SELF‐concept change through a microteaching experience

Thirty‐two Diploma of Education students took part in a microteaching course of 12 weeks duration. Each student taught two, 10 minute micro‐lessons to groups of five secondary school students, their performance being observed by their fellow trainee teachers and recorded on videotape. After the microlesson had been completed, the student teacher viewed his taped performance and made the decision whether to use it with his colleagues and the pupils he had taught in a discussion group format. In all cases this was done. Students completed the Tennessee Self‐Concept Scale before and after their microteaching course, their scores being compared with other Diploma of Education students who had had no such experience. Results indicated that self‐concept change in a positive direction was facilitated by the microteaching experience.     

“We do investigate ourselves”: figurative assessment practices as meaning-making in English education

ABSTRACT

In this study of microteaching in a secondary English methods course, we intentionally stray from normative assessment practice, instead asking pre-service teachers to provide feedback on their peers’ microteaching using assessment practices designed to orient them figuratively. The term ‘figurative’ refers to ‘figurative language’: the bringing together of multiple, seemingly unrelated things, through associative configurations, and placing them side-by-side in order to reorient thought towards new or unexpected meanings. This study reframes assessment, not as a means of collecting data on what students have learned from a given lesson in order to evaluate and augment learning, but instead figuratively, as providing opportunities to expand and imagine ways of meaning-making through and with assessment. We examine in detail four modes of figurative assessment practices through which we sought to surprise and disorient students, producing new and different kinds of responses to microteaching that went beyond normative feedback practices.     

Pair microteaching:an unrealistic pedagogy in pre-service methodology courses?

Despite its inherent nature of artificiality, microteaching has been widely used as a routine procedure in pre-service teacher education courses to apply theoretical knowledge and develop practical teaching competence. Its importance in the practice element of teacher education programmes has given rise to a considerable amount of attention to its potential in research. However, there has been little or no research on pair microteaching, which is exploited as a circumstantial compromise and innovation. This article reports on a small-scale study of the effect of pair microteaching on EFL (English as a foreign language) student teachers’ professional learning. Triangulated sources of data were collected qualitatively to investigate a group of 30 student teachers’ perspectives about their eight-week-long microteaching experience on an English language teaching methodology course. The results show a high level of endorsement of the experience despite the drawbacks of limited practice opportunity and artificiality of the experience. The article concludes that pair microteaching can be a feasible pedagogy in methodology courses that can be supplemented by other forms of direct and indirect school experiences.     

Enhancing the Effects of Modeling Through Role-Play Practice

The effects of yoking role-play practice to modeling treatments designed to teach the rudimentary counseling skill of reflection of feeling were investigated. Twenty-eight novice counselors-in-training were randomly assigned to one of the four treatment conditions: written model, videotape model, written model plus role-play practice, and videotape model plus role-play practice. Effectiveness was measured by ratings of students' oral responses to 16 videotaped client vignettes. The multivariate analyses revealed that although there were no significant differences between the two modeling conditions without role-play practice, there were significant differences between students who received an opportunity to role-play practice and those who did not. From the results of the analyses, it was concluded that role-play practice significantly enhanced the effectiveness of the written model but not the video model. These results are discussed in terms of counselor skills training.     

Reciprocal peer tutoring and repeated reading: Increasing practicality using student groups

Previous research has investigated the efficacy of peer‐mediated repeated reading (RR) interventions carried out by student dyads. This research extends the existing research by investigating the impact of RR on oral reading fluency and comprehension when carried out by a teacher in small groups of fourth‐grade students. Outcomes were analyzed using a multiple baseline single case design across groups in addition to supplementary analyses (dual level and trend criteria, percentage of non‐overlapping data, class box plots). Visual analysis of results indicated that RR was effective in improving levels of reading fluency and reading comprehension skills of four targeted students as well as classwide performance in fluency and comprehension. Acceptability ratings showed that the small group format was easy to implement and acceptable to the teacher and students. Despite positive findings, RR may need to be supplemented by other instructional and practice strategies to promote consistent and comprehensive changes beyond fluency. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Do classroom exemplars promote the application of principles in teacher education? A comparison of videos,animations, and narratives

Students learned about teaching principles with a multimedia program that either did not include a classroom exemplar illustrating how to apply the learned principles to the teaching practice (control group) or included a classroom exemplar in video, animation, or text format. Across two experiments, video and animation groups reported more favorable attitudes towards learning and were better able to apply the learned principles than the control group. Text and control groups did not differ in their learning or attitudes towards learning, suggesting that format is an important factor in determining the effectiveness of classroom exemplars as pedagogical tools for teacher education. Results encourage the use of visual classroom exemplars to promote the application of theory into practice.     

体育教育专业体操普修课“微格教学”的设计与实践

微格教学是美国斯坦福大学艾伦博士等人创立的培养师范生课堂教学技能的方法,它是由少数学生组成的小课堂,以现代教育理论为指导,通过多项反馈、分项,按照严格的强度对师范生轮流进行培训,使学生理解教学过程并掌握教学技能,从而形成培养师范生教学技能的教学模式。将“微格教学”应用于体育教育专业体操普修课中,以教育心理学与现代教育理论为指导,把基本教学技能按类型分为若干不同的单独技能,并根据相应的技能培训内容进行教学设计,通过视频、角色扮演、示范、备课、反馈和讨论等一系列具体的教学活动,对技能进行正面和反面示范,使每位学生明确技能培训的目标和要求,从而形成以能力培养为中心,多功能并举的体操教学新模式。     

Problem- Versus Case-based Approaches in Teaching Medical Students about Eating Disorders: A controlled comparison

Fourth-year medical students were allocated randomly to either problem-based learning (PBL) or case-based learning (CBL) tutorials on the topic of eating disorders during their 6-week psychiatry attachment. All students were evaluated in terms of their tutorial performance and the factual knowledge they had acquired. In turn, students evaluated the performance of the tutors in both the PBL and the CBL process. No significant differences were found between the student groups with respect to their performance or acquired knowledge. Furthermore, there were no significant differences when comparing the PBL format with the CBL format with regard to group functioning or oral interaction between students. Finally, student ratings for tutor performance on feedback, group management skills and personal qualities showed no differences. Implications for education are discussed.     

Exploring authenticity of microteaching in pre-service teacher education programmes

This study examined the perspective of a cohort of 60 Chinese EFL pre-service teachers with regards to microteaching. Reflective paper writing was employed to explore the student teachers’ perceptions of the experience. The study results show that microteaching was a useful tool for the pre-service teachers’ professional development; however, the experience was not without flaws. The most commonly perceived deficiency was artificiality, which appeared to have to some extent limited the student teachers’ development of real-life classroom teaching competence. The study suggests that microteaching should be supplemented with various alternative forms of school experience and practice.     

Learning to teach: Effects of classroom observation,assignment of appropriate lesson preparation templates and stage focused feedback

This article focuses on improving the instructional quality of student teachers in elementary education. We developed a coaching approach involving classroom observation and appropriate lesson preparation and feedback templates. Using an untreated control group design with pre-test and posttest (n = 198), we answered the question ‘whether student teachers who learned to teach with the new coaching approach achieved a higher level of pedagogical and didactical teaching skills compared to student teachers who did not receive this approach’. The effect variable used was the observation instrument ICALT. We compared the average scores of the control group and the experimental group on the posttest (ANCOVA). The differences found on the posttest, after controlling for the confounding variables, were significant on all ICALT scales. These effect sizes are medium on the scales; ‘Safe climate’, and ‘Clear instruction’, and large on the scales; ‘Classroom management’, ‘Activating pupils’, ‘Adaptive teaching’, and ‘Teaching learning strategies’.     

Micro-Counseling: An Experimental Study of Pre-Practicum Training in Communicating Test Results

Micro-counseling techniques were used to train 10 beginning graduate students in communicating test results. Training emphasized listening and responding to cues given by the client, brief and concise statements about test-related information, and relating the information to the client's experiences and needs. Training aids included programmed materials, brief videotapes of positive and negative models, role-playing, and videotape feedback of the role-playing and test interpretation sessions. Judges' ratings of trainees in the experimental group were significantly higher than their ratings for the 10 trainees in the control group. Client ratings of counselor effectiveness did not differ significantly for the two groups. Changes in clients' pre- and post-test attitude scores and knowledge scores were statistically significant. An enthusiastic response to the micro-counseling approach was evident from both inexperienced and experienced graduate students.     

Real-Time Feedback on Rater Drift in Constructed-Response Items: An Example From the Golden State Examination

In this study, patterns of variation in severities of a group of raters over time or so-called "rater drift" was examined when raters scored an essay written under examination conditions. At the same time feedback was given to rater leaders (called "table leaders") who then interpreted the feedback and reported to the raters. Rater severities in five successive periods were estimated using a modified linear logistic test model (LLTM, Fischer, 1973) approach. It was found that the raters did indeed drift towards the mean, but a planned comparision of the feedback with a control condition was not successful; it was believed that this was due to contamination at the table leader level. A series of models was also estimated designed to detect other types of rater effects beyond severity: a tendency to use extreme scores, and tendency to prefer certain categories. The models for these effects were found to be showing significant improvement in fit, implying that these effects were indeed present, although they were difficult to detect in relatively short time periods.     

Interaction of wait time feedback and questioning instruction on middle school science teaching

Wait time, the duration of teacher pauses after questions, is an important variable in research on science teaching. This project investigated the effects of increasing teacher's wait times on general questioning skills in science teaching. In previous research, the influence of wait time training has been confounded with instruction in general questioning skills, making it difficult to test the hypothesis that increasing the wait time will by itself improve classroom discussions. In this project, these variables were separated through the use of four treatment groups made up of science teachers. One group received instruction in wait time using a newly developed electronic feedback device that monitors the duration of teacher and student pauses; a second group received instruction in general questioning skills; a third group received both types of instruction; a comparison group received no instruction of either type. The tape recordings were coded and analyzed for classroom interaction data. Comparisons were made using discriminant analysis, analyses of variance, and correlational relationships. The wait time feedback devices facilitated the production of wait time means consistently superior to baseline performance, albeit slightly below the 3-second criterion sought. Regardless, the feedback groups did produce a large number of the hypothesized changes. Significant effects were found from a comparison of the discriminant function scores. Effects consistently favored the groups with the feedback devices. The presence of the guides seemed to make little difference. The groups with the devices used greater numbers of high-level questions, especially those of the evaluative level. There were more contributions from students, as measured by length of answers, frequency of volunteered contributions, numbers of relevant student words, and percentages of student talk.     

Cognitive Load and Assembly Tasks: effect of instructional formats on learning assembly procedures

The study investigated the effect on learning of four different instructional formats used to teach assembly procedures. Cognitive load and spatial information processing theories were used to generate the instructional material. The first group received a physical model to study, the second an isometric drawing, the third an isometric drawing plus a model and the fourth an orthographic drawing. Forty secondary school students were presented with the four different instructional formats and subsequently tested on an assembly task. The findings indicated that there may be evidence to argue that the model format which only required encoding of an already constructed three dimensional representation, caused less extraneous cognitive load compared to the isometric and the orthographic formats. No significant difference was found between the model and the isometric‐plus‐model formats on all measures because 80% of the students in the isometric‐plus‐model format chose to use the model format only. The model format also did not differ significantly from other groups in total time taken to complete the assembly, in number of correctly assembled pieces and in time spent on studying the tasks. However, the model group had significantly more correctly completed models and required fewer extra looks than the other groups.     

英语师范生教师教育课程改革:"3DR"课程方案

文章从课程目标、课程内容、教学模式及其评价方式等角度介绍海南师范学院外语系自2000年以来开始实施的“3DR”英语师范生教师教育课程改革方案,重点讨论该方案中“描述课堂观察”、“设计课堂任务”、“演示教学思想”、“反思教学实践”等专业实践活动及训练策略对促进师范生综合专业素质的发展和使之适应英语教师持续发展的重要意义。     

高师院校英语师范生微格教学管窥

微格教学前应复习语言教学理论与实践知识,确定微格教学实施方案,撰写教案并开展课前研讨;微格教学中应注意教师教态与角色转变、课堂用语与指令的准确性以及教学决策的合理性;微格教学后应开展评价与反思。微格教学存在的诸如管理不够完善、指导教师认识模糊、评价标准缺乏系统性等问题应引起注意。     

Developing Reflection on Practice Through Journal Writing: Impacts of variations in the focus and level of feedback

Journal writing is a popular technique for encouraging student-teachers to reflect on their professional practice during field experience placements. This paper explores the role and importance of journal feedback in developing students' reflective skills. Weekly journal entries were submitted by 35 student-teachers during a 6-week field placement. Students received individual feedback on each journal entry that focused on either the level of reflection attained in their writing or the particular issues that their entries addressed. Within these groups, the type of feedback provided was further varied according to the level of questioning and challenge with which students were confronted (high versus low). The relative effectiveness of the four different types of feedback in improving student journal writing and facilitating reflection on practice is examined. Although students in all conditions reported positive aspects of the feedback they received, feedback that focused on the level of reflection attained was more effective in bringing about improvement in journal writing than feedback that focused on teaching issues. Such feedback, combined with issue-related questions and comments designed to challenge the student and encourage consideration of alternative perspectives, would appear to offer the most effective strategy for enhancing the effectiveness of journal writing as a learning tool.     

The effects of variations in lesson control and practice on learning from interactive video

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of variations in lesson control and practice on the learning of facts, procedures, and problem-solving skills during interactive video instruction. Subjects were volunteers from graduate and advanced level undergraduate college classes. The instructional content was a 30-minute videotape. “Project Lifesaver,” which was designed to introduce cardiopulmonary resuscitation [CPR]. Students were randomly assigned to one of three instructional control groups: designer control, learner control, and linear control. A posttest was administered to assess learning of facts, procedures, and problem-solving skills. The results indicated that there were [1] significant differences between practiced and non-practiced information; [2] significant differences on posttest scores among various lesson control groups; and [3] a significant interaction between practice and type of learning.