Factors influencing the effectiveness of microteaching in a teacher education programme

Abstract

Education courses leading to the award of degrees with secondary school teaching qualifications were first taught at the University of Stirling in 1968. The overall course structure was one of concurrent academic and professional studies and from the outset it was planned that microteaching would form a component part of individual courses. A five year research project (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) was commenced in 1969 "to evaluate the contribution which microteaching could make to the preservice professional education of secondary school teachers" (McIntyre et al., 1977; p. 11). This study is one of several projects which attempted to respond to this stated objective. Other projects have been reported in McIntyre et al. (1977). Initially developed at Stanford University, microteaching programmes attempted to resolve several issues facing teacher educators. Training programmes constantly searched for an effective balance between theoretical studies and professional practice. This balance reflects a concern for the student's practical competence in the task of classroom teaching and with their ability to demonstrate understanding of the teaching-learning process, and factors which affect it. The introduction of microteaching is described in Chapter I of the present study, together with a review of the available research relating to the general effectiveness of microteaching, and to variables operating within Microteaching programmes. This discussion leads to a statement of the purposes of the present study and the hypotheses to be tested in the Stirling situation. The research focussed primarily upon teacher questioning behaviours practised in microteaching and in school classrooms, and took account of both teacher behaviours and pupil response behaviours associated with the teacher questions. With the development of a minicourse on questioning behaviours at the Far West Laboratory for Educational Development (Gall et al., 1971) an opportunity was provided to compare the effectiveness of these materials with the programme already operating at Stirling. Chapter II describes the development of a lesson analysis instrument to measure the relevant teacher and pupil behaviours and indicates the steps taken to establish the reliability of this instrument prior to its use in the main experimental programme. Given the different formats of the normal Stirling programme and the introduced minicourse programme it was advisable to gauge student and staff reaction to this innovation and questionnaires were designed for this purpose. The three experimental stages of the study are set down in Chapter III including, in each case, details of the methodology employed and the teaching programmes. Chapters IV and V present the results of the experimental programme. Chapter IV provides a full analysis and discussion of the results relevant to the teacher questioning and pupil response behaviours concluding with a testing of the hypotheses nominated for the study. Chapter V reports, and interprets, the results of the questionnaires administered to participant student teachers and staff members. In the final chapter, the findings of the present study are outlined, and a consideration of the implications of these findings is presented against the background of relevant recent research.