Preservice Science Teachers’ Opportunities for Learning Through Reflection When Planning a Microteaching Unit

Abstract

Although microteaching is a common approach to engaging preservice teachers in reflection on teaching in on-campus courses, this reflection is usually carried out as a separate part. We examined how preservice middle school science teachers reflected amid planning a 20-min microteaching unit on sustainable development. Six groups of preservice teachers were video recorded and their conversations transcribed. We used practical epistemology analysis to analyze moments of reflection in these conversations. The preservice science teachers recurrently engaged in reflection in the course of their planning, which led to changes in perspective concerning important aspects of how to plan teaching that may be considered central for preservice science teachers to learn during their teacher education. Preservice teachers' reflection was related to the openness of the task, as they had to make decisions about many different aspects of their teaching. Even aspects that are not on the table in a realworld setting, for instance having the possibility of deciding on the age of the target students, led to productive reflection and opportunities for learning. Our results contribute to increased awareness of the possibilities of microteaching for facilitating learning during planning. This may provide science teacher educators with better possibilities of supporting their preservice science teachers' reflective practice.

Microteaching: A Technique to Enhance English-as-a-Foreign Language Teacher Candidates’ Professional Learning

“…The findings showed that EFL teacher candidates valued engaging in self-evaluation through watching their own micro lessons and taking into consideration the lecturer and peer feedback as they got opportunities for evaluating their performance on microteaching in an unbiased manner and for heightening their awareness of their strengths and weaknesses in their teaching skills. These results illustrate that selfevaluation gets EFL teacher candidates to delve into reflective practice, which is in line with those of the studies carried out by I'anson et al (2003), Karlström andHamza (2019), Jones andJones (2013) and Karakaş and Yükselir (2020). Self-evaluation plays a significant role in teacher candidate learning because teacher candidates should be active agents in their professional learning as postulated by Francis (1997).…”

“…This study was carried out with a view to exploring the effect of microteaching on EFL teacher candidates' professional learning via uncovering their overall evaluation of the effectiveness of conducting microteaching and observing the microteaching their classmates conducted in their professional learning, their perceptions regarding the effectiveness of getting peer feedback and engaging in self-evaluation, and through unpacking the suggestions they had as to enhancing the quality of the microteaching process for their professional learning. The findings as to EFL teacher candidates' overall evaluation of their microteaching experiences are in congruence with the results of existing research in the literature examining students' perceptions concerning their microteaching experiences (Arsal, 2014;Frenandez , 2005;Golightly, 2010;Karlström & Hamza, 2019;Mikulec & Hamann, 2020;Özcan & Gerçek, 2014). The EFL teacher candidates stated in the qualitative questionnaire that conducting microteaching contributed to their professional learning by providing opportunities for putting what they had theoretically learned about classroom management and language teaching methods into practice, and they gained experience of lesson planning and of preparing materials to use as teaching English to young learners.…”

“…Review of relevant literature also demonstrated that microteaching led teacher candidates to engage in reflective practice and to heighten their awareness of how their teaching was evaluated by others (I'anson et al, 2003;Jones & Jones, 2013;Karlström & Hamza, 2019). Kuswandono (2014) conducted a study to investigate university mentors' experiences of guiding teacher candidates' reflective practices in microteaching practice.…”

The Effect of Distance Learning With Learner Center Micro Teaching Model On Student’ Teaching Confidence and Teaching Skills

“…According to Savas, participants' responses showed that micro-teaching video activity had a positive impact on improving participants' teaching skills [17]. Students' reflection was related to the openness of the task, as they had to make decisions about many different aspects of their teaching, and increased knowledge of the possibilities for productive reflection during planning may also contribute to understanding of how teacher educators may make reflection an integral part of microteaching [18]. Feedback has been found to be effective in improving the general teaching competence of student [15] [19].…”

Enacting Scenario Card-Lesson Study in Pre-service Teacher Education: A Case Study on Indonesian Pre-service Teachers with Disabilities

“…In particular, there has been a growing concern on pre-service teachers' teaching and learning process in the classroom context in the last decades (Lim et al, 2018;Owiny et al, 2019;Quinlan, 2020;Zhang et al, 2018). Research to date has much focused on pre-service teacher reflection (Karlström & Hamza, 2019), pre-service teacher beliefs (Othman & Kiely, 2016), pre-service teacher teaching practicum (Maidou et al, 2020), and pre-service teacher identity construction (Trent, 2012). The studies above have greatly contributed to positive findings of pre-service teacher research in the educational landscape.…”