The Effects of Microteaching Experience on Student Teachers’ Secondary English Class Observation

The Effects of Microteaching Experience on Student Teachers’ Secondary English Class Observation Kyungsuk Chang Korea Institute for Curriculum & Evaluation Youngjoo JeonMokwon Univers

The Effects of Microteaching Experience

on Student Teachers’ Secondary English Class Observation

Kyungsuk Chang (Korea Institute for Curriculum & Evaluation)

Youngjoo Jeon(Mokwon University) Chang, Kyungsuk, & Jeon, Youngjoo (2015) The effects of microteaching experience on

student teachers’ secondary English class observation English Language Teaching, 27(4),

1-21

In the field of pre-service teacher education microteaching has been widely used to help student teachers with instructional experiences with focus on teaching skills Recent attention to microteaching to enhance student teachers’ awareness relates to emphasis on reflection in professional development This study aims to investigate how prospective teachers’ microteaching experience influenced their English class observation The research was conducted with a total of 35 student teachers attending the ELT department at a Teachers College The data was gathered via class observation before and after microteaching experience, where the participants’ teaching was videotaped and reflected The used observation scheme consists of five areas including preparation, presentation, execution/methods, personal characteristics, and teacher-student interaction The analysis of the observation data in each area reveals that there was statistically significant difference before and after microteaching The execution/methods area shows more difference than any other area The oral and written reflection data is analyzed to see how microteaching affected the subjects’ perception on the English language teaching they observed The study concludes with some suggestions for incorporating microteaching into a pre-service teacher education program to help student teachers become reflective practitioner

I INTRODUCTION

Cruickshank and Metcalf (1993) defined microteaching as a scaled-down teaching encounter

in which pre-service teachers demonstrate their ability to perform one of several desirable teacher abilities to a group of 3-5 peers during a short time period Microteaching was developed

in the early 1960s at the Stanford Teacher Education Program, representing a significant departure from traditional kinds of teacher training programs (McKnight, 1980) With its original focus on discrete teaching skills, microteaching has been widely used to teach student

 1 st author: Kyungsuk Chang; Corresponding author: Youngjoo Jeon

teachers to master specific teaching skills in the field of pre-service teacher education In microteaching a student prepares and teaches a brief lesson to their peers Feedback is provided once the lesson is completed Microteaching involves teaching simplified in three ways: class size, lesson length and task complexity (Benton-Kupper, 2001; Fernández & Roinson, 2007)

As Benton-Kupper (2001) states, while some may have come and gone, incorporating microteaching experience into pre-service teacher education programs is still alive and strong in the 21st century He goes on to note that various components to microteaching have been altered

or added but the general philosophy still remains The long-term survival of microteaching in teacher education appears to be attributed to the philosophy and its effectiveness in improving student teachers’ teaching skills Subramanianm (2006) indicates, the use of microteaching within teacher education is seen as an on-campus way of introducing pre-service teachers to the complexities of teaching and a bridge that connects theory to practice As Benton-Kupper (2001) points out, the concept of microteaching appears to be alive and well Microteaching is considered to be a viable approach to meeting the desired goals of preparing pre-service teachers

to become effective and reflective teachers (Amobi, 2005)

Expanding pre-service teachers’ microteaching experience to reflective practice relates to a paradigm shift from skill or competency-based teacher education In the traditional skill or competency-based prescriptive approach, student teachers practice discrete teaching skills or techniques to master them to be an effective teacher (Burns & Richards, 2009) This approach has been criticized for dilemmas novice teachers face in the real classroom setting Components

to microteaching have been changed to meet the need to enhance student teachers’ reflection (Amobi, 2005) Emphasis has moved to pre-service teachers’ active involvement in reflection on their teaching practice beyond mastering discrete teaching skills Compared to the developments

of microteaching in the field of general education, little research has been done in second language teacher education Little has been explored about how microteaching affects student teachers’ attitudes, perception, or awareness of teaching

This study aims to investigate how prospective English teachers’ microteaching experience influenced the way of doing class observation It examines the impacts of microteaching on student teachers’ development in the pre-service teacher education setting Implications are drawn from the findings for pre-service teacher training program and evaluation, long-term teacher professional development, and field-based practicum

II RELEVANT LITERATURE

1 Learning Discrete Teaching Skills

Microteaching is often focused on practicing a particular teaching skill, e.g presenting

learning objectives, providing feedback, using wait-time appropriately etc The Stanford model developed in the early 1960s is considered to be the most commonly practiced form of microteaching in language teacher training (Cripwell & Geddes, 1982) Fundamental skills all teachers needed were established from the observation and analysis of a large number of lessons

As McKnight (1980) puts, when it was developed in the 1960s it was seen as a way of acclimatizing students to teaching over a shorter time period, and early studies indicated a favorable comparison with traditional student teaching, presumably because of the use of nurturant and continuing supervisory feedback, the development of a group of technical skills of teaching and the reduction of the complexity and scope of normal classroom variables (a number of students, length of lessons, etc.) to provide a scaled-down, yet realistic, teaching environment

Principal factors studied at early research were the scaled-down format, the technical skills of teaching, and the use of modeling and feedback variables in the technical skills training (Allen

& Ryan, 1969; McLeod & McIntyre, 1977) Early studies on microteaching measured teaching skill acquisition by counting frequency of the desired behavior across the various teaching occasions Videotaping was used to provide reliable and valid data on student teachers’ teaching performance (Lee, 1992) McKnight (1980) depicts a typical microteaching as a program where after a technical skill of teaching is described for the trainee through a videotape of a master teacher modeling the skill, the trainee’s subsequent brief teaching performance is videotaped and then reviewed under various supervisory and other feedback contingencies Its original model of microteaching in the 1960s was cyclical in nature since it involved ‘plan, teach, observe, critique’ followed by the repetition of the same steps after the whole process was reviewed (Amobi, 2005; Bell, 2007; Ismail, 2011)

Microteaching has gained popularity in the pre-service language teacher training in that it may bridge the gap between theory and practice As Ismail (2011) points out, a microteaching program provides pre-service teacher-trainees with a simulated situation to put the theories that they have learned into practice and to develop confidence and teaching skills while conducting a mini-lesson to their colleagues While some consider microteaching as fake teaching since it does not involve real students in a real teaching situation where a teacher and students interact naturally, it has been argued that it provides students with valuable teaching experiences and made them aware of the benefits and relationships between theory and practice (Bell, 2007; Ismail, 2011)

Subramaniam (2006) analyses the benefits that microteaching provide pre-service teachers

in various studies (Amobi, 2005; Brent & Thomson, 1996; Farris, 1991; Hawkey, 1995; Wilkinson, 1996) Among them are exposing them to the realities of teaching, introducing to the roles as teachers, and helping them to see the importance of planning, decision making, and implementation of instruction, enabling them to develop and improve teaching skills, and helping them build confidence for teaching Judging from a number of studies on the effects of

microteaching, it is convincing that microteaching affects positively However, as Cripwell and Geddes (1982) point out, it is still difficult to see how microteaching can give help with the development of skills that are only observable in a real situation, particularly if trainees are teaching a microclass of other student teachers

2 Student Teachers’ Reflection on Teaching

In the developmental paradigm of language teacher education, emphasis is given to the individual teachers’ socio-cultural context (Johnson, 2006; Wright, 2010) While fundamental skills needed by teachers are practiced in microteaching, it is observed that teaching practice in a microclass depends largely on how individual teachers perceive good teaching As Cripwell and Geddes (1982) observe, while a number of checklists and assessment forms have been used to define the characteristics of a good teachers’performance, it is clear that they differ over what is considered important Studies have been conducted to see how microteaching experience affects pre-service teachers’ perception on teaching It is found that microteaching inculcates the value of reflective practice to student teachers (Amobi, 2005; Benton-Kupper, 2001) Wilkinson (1996) claim that pre-service teachers who engage in microteaching are more receptive to feedback Brent and Thomson (1996) contend that microteaching encourages self-evaluation of self-perceptions and teaching behaviors

It is observed that emphasis on trainees’ reflection on teaching has influence on the focus

of implementation of microteaching into the pre-service teacher training institutes Brent and Thomson (1996) observe that the implementation enables both pre-service teachers and teacher educators to engage in dialogue and discussion centered on making connections between theories of teaching and microteaching experiences Their observation is different from the clinical supervisory mode where student teachers get the judgemental and prescriptive feedback from trainers to help them master fundamental teaching skills This is related to the recent evolvement of microteaching from the traditional version to modified versions with teacher education programs Subramaniam (2006), in his comparison, identifies differences between the traditional version and modified versions of microteaching One main difference is a shift from a dependence on clinical supervisors as evaluators to a dependence on course instructors and peers as evaluators Studies show that feedback serves as the content for and quality of reflection, enabling preserve teachers to reflect on their microteaching experiences leading to changes in self-perceptions and subsequent teaching behaviors (Amobi, 2005; Benton-Kupper, 2001; Chang & Lee, 2012; Heo & Kim, 2010; Kim, 2009; Kim & Yi, 2013; Paek, 2008; Wilkinson, 1996; Yi & Kim, 2011)

There is little research on changes in student teachers’ attitudes, perception, reflection on

teaching within a simplified context in the pre-service English teacher training programs

At the center of reflection in teacher professional development is class observation

Learning to teach through class observation is closely related to changes in trainees’

awareness, attitudes or perceptions (Bailey, Curtis, & Nunan, 2001; Wallace, 1991) The

present study aims to investigate how student teachers’ microteaching experience with

focus on reflection brings about changes in their English class observation

III METHODOLOGY

1 Participants and Context of the Study

The subjects of this study were 35 prospective teachers who registered at the department of

English education, Teachers’ College, K University in S City They enrolled on the English

Language Teaching Theory and Practice Course taught by the researcher The syllabus of the

course is shown in Table 1

TABLE 1

The Course Syllabus

1 -Getting Started

2

-A Methodical History of Language Teaching

-The postmethod era: Toward informed approaches

-Teaching by principles

3

-Intrinsic motivation in the classroom

-Teaching across age levels

-Teaching across proficiency levels

-Teaching and materials

-Technology in the classroom

-Initiating interaction in the classroom

2 Data Collection and Analysis

Thirty-five prospective English teachers were required to prepare a twenty-minute lesson using one of the authorized English textbooks used at the secondary schools They were asked to teach the lesson their peers After teaching the mini-lesson, each student teacher was required to reflect orally and in writing about their experience in conducting the lesson

To compare how microteaching experience affected the participants’ classroom observation, the student teachers observed the same class before and after microteaching On Week 9 they were required to observe an English class done by an experienced teacher, and they observed the same class on Week 14, when every participant finished microteaching The tool used for the pre- and post-class observation was the scheme proposed by Brown (2007) in the main textbook for the course The observation scheme used to gather the data consists of 5 areas (see Appendix):

 Preparation

 Presentation

 Execution/Methods

 Personal Characteristics

 Teacher-Student Interaction

There are 41 statements in the observation scheme Presentation area has 3; presentation 10; execution/methods 13; personal characteristics 5; and Teacher/student interaction 10 The scheme has a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (unsatisfactory), 2 (average), 3 (above average)

to 4 (excellent), and not applicable (N/A) The student teachers’ responses to each question in the pre- and post-classroom observation were analyzed using SPSS 12.0 version for descriptive statistics, frequency analysis, and paired t-test to see difference between the pre- and post-classroom observation

The qualitative data analysis was also done in order to better understand the effects of the student teachers’ microteaching experience on observation The data from the participants’ oral and written reflection about their microteaching experience was analyzed using Ross’ (1989) Content Analysis Method The data was categorized into themes consistent with the areas to be examined through the current research (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994) The details and specifics of the data were looked at to discover important themes and interrelationships

IV FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The results of the analysis of the class observation and the reflection data reveal how the student teachers’ microteaching experience had influence The changes in each area of class observation are discussed with the quantitative and qualitative data

1 Most Significantly Changed Areas

The observation results of five areas were changed after experiencing microteaching The comparison of the pre- and post-observation results shows the evaluation of each area changed after microteaching The execution/methods area had the most difference in the mean value, and teacher-student interaction area had the second most difference after microteaching experience The personal characteristics area revealed the least change after the experience As shown in Table 1, the difference between the pre- and post-observation is statistically significant at the p-value of 05 and 01

TABLE 2

Comparison of Observation Areas (N=35)

At the oral reflection, some student teachers mentioned that microteaching helped them see

the principles behind teaching Participant L stated:

When I was asked to observe the class at the first time, I wasn’t quite engaged in the observation

No doubt I missed many things, just ticking the boxes in the checklist I admit it is a shame on

me My second observation was completely different from the first one After teaching a

minilesson to my peers, I could see what I missed at the first observation I started to the

principles behind teaching observed

Student teacher C also mentioned in her written reflection she appreciated and had empathy

with the teacher after doing microteaching She expressed changes in her attitudes toward teaching:

…I didn’t think she(the teacher) did very well at the first observation I thought her teaching was

what anyone could do without any specialty … Preparing and doing my minilesson, I could see

nothing was easy as it looked I felt empathy with the teacher and her teaching looked great

The students’ oral and written reflection supports that microteaching changed the student teachers’ perception on the observed teaching They gave more credit to teaching after experiencing microteaching This is in line with benefits prospective teachers gain from microteaching in previous studies (Bailey, Curtis, & Nunan, 2001; Benton-Kupper, 2001; Ogeyik, 2009)

was also an increase in the mean value in the material and goal preparation, but not statistically significant

2 The lesson reviewed material and

1.291 (0.205)

3 The prepared goals/objectives were

0.645 (0.523)

Another participant shared her understanding about the preparation of the observed lesson

By microteaching I think I learned different ways to plan an English lesson, which I had not thought before This helped me see good points that I could learn from the observed lesson … I feel individual teachers have their own teaching styles I cannot say this is right or wrong Every lesson is different It should be appreciated as it was planned

It was found that the reflection on their microteaching and learning from the reflection had a positive effect on observing other lessons This was applied to the participants’ observing the lesson preparation The results support the assumption that student teachers’ professional development can take place through teaching their peers in microteaching (Amobi, 2005; Ismail, 2011)

3 Presentation

Table 4 shows that while the mean of the evaluation in the presentation area is less than three

(above average) except No 4, it has increased after microteaching experience except No 6

Most student teachers evaluated the pace of the observed lesson negatively and even after microteaching their evaluation became even worse The mean of the teacher material

presentation at the students’ level of comprehension has increased most in all the features under presentation, from 2.27 to 3.24 This increase was statistically significant at p<.01 level

5 The lesson was smooth, sequenced, and

0.255 (0.801)

(0.763)

7 Directions were clear and concise and students

1.000 (0.324)

8 Material was presented at the students' level of

3.187** (0.003)

9 An appropriate percentage of the class was

student production of the language 1.74 0.95 1.94 0.84 0.20

1.125 (0.268)

10 The teacher answered questions carefully and

0.487 (0.629)

11 The method(s) was(were) appropriate to the

1.683 (0.102)

12 The teacher knew when the students were

1.832 (0.077)

13 The teacher showed an interest in, and

enthusiasm for, the subject taught 2.91 1.00 3.18 0.80 0.27

1.602 (0.119)

** p <.01

The student teachers evaluated the appropriateness of the student language production percentage The above table reveals the mean value of the feature remain at less than average level In their reflection the participants often pointed out that the teacher in the observed class needed to introduce new strategies to increase the student’s participation in oral production

One of the comments the student teachers gave in their oral and written reflection was related

to analyze the features of a lesson from student perspectives Prospective teacher H observed:

… it is a good experience to teach my peers in a microteaching I could see that it was really difficult to meet individual students’ differences in learning There were differences even among

my peers I wondered how the teacher managed the differences among individual students She