanford program, or they may be peers playing the role of students. In the case of pre-service teachers and teaching assistants, there generally is at least one “expert”, as well. If desired, the session can be videotaped for review later (Vare, 1993).
The presentation is followed by a feedback session. In some cases, the feedback session can be followed by a re-teach, so that the instructor has an opportunity to practice the improvements suggested during feedback (Vare, 1993).
Giving Feedback
Receiving criticism is hard for all of us. Setting a tone of respect and professionalism may help participants to be tactful and to keep feedback constructive. Here is an example of ground rules used by the CASTL program at California State University (http://fdc.fullerton.edu/learning/CASTL/carnegie_microt