AN INTRODUCTION TO MICROTEACHING

[Music] [Music] teaching skills developed in the micro teaching clinic of the school of education at Stanford University an introduction to micro teaching [Music] with dr. Kevin a Ryan dr. James M Cooper dr. Dwight W Allen and dr. Robert and bush [Music] there has traditionally been a gap between formal teacher education and actual teaching the gap has been one of realistic training unlike most professions the teaching profession is not provided its practitioners with opportunities for safe training safe experimentation and safe practice while students have their moot courts pilots their link trainers medical students their cadavers in those professions the denial of such non-academic training experiences would be unthinkable but in teaching the sad fact is that the opportunities for both in service and pre-service realistic training have been next to nil for many years at Stanford University teaching candidates and supplemented their academic studies with work in nearby schools as teacher aides this experience was often found to be unsatisfactory the training gap was only partly filled the experience was basically one of mere observation sure the master teacher would often give the aide a chance to teach and the student suffered for it it was like letting the pilot trainee after extensive classroom work and after observing an experienced pilot take over the controls with passengers aboard what was needed was a realistic training experience analogous to those shoes and other professions micro teaching was developed over the years in response to this need what micro teaching is provided is a safe that realistic training situation for teachers both in service and pre-service micro teaching is real teaching but at the same time it is constructed teaching it is designed so that teachers can concentrate on the mastery of specific teaching skills in a low-risk situation the students don't suffer for it because it's not part of their regular curriculum and the teachers free to experiment with different techniques increase their range of classroom skills micro teaching can be thought of as an approach or as a concept we can describe a micro teaching situation for you but we cannot prescribe one hence there are almost no unbreakable rules in micro teaching let's look at a typical micro teaching session this teacher is conducting an English lesson on the social origins of language her performance is being recorded on videotape this videotape record will later be used in the critique of the lesson second way being old words take on a new meaning now I'll just ask you if you can think of any any examples of words which had an older meaning but which are suddenly used in a new way spelling is kept the same the word is kept the same but it begins to mean a new thing mark like peel like peel yeah like kind of food and then the new meaning is something like peel out for the car okay well it would in a way it would have another word added to it yeah but you could perhaps you could use peel just even without the out and have it have a slang meaning all right can anyone think of another Carlos do you have another example bull bone okay bones the old definition being the bones in your body Kathy what which yeah Kathy what would you think the fine definition of it is you never heard of it you just well you'd know about the bones in your body but not the other do you know Beth well Carlos maybe you'll have to define it for us money money bones is a slang word for money okay okay I might make the point in them this kind of illustrates a danger of slang that is it's got an old meaning that we all know about but it can take on a new meaning and yet maybe everybody doesn't know what that new meaning is the lesson she is teaching is a genuine lesson it is a short one typically five the students she is teaching are real students although they are not part of her regular class usually four students are used but the focus of her attention and the supervisors attention is on the specific skill that she is practicing in this case higher order questions so micro teaching is genuine teaching but it is also constructed teaching and when the teachers finished the lesson she will participate in a critique with her supervisor the subject of the critique will be the use of that particular skill she is practicing and that first part was really coming along well toward the end the kids were really beginning to dig and look let's take it on some more and see see how you handle the second part now suddenly use in a new way billing is kept the same that word is kept the same but it begins to meet a new thing mark [Music] okay if you if there were time limits here and and I can understand why you choose one way if you had plenty of time what what other ways could you have gone about evoking the responses from these kids to lead them to that category to the second category did I um well I guess especially that particular one where my examples the examples were flying examples I probably could have gotten to it by just asking them if they ever made up words themselves you know if they were the cause and boards coming into the language and perhaps kind of helped them along with you know in your particular group at school or in your particular do you have if you have a particular hobby and other people who do it with you do you make up words of you and I think they might have arrived in it there never had asked kids a question and gotten that that great vacant stare yeah you know okay what if what if they've done that to you well okay then I guess I could have actually given them examples of various slang words or could have said alright can you give me some slang words now from what she learns during this critique the teacher will decide upon whatever changes she wants to improve her use of that skill after taking time to incorporate these changes into her lesson plan she will reteach the lesson which will again be analyzed the process can be repeated as often as necessary and altered to fit special circumstances a key advantage to the micro teaching approach is that it allows for immediate application of feedback that is the information that teacher gains during the critique we suggest that feedback from several sources be used one source of feedback is the supervisor he may be anyone qualified to guide the teacher in a critique of the lesson he may or may not be known to the teacher maybe a member of the institution conducting the clinic or may be employed specifically for micro teaching supervision a second source of feedback is an audio or video tape recording of the teachers performance videotape equipment is not essential to an effective micro teaching clinic but it is a most valuable tool and we urge its use when and where possible videotape assists the supervisor and analyzing the performance and in communicating his analysis to the teacher videotape allows the teacher to see herself teaching the value of this and promoting self evaluation and self improvement is enormous third we suggest the use of feedback from colleagues they may be fellow participants in the clinic besides providing the teacher with additional feedback the colleagues themselves learn by observing the session a fourth source of feedback is the student's student feedback is potentially quite rich it has been used before but almost always in unproductive ways research has shown that student feedback when intelligently channelled is highly reliable finally the teacher herself is a source of feedback the self critique is central in the micro teaching approach we want the teacher to learn how to evaluate her own performance by comparing her evaluation with those of her supervisor her colleagues and the students she will gain the perspective necessary for self evaluation these then are the five sources of available feedback they have a common quality they focus on a specific skill being practiced the supervisor does not evaluate the lesson as a whole he restricts his pratik to the specific skill under consideration the students are not just asked how did you like the lesson but they are asked questions designed to elicit information relevant to the skill being practiced my critique increases useful information while decreasing irrelevant information and since the teacher Ken shortly after their critique apply this information to a reteach lesson maximum immediate use of this feedback is made we have developed this micro teaching package around a set of skill clusters each skill cluster consists of several related teaching skills these teaching skills have been found to be basic to effective teaching we have selected what we feel are the five most basic clusters of skills and have made model films demonstrating the use of each skill in the clusters lights please for example one of the skills included in the cluster of presentation skills is a skill of using examples in this model film note how the teacher creates and maintains student interest by effective use of this skill okay can you think of another example about crustacean Melissa crab a crab but see if this crab we have here also fits our list of characteristics its crab little water yes mm-hmm we have hard shells yes let's hit this one the hardest yeah this hard shell is pretty much like an armored tank the armored protects a soldier inside the tank from bullets and so on this hard shell protects the tender body too crammed inside how about the number of legs two four six eight and inches these pictures are a little different from that Lobster but yet they're pretty obviously features another cluster of skills is what we call creating Student Involvement one of the skills in this cluster is stimulus variation note here how the teacher achieves student involvement by varying the stimuli she presents the students the monkey is all on all fours and windier ape is in the trees it just swings on its arms and the monkeys are smaller than the monkey has toes on all four feet nails like fingers and the eggs now Fanny which one did you decide will probably evolve from hey it's alright John yay yep stamp yay all right the ape um you all gave quite a few good reasons for thinking this one more excerpt we would like to show you is taken from the skill cluster we call increasing student participation this film models the use of silence and nonverbal cues note here how the teacher using no verbal cues gets his students to respond and keep the discussion going I don't think that censorship on the nation level it's more or less I don't think it's gonna cause a revolution really but I think that it's necessary I'll withhold information about um big offenses offenses ever take place you know that it is since what that is censored because I mean you know they tell you about it but they don't tell you what it is well I think censorship is kind of a form of publicity I mean well if you if you like see oh this movies for adults only you're gonna want to see it because you know well it must be just for adults only so I'm gonna see that one it'll be good and this will make you know everybody want to see it there isn't too much of that anymore they're just adult going movies it's mostly just recommended for adults all right which will get kids to go see it it is pretty easy to obtain pornographic literature lights please there are five skill clusters presentation skills creating Student Involvement increasing student participation the fourth skill cluster is called questioning skills the fifth cluster we call response repertoire a series of response skills aimed at helping teachers learn to vary their ways of responding to students each cluster contains precise detailed written descriptions of the skills written examples of the skills are also included as our transcripts of each model film there are also directions for practicing the skills on a dry run basis using skill drill sheets designed for that purpose there are training protocols in which ways to learn the skills are suggested and there are evaluation sheets designed for use by the teacher the students and the supervisor finally there is an instructors manual which gives our perspective on how the materials we've provided might most effectively be used the manual also includes information on how to organize and conduct a micro teaching clinic it is very important that these materials not be viewed as fixed this is an open-ended package we have considerable evidence that as teachers learn to use these skills they become more comfortable more varied more imaginative we know that the students like the teaching better we have favorable judgements from professional teachers who participated in micro teaching but micro teaching can be adapted to additional purposes as well such as curriculum development team teaching research and diagnosis but these skills basic to effective teaching are ideally suited to the micro teaching situation we want teachers to develop a repertoire of skills that is we want to provide the teacher with a greater range of alternatives the more alternatives a teacher has available the more effective the teacher will be professional decision-making which occurs every day in the classroom becomes a more meaningful process only if there are alternatives from which to choose micro teaching provides the control but realistic training situation necessary to the development of the basic teaching skills needed for the possibility of decision making alternatives [Music]