Source: European Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 37, No. 4, 453–446, 2014
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)
This study aimed to determine the effects of microteaching on the sense of self-efficacy in teaching of a group of special education pre-service teachers’ in comparison with the effects of traditional teaching.
Method
The participants were 70 pre-service teachers in the special education teacher preparation programme at a public university in the north of Turkey. They were enrolled in the Methods of Teaching Course. None of the participants had received any previous training in microteaching. Therefore, one group was randomly selected as the experimental group and the other as the control group.
The participants in the experimental group were exposed to microteaching training for one semester. In the microteaching training, each pre-service teacher in the experimental group planned and implemented a lesson that included teaching methods, activities, materials, class management and behaviour management strategies.
The author administered the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES), which was developed by Tschannen- Moran and Hoy (2001), to both the experimental and control groups at the beginning and end of the application.
Discussion
The findings revealed that the sense of self-efficacy in teaching of the participants in both the control and experimental groups increased. The author suggests that the increase in the sense of self-efficacy in teaching among pre-service teachers in both groups might be related to their learning experiences in the ‘Methods of Teaching’ course.
An important result was that the sense of self-efficacy of the participants in the experimental group increased at a statistically significant level when compared with that of the participants in the control group. The author argues that this finding indicates that the microteaching experience positively affected the sense of self-efficacy in teaching of the pre-service teachers in the experimental group.
In microteaching training, the participants face an authentic teaching situation, have the opportunity to plan the teaching, learn time management and reduce teaching problems. The author argues that it can be inferred from the current results that the participants in the experimental group were able to develop their teaching skills and reduce their teaching problems with the help of the microteaching training.
The participants in the experimental group shared their experiences with each other, so this collaboration might have played a role in the development of their sense of self-efficacy in teaching. The participants in the experimental group stated that the microteaching experience was beneficial to them because of collaboration and the sharing of their experiences with each other.
Conclusion and recommendations
The author concludes that this study showed that a microteaching experience positively developed the sense of self-efficacy in teaching of pre-service teachers in a special education teacher preparation programme.
The author suggests that teacher educators in the special education teacher preparation programme should implement microteaching in order to improve pre-service teachers’ sense of self-efficacy in teaching.
References
Tschannen-Moran, M., and A. W. Hoy. 2001. “Teacher Efficacy: Capturing an Elusive Construct.” Teaching and Teacher Education 17: 783–805.