What are the Merits and limitations of micro-teaching?

Merits of Micro-teaching

1. It is a useful innovation in teacher education.

2. It develops greater awareness of individual differences.

3. It helps the teacher trainee of many problems such as indis­cipline and anxiety.

4. It helps the teacher to prepare in better way.

5. It helps to reduce strain on practicing school.

5. It is quite suitable for refresher courses.

7. It is quite helpful in faster motivation of the students.

8. It is concerned more with self-improvement and self-evalu­ation.

9. It helps in creating more interest and enthusiasm towards teaching.

10. It helps to develop greater understanding of teaching

11. It generates self-confidence.

12. It helps to develop a healthier attitude towards criticism.

13. It makes teaching more enjoyable.

14. It creates greater awareness of verbal and non-verbal com­munication.

15. It helps in proper planning of lessons.

16. It is quite useful in teaching the same unit again.

Limitations of Micro-teaching

1. It fails of provide necessary training to teacher to teach in a normal class-room.

2. Limited number of students fails to arouse interest in teach­ing.

Teaching of Commerce

3. It is only of a limited application.

4. They require more time for planning.

5. Some-times it becomes difficult for the teacher to divide a bigger unit into smaller units.

6. Many times it creates administrative difficulties.

7. It hampers the class-room climate.

8. It is an artificial situation.

9. It requires the supervisors to be more critical.

10. It requires insightful supervisors.

Micro-teaching in India

Micro-teaching is an innovation in teaching education. By adopting it is a systematic and meaningful way, it is possible to bring about a revolution in teacher education in India. This technique is quite use­ful both at pre-level as well as at in-service teacher education programmes. By adopting this technique a wide range of experiences could be provided with economy in time and resources. It can be altered to suit many circumstances.

This technique was adopted in 1967 at Government central Pedagogical Institute at Allahabad. G. B. Shah tried it in 1970 at the Faculty of Education and Psychology Baroda. Later on it was adopted at many places such as at Technical Teachers Training Institute, Madras; Technical Teachers Training Institute, Chandigarh; Techni­cal Teachers Training Institute, Calcutta etc.

To integrate micro-teaching into the ‘student teaching’ programme following procedure is used :

(i) Lectures on theory connected with ‘student teachings are given.

(ii) Demonstration Lessons are given to student-teachers.

(iii) Diagnostic Lessons are evaluated to find the areas in which the teacher trainee is deficient and then remedial measures are undertaken.

(iv) Micro-lesson for practice is arranged for training teachers is ‘student teaching’.