CHAPTER # 5 INNOVATIVE METHODS OF TEACHING

5.1 MICRO TEACHING

Micro teaching is a new concept in the field of Educational Technology. The term, first of all, was coined by Dwight W. Allen and his co-workers in 1961 at Stanford University, U.S.A.   It is now considered as a very effective teacher training technique at pre-service and in-service level and used as an effective research tool all over the world.

Teaching is a complex activity. It consists of a number of verbal and non-verbal acts. To produce an effective teacher, training should be given to perform effectively in each teaching act or teaching skill. So it is the central point of Micro teaching to break the whole teaching activity into simple skills and provide training in them under controlled conditions. Experts observed actual performance of skills and provide feed back to improve it. In this way Micro Teaching is a technique to modify or change the behavior of teacher in required direction.

DEFINITIONS

In order to understand the concept of Micro Teaching more clearly and precisely, let us study the expert views on it.

1. View of Allen:

Allen (1996) defined Micro Teaching as, "a scaled down teaching encounter in class size and class time". In this v teaching is reduced to simple form. Size of the class is reduced way. to 5-10 students. Duration of teaching period is reduced to 5- 10 minutes.

2. View of Bush:

According to Bush, Micro Teaching is "a teacher education technique which allows teachers to apply well defined teaching skills to a carefully prepared lesson in a planned series of five to ten minutes encounter with small group of real class-room students, often with an opportunity to observe the performance on video-tape".

3. View of Cliff and Others:

Cliff and others (1976) say, "Micro-teaching is a teacher training procedure which reduces the teaching situation to simpler and more controlled encounter achieved by limiting the practice to specific skill and reducing teaching time and class size".

4. View of Mc Allese:

According to Mc Allese and Urwin (1970), Micro-teaching is a simplified, controlled practice in teaching. It consists of brief lessons six to fifteen minutes with micro class of five to ten students. They further say, "Micro teaching is most often applied to the use of close circuit television (CCTV) to give immediate feedback of teacher trainee performance in a simplified environment".

5.View of Peek and Tucker:

Peek and Tucker have defined micro-teaching as "a combination of a conceptual system for identifying precisely, specified teaching skills with the use of video-tape for feedback to facilitate growth in these teaching skills"."

6. View of B.K. Passi:

In the words of B.K. Passi (1976), "Micro teaching is a training technique which requires pupil-teachers to teach a single concept, using specified teaching skills to a small number of pupils in a short duration of time".