Why Micro-Teaching is Important for Teachers?

If you are a student of faculty of education or a teacher, you must be familiar with Micro-Teaching. It is one of the compulsory course that you have to take before taking teaching practice. Micro-Teaching is not only charged to the university students but also for teachers who have been teaching as a quality improvement of educators. Typically, teachers should attend a micro teaching class for administrative proceedings in promotion.

In this article, I would like to explain the importance of micro-teaching. Before I write about it, I have to explain about the definition of Micro-Teaching including its history in education.

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The Definition of Micro-Teaching

Basically, the application of Micro-teaching is one of the efforts to develop the knowledge, skill and professional attitude of a teacher. To understand more about the Micro-Teaching, I refer to Allen's definition:

“Micro-teaching is a teacher training and faculty development technique whereby the teacher reviews a recording of a teaching session, in order to get constructive feedback from peers and/or students about what has worked and what improvements can be made to their teaching technique." (Wikipedia)

The history of Micro-Teaching was started in 1960s at Stanford University. Allen is the first one who created the concept of Micro-teaching to be applied in education faculty to enhance the teaching performance of prospective teachers. This concept gives the opportunity for prospective teacher to get involved in teaching experience. This Model, usually, is scaled down in terms of the number of time and students for a 4 to 20 minutes and 3 to 10 students (Allen, 1970)

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Why Micro-Teaching Is Important for Teachers

Every teacher would say that Micro-Teaching is very important for the professional development because it play a vital roles in developing their knowledge, skills and professional attitudes as a educator. Furthermore, In this chance I would like to explain some points about the importance of Micro-Teaching that suggested by Allen, (1970):

1. Micro-Teaching is a real teaching situation but the number of students and time is scaled down into small portion. This is different to simulated teaching. In the Micro-Teaching the students is peers who play a role as a students. After the teaching process the peers will give the feedback on the teacher's performance.

2. The teacher can get the feedback from the supervisor, peers, or video records directly to help the teacher to develop their weaknesses in teaching performance. The information can be the aids for his/her future teaching in the real classroom.

3. Micro-Teaching allows the teacher to focus on the acquisition of teaching skills through the selection of only one standard of competence. Thus, it helps the teacher reduce the complexity of teaching in the normal classroom.

4. Micro-Teaching will no endanger student if the teacher fails in teaching. It has low risk situation for both students and the teacher, and the teacher is allowed to choose the topic of lesson that he/she greatest capability on it.

5. Micro-Teaching provide a more conducive classroom where the teacher can prepare themselves to be not anxiety when they face the real classroom, and choose some learning strategies in the real large classroom with various
   backgrounds of students.

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Conclusion

By understanding the importance of Micro-Teaching, The teacher can prepare his/herself in taking this compulsory course in developing their professional career as a teacher. Being a profesional teachers means he/she must have teaching skills, knowledge and attitudes as a teacher.

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Reference
Allen (1970) Micro-Teaching: History and Preset Status
Wikipedia : Micro-Teaching

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Regards,
ALFYD, English Language Status