The Importance of Link Practice in Microteaching

INTRODUCTION

The current popular practice of teaching in which teachers are given the opportunity to enhance their teaching skills by improving the simple tasks is termed as Microteaching. It helps to enhance the real-time teaching experiences of teachers. Microteaching which involves the skills of presentation and reinforcement helps novice teachers to learn how to teach students or the art of teaching at ease. Thus, importance of Microteaching can’t be ignored.

Microteaching has been used in various fields impactfully such as life sciences, health sciences etc. Medical Council of India has been introducing changes in medical curricula and this arises the need of getting the special training to make the role of medical teachers important. There arises a need also to monitor the skill of teachers for their constant growth in performance.

 

What is microteaching?

Teaching is not only the transfer of knowledge from teachers to students and others. In fact, it is a complex process which facilitates the process of learning. Teachers are of different level and the quality of their teaching is measured by measuring the level of understanding of students from their teaching. The classrooms can never convert into a platform for gaining primary teaching skills. It becomes more tough in case of training of medical teachers as they require specific teaching skills of medical education programs.

Teaching skills to teach can be gained by technical training of more structured and cheaper way. The introduction of microteaching has made a way simpler for teachers to get training in a specific field.

Definition of Microteaching

The objective of Microteaching is to teach teacher technique about learning teaching skills. With this teaching, real teaching situations are put forward to take their advantage for developing skills and get deeper knowledge about the art of teaching and how to teach.

Dwight W. Allen and his co-workers first adopted the concept of Micro-teaching in 1961. It is a contribution of Stanford University. Simply, Microteaching helps to introduce the simplified way to reduce the complexities of the teaching process. General and rigid settings can not make teaching which is a complex process easy but with well-defined components, it can be practiced, taught and evaluated. There are a lot of verbal and non-verbal acts in teaching. The concept of Microteaching clears that teaching includes various skills. A teacher will be efficient in teaching only when they acquire the specific skills. Practice can make these teaching skills effective.

The concept of Microteaching stresses on to practice teaching under controlled conditions with specific teaching behaviors. It automatically improvises the behavior of the teacher and make the teaching-learning process more effective. While following the Microteaching, one should not put in real teaching situation as it is a scale- down sample of teaching. For example, a driver never allows its learner to drive on highway on its first driving lesson. Start with a less risky situation because if the learners makes a mistake, it does not harm anyone. Thus, it is required to break down the complex act of teaching into simpler components, so that it could be manage properly. Microteaching learning emphasizes on only one particular skill which is ‘how to teach’ rather than ‘what to teach’. This skill is practiced, attempted, and developed during the entire learning session.

It offer teaching practice to teachers where the normal complexities are reduced as:

•        Length of the lesson.

•        Number of students

•        Scope of the lesson

•        Class time

Features Of Microteaching

There are following the features of Microteaching:

Micro-Element

The concept of Microteaching is clear that it helps to reduce the complexities of the teaching and make it easier for teachers. The complexities arrives in times of teaching, during the lesson, and the subject matter and it can be overcome by concentrating on the training process.

Teachers can get training in specifically one skill as well. Before attempting the performance of complicated task, teachers should master the tasks’ components. 

Teaching Skills and Teaching Strategies

There are many skills decided by researchers which represent the tasks, procedures and strategies of teaching many subjects at different levels. These skills may be classified as:

(i) Pre-Instructional Skill

Pre-instructional skill consists of writing instructional objectives, sequencing and organizing knowledge for achieving specific appropriate content, objectives, proper organization, selection of proper audio-visual aids and others.

(ii) Instructional skills

Instructional skills consists of probing questions, reinforcing pupil participation, introducing a lesson, skills of explaining and illustrating, reinforcement, diagnosing pupil’s difficulties and others.

(iii) Post-Instructional skills

Post-Instructional skills consists of writing test, performance in a test, interpreting students, planning remedial measures and others.

The feed-back Element

Supervisors give feedbacks keeping the present system in mind after analyzing the teaching competency of the trainees. Feedbacks are dependent on reliable and authentic sources of Microteaching.

1.    Teachers give oral feedback.

2.    The participating peer groups fill observation schedules.

3.    Right feedback are given by audio-tape recording.

4.    But the most accurate feedback are given by Video-tape recording.

Safe Practice Ground

The features of classroom are available in the micro-teaching laboratory as well.

The Teaching Models

By using teaching models, a tape, a film, or demonstration by the supervisor, the learners of teaching skills can study the desired patterns of behavior.

Following programmers can be found in Microteaching:

1.    In teaching a specific teaching behavior, a particular skill is taught to pupils.

2.    To sharpen the particular skill, the teachers are given a demonstration lesson.

3.    Students are taught a pre-decided model on a suitable topic relating to the particular skill in which he wants to mastery in.

4.    By using audiotape or video-tape recorder, students get instant feedbacks. The supervisor helps students to observe and analyze the lesson. The feedback session by the peer group is called

‘critique session”

5.    The comments of supervisor direct  the teacher to re-plans or restructures the same lesson to sharpen the skill.

6.    Once, the pupil revised the lesson, it is re-taught to them.

7.    Then again feedback is given to them which is called the ‘refeed back session’.

Link practice (Integration of teaching skills)

Link practice involves the integration of skills. The main objectives of integration of teaching skills are to help in the transition from microteaching situation to real teaching situation where the trainee teacher is allowed to teach all the skills together learnt in microteaching sessions. The link practice may be defined as a process of selection, organization and utilization of different teaching skills to form an effective pattern for realizing the specified instructional objectives in a given teaching learning situation.

Importance of Link Practice in Microteaching

Micro-teaching is a versatile teaching technique. It has been used in various fields such as life science, business, psychology and many more. It focuses on ‘how to teach’. Furthermore, it emphasizes practicing teaching under controlled conditions with specific teaching behaviors. 

Every teacher would agree that micro-teaching is critical to their professional growth since it helps them develop their knowledge, abilities and professional attitudes.

The importance of micro-teaching cannot be ignored as it helps an educator gain the required skills. 

One of the major benefits of micro-teaching is that the student-teachers concentrate on practicing a specific, well-defined skill. Through the micro-teaching cycle, the teachers get immediate feedback, which they can implement instantly. Another factor that underscores the importance of micro-teaching is that it will not put students in danger if the teacher fails to teach. 

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CONCLUSION

The skills of Microteaching help pupil-teachers to to improve their own teaching. With learning the new skills of particular teaching, complex teaching process can be simplified. The importance of Microteaching can’t be ignored as it is beneficial for teaching certain fields which require special teaching skills.