LEARNING TEACHING SKILLS THROUGH MICRO-TEACHING IN TEACHER TRAINING FOR CHEMISTRY TEACHING

Abstract

Teacher training equips teachers with skills that help them to substantially develop learner knowledge, skills and attitudes that translate to quality education and eventual development of a nation. The professional preparation of teachers requires that the individual being trained as a teacher should gain skills and abilities that are required to teach in a real classroom setting. To improve the acquisition of basic teaching skills, most initial teacher training programs include practice sessions through microteaching. It is notable that in most developing countries, there are serious resource constraints with many institutions lacking basic facilities such as microteaching laboratories, enough personnel for practice and adequate technological support. However, the importance of microteaching in teacher training is highly emphasized in many countries including Kenya. It is therefore important to determine whether microteaching carried out during teacher training is helpful in imparting intended skills. This study seeks to describe the teaching skills that are gained during microteaching, the perception of teacher trainees towards the effectiveness of microteaching in imparting the skills and the practices during microteaching process that assist in skill acquisition. Sixty Chemistry teacher trainees participated in the study. Descriptive research design was used. Questionnaires, microteaching lesson observation guide and focus group discussions were used to collect data from the participants. Over 85% of the student teachers indicated that microteaching helped them develop and practice teaching skills to a great extent. Many teaching skills were observed during the microteaching lessons. Teacher trainers should focus on improving specific teaching skills through microteaching. Teacher training programmes should allocate more time and resources (including detailed guides), towards microteaching programmes for quality teacher preparation.