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Exploring authenticity of microteaching

in pre-service teacher education
programmes
a a
Chuanjun He & Chunmei Yan
a
Central China Normal University , Wuhan, China
Published online: 15 Aug 2011.

To cite this article: Chuanjun He & Chunmei Yan (2011) Exploring authenticity of microteaching
in pre-service teacher education programmes, Teaching Education, 22:3, 291-302, DOI:
10.1080/10476210.2011.590588

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 Teaching EducationAquatic Insects
Vol. 22, No. 3, September 2011, 291–302

Exploring authenticity of microteaching in pre-service teacher

education programmes
Chuanjun He and Chunmei Yan*

Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China

Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 07:25 29 December 2014

(Received 23 September 2010; final version received 26 October 2010)

This study examined the perspective of a cohort of 60 Chinese EFL pre-service

teachers with regards to microteaching. Reflective paper writing was employed
to explore the student teachers’ perceptions of the experience. The study results
show that microteaching was a useful tool for the pre-service teachers’ profes-
sional development; however, the experience was not without flaws. The most
commonly perceived deficiency was artificiality, which appeared to have to
some extent limited the student teachers’ development of real-life classroom
teaching competence. The study suggests that microteaching should be supple-
mented with various alternative forms of school experience and practice.
Keywords: teacher education curriculum

Introduction
Microteaching, invented by Dwight Allen as a training technique at Stanford Uni-
versity in the early 1970s, has been used with success for several decades now as
an established teacher training procedure in many universities and school districts
to help teachers acquire new skills. The theoretical basis for microteaching was ini-
tially related to the psychological theory of behaviorism, and subsequently it was
used more as a technique for professional reflection than as a technique for shaping
behavior. Microteaching can be defined as a training context in which a teacher’s
situation has been reduced in scope or simplified in some systematic way, involving
‘teaching for a short period of time, normally focusing on one particular aspect of a
lesson or teaching technique’ (Morrison, 2010, p. 19). Its training procedure is
geared towards simplification of the complexities of the regular teaching–learning
process. Class size, time, task, and content are scaled down to provide optimal
training environments.
A highly popular professional development tool for pre-service teachers as
microteaching is, there is a dearth of empirical studies on the effect of microteach-
ing and possible hindrances in the implementation process. Therefore, it is neces-
sary to conduct empirical research to yield significant insights and enrich the
literature on microteaching. From a practical perspective, it is well worth probing
into the impact of the microteaching experience on student teachers’ professional
learning to enhance its potential role as one of the essential components in pre-ser-
vice teacher education programmes. Against this background, this research intended

*Corresponding author. Email: chunmei_yan@yahoo.co.uk

ISSN 1047-6210 print/ISSN 1470-1286 online

Ó 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2011.590588
http://www.informaworld.com
 292 C. He and C. Yan

to examine the extent to which microteaching could contribute to pre-service teach-

ers’ professional development and possible practical constraints that needed to be
addressed to maximize its positive effect.
This article has six parts. The first is an introduction to the background of this
study, including the theoretical and practical significance of the research. The second
provides a review of relevant literature on microteaching. The third delineates the
research methodology, procedure, and data analysis. The fourth presents the research
findings. Then it moves on to the fifth part, ‘Discussion’, which interprets the find-
ings from the study. Finally, the conclusion is drawn in the sixth and final part.
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Literature review
Since its start in the early 1960s at Stanford University, microteaching has evolved
in some variation or another as the on-campus clinical experience method in ‘91%
of teacher education programmes’ (Cruickshank et al., 1993, p. 105), the most
widely used method for providing on-campus clinical experience for pre-service
teachers. In its traditional form, microteaching is used to teach pre-service teachers
to master specific teaching skills. Nowadays in many teacher education progrram-
mes, the use of microteaching has expanded from its original focus of helping pre-
service teachers to master discrete teaching skills, to giving them the complete
teaching experience and orienting them to teach in the natural classroom during
field experience (Amobi, 2005). Two associated components are critical in the
implementation of this on-campus clinical activity: videotaped micro lessons and
feedback (Mills, 1991; Metcalf, 1993; Metcalf et al., 1993; Cruickshank & Metcalf,
1993; Vare, 1994; Brent, Wheatley, & Thomson, 1996; Benton-Kupper, 2001). The
common element in microteaching activities is the provision of feedback. Led by an
instructor, other trained supervisors, or with a peer, pre-service teachers engage in a
discussion of each microteaching presentation and point out the strengths and weak-
nesses of the lesson. Oral feedback is followed by written feedback of the lesson
on a microteaching review and feedback form developed for the purpose. Alterna-
tively, working alone, with the instructor and/or a handful of peers in the micro-
teaching group, pre-service teachers view a videotape of their individual lessons to
analyse and reflect on the lesson as taught.
The positive effect of microteaching on student teachers’ professional develop-
ment has been much documented. Wahba (1999) considers microteaching to be
capable of aiding in the gradual development of professional expertise and minimiz-
ing the risk of failure in the classroom. He identified four distinct stages of micro-
teaching. In the briefing, teachers receive information on the skills to be practised
and the methods to be used. During the teaching stage, the trainee teaches the
micro-lesson, and if possible, the micro-lesson is videotaped or audio-recorded. In
the analysis and discussion period, the trainee’s micro-lesson is reviewed, discussed,
analyzed, and evaluated. Finally, in the re-teaching stage, the trainee re-teaches
the micro-lesson, applying those points raised during the discussion and analysis.
Fernández (2010) found evidence of growth in mathematics student teachers’
knowledge of teaching aligned with an overarching student–learning process goal
(i.e., mathematics reasoning). Active learning involving meaningful discussion,
planning, and practice, support from a knowledgeable advisor, collaborative
deliberation-in-process, and opportunity to trial, analyse and revise were revealed as
centrally important for prospective teacher learning through microteaching lesson
 Teaching Education 293

study. Mergler and Tangen (2010) reported that microteaching had a positive impact
on student teachers’ teacher identity development. Legutke and Ditfurth (2009, p.
213) argued that structured in a ‘teach; review and reflect; re-teach approach’,
microteaching sessions raise student teachers’ awareness of knowing and doing,
increase an emphatic understanding of students as learners, and teach observation
and feedback skills.
Some criticisms of microteaching have also emerged in the literature, mainly
concerned with the artificial nature of the experience and student teachers’ dwindled
enthusiasm. Stanley (1998) highlighted student teachers’ reluctance to take part in
microteaching activities due to non-natural classroom environments, material pro-
duction procedures, and time constrained course schedules. Cripwell and Geddes
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(1982) also pointed out the artificiality of classroom environments. Furthermore,

some other problems such as the cost and maintenance of equipment, budgetary
constraints for student teachers, the limited amount of time for preparing materials,
and the level of difficulty of material production combined to cause student teach-
ers’ lack of enthusiasm in microteaching. Lederman and Gess-Newsome (1991)
observed that limited time for preparation and wastefulness of microteaching may
create obstacles in student teachers’ teaching process and lead them to develop
reluctant attitudes in teaching experiences.

The pre-service teacher education programme and the microteaching

component
The pre-service teacher education programme under investigation was based in a
normal (teacher education) university in Central China. The programme’s duration
was four years, like any other EFL (English as a foreign language) teacher educa-
tion programmes in China’s tertiary institutions. The teacher education programme
follows the rationalist (Schon, 1983) view of teacher education, i.e., the learn-
the-theory-and-then-apply-it model (Ur, 1992), which is currently most commonly
practised in Chinese teacher education universities. The first three years focused on
on-campus courses, consisting of four major components, i.e., language develop-
ment courses (listening, speaking, reading and writing), linguistics-related courses
(linguistics, pragmatics, stylistics, lexicology), English literature (mainly British and
American), translation, and English teaching methodology. English teaching
methodology was undertaken in the second semester of the third academic year,
including 18 sessions. The first 10 sessions were lecture-based, addressing major
theories with respect to English language teaching; whilst the remaining eight
sessions were devoted to students’ micro-teaching. The arrangement of the method-
ology course intended to integrate theories and practice to prepare the students for
(1) their teaching practicum at the start of the fourth academic year, and (2) their
future career as English teachers in junior and senior high schools in China.
The microteaching unit was one of the two central elements of the methodology
course, spanning eight weeks. The English textbook used for the microteaching was
the one for Grade 1 of senior secondary school students published by the People’s
Education Press in 2007. Given the time limit (eight weeks altogether for micro-
teaching) and the student number (30 students in each class), extra time was
provided to ensure that each had one opportunity to engage in the microteaching
practice. The microteaching took place in a well-equipped multimedia classroom.
A maximum of 25 minutes was allowed for each. The class acted as secondary
 294 C. He and C. Yan

school students. Feedback from the tutor and peers was provided immediately after
the completion of each microteaching. Each microteaching lesson was videotaped
and kept in the department library as a learning resource accessible to all student
teachers for self-observation purposes. This study focused on the microteaching
conducted in 2009 by the 2006 cohort of student teachers.

Research methodology
Reflective paper writing was chosen as the research method on account of its high-
est level of appropriateness and feasibility as compared with other forms of reflec-
tive practice, e.g., viewing videos (Borko, Jocobs, Eiteljorg, & Pittman, 2008; Rich
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& Hannafin, 2009), reflective teaching (Zeichner & Liston, 1996; Wallace, 1996),
journal keeping (Brock, Yu, & Wong 1992; Cole, Raffier, Rogan, & Schleicher,
1998), and undertaking action research (Cochran-Smith, 1993; Freeman, 1998) to
achieve the dual purposes of evaluation of the microteaching experience and student
reflection. On the one hand, the student teachers’ perceptions of the microteaching
experience would yield student teachers’ perspectives on the professional activity
and process, which would in turn inform course evaluation and help to enhance the
practices of microteaching. And teachers who read accounts of other teachers’ pro-
fessional lives may benefit from the added understandings of their own work which
reading about someone else’s can bring. On the other hand, the paper writing was
intended to promote individual reflection (Jay & Johnson, 2002), which is an
equally important aspect of teacher reflection as collaborative reflection. The student
teachers were encouraged to undertake three-dimensioned reflection proposed by
Jay and Johnson (2002): descriptive reflection (asking ‘what is happening’ and
noticing salient features in a classroom situation), comparative reflection (consider-
ing alternative views and different perspectives), and critical reflection (taking on a
new perspective and making a judgment about future action through careful deliber-
ation). Similarly, as Borg (2001, pp. 156–157) proposes, reflective writing can pro-
vide much insight into the personal and often implicit processes which teachers
experience in their work and development, e.g., developing student teachers’ reflec-
tive practices. Writers benefit from an enhanced awareness of themselves as people
and as professionals, an awareness which makes for more informed professional
decision-making (Holly, 1989). Therefore, the student teachers’ writing was
intended to serve multiple purposes, e.g., developing the student teachers’ reflection
on teaching as a novice teacher, facilitating the implementation of the microteach-
ing, enhancing the collaborations between the faculty and cooperating schools, cre-
ating possibilities for research on microteaching, and improving the pre-service
teacher education programme.
Sixty third-year student teachers who undertook the English teaching methodol-
ogy course were given a writing assignment to reflect on their benefits from the
microteaching experience, drawbacks and suggestions for improvement prior to the
start of the microteaching. Fifty-three participants of the population were female,
and seven were male. The assignment generated 60 reflective papers on the pros
and cons of the microteaching as data for the study. The data analysis was charac-
terized by a data-reduction process involving a series of steps: reviewing manu-
scripts, identifying units of meaning, clustering units and generating conceptual
categories of themes representing dimensions of the student teachers’ reflections,
crystallizing meaningful units into themes/and subthemes (Crabtree & Miller, 1992;
 Teaching Education 295

Miles & Huberman, 1994; Marshall & Rossman, 1995) for coherent writing up.
Quotes that contained grammar mistakes were retained since the purpose of the
analysis was to identify salient ideas rather than linguistic forms. For the purpose of
confidentiality, pseudonyms were used for the extracts in the findings.

Results
Views on the benefits from the microteaching experience
Overall the microteaching was felt to be a beneficial learning experience for the stu-
dent teachers. The 25 minutes’ teaching practice was seen as ‘appropriate and long
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enough to reveal problems of the teaching within the observers’ concentration

span’. The student teachers felt they had an opportunity to apply what they had
learned from the teaching methodology course in their microteaching with the help
of the multi-media technology. They obtained a sense of achievement because it
helped them develop their pedagogical experience and competence, and gain more
confidence. These positive impacts are reflected in the following two excerpts:

All of us make full use of slides and other modern technologies to aid our teaching
process. Some make very good slides and share with others their methods. Various
kinds of methods have been applied in the teaching. (Sunny)

Before my microteaching, I was an extremely shy girl without self-confidence. Even

answering a simple question in front of my classmates may make me tremble. Now I
am not afraid to stand in front of my classmates. (Beth)

Three factors were found to be contributing to the success of the microteaching.

The first one was the support of their peers, who were highly cooperative in the
process. One expressed, ‘The students, who were my classmates, were willing to
cooperate with a good knowledge of English. The job of teaching went smooth’
(Sophie).
The second contributing factor was the provision of teacher and peer feedback,
which was felt to be highly beneficial to the student teachers’ reflection and aware-
ness of their strengths and weakness, and help them identify their areas for
improvement via ‘combining others’ advantages with their own understanding of
teaching skills’, as illustrated in the following quotes:

Microteaching puts the teacher under the microscope. All the faults of the teacher are
observed. And the observer gives constructive feedback. It can help sharpen and
develop specific teaching skills and eliminating error. It enables understanding of
behaviours important in classroom teaching. It increases the confidence of the student
teacher. (Susan)

We can get feedback from classmates and teacher immediately after finishing our
microteaching. They state briefly our merits but most importantly they remind us of
our defects and make sincere suggestions for us. We learn from each other and
improve ourselves and teaching greatly. (Celia)

The third facilitating factor was the teamwork commonly exercised during the
microteaching, which was perceived to promote collaboration and professionalism.
As one student said,
 296 C. He and C. Yan

We all spend lots of time and energy to make full preparation for the short teaching
period. We practise again and again with the help of roommates. I realized that dedica-
tion to teaching is of great importance to us teachers-to-be. (Charlotte)

Views on the drawbacks

Three major drawbacks of microteaching emerged: the artificiality of the experience,
the lack of contribution of schoolteachers to the feedback form on the student teach-
ers’ performance, and the limited opportunity for each for practice. The first and
most commonly mentioned one was lack of authenticity in teaching. As one student
said, ‘the microteaching was to a large extent a show rather than real teaching’. She
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explained the reason for her view:

Microteaching is an idealized situation of teaching. It is teacher-oriented just like

some public classes, whose major role is to display rather than educate. It can lead
to a false conception of teaching among student teachers, which will have a lasting
bad effect on their future teaching. We spared no efforts to make our classes
impress the judges at first sight, but in fact nothing permanent remains in the mind.
(Megan)

The lack of authenticity was perceived to be attributable to the non-authentic

classroom setting, atmosphere, and students. Firstly, the classroom atmosphere was
felt to be different from the real-life secondary schools’ classrooms. In the view of
some student teachers, the 25 minutes restrained them from addressing the major
concerns of secondary school students about exam purposes, e.g., language points.
As one said:

Because of the time limit, many classmates just cover the passage structure analysis
part and give up the language points. But in fact, language points analysis is quite
important in real teaching, particularly important to senior high school students who
are under the pressure of college entrance examination. Besides, language point analy-
sis is a very difficult part for even the most experienced teachers.

Additionally, the manner in which the student teachers acted as high school stu-
dents contributed to the artificiality of microteaching. The far more advanced Eng-
lish proficiency and the well-intentioned excessive support and cooperation were
felt to have significantly reduced the opportunity to practise real-life teaching skills,
especially classroom management and improvisation skills to deal with unexpected
contingencies. Some student teachers simply acted as actors, memorizing the scripts
they had rehearsed repeatedly. As one student commented:

Microteaching is achieved by students assisting each other to imitate a high school

classroom. The ‘students’ have lots of background knowledge, advanced study habits
and capacities, similar academic achievements, high cooperation enthusiasm. All these
factors have combined to reduce the difficulty of teaching. It has led to student teach-
ers’ underestimating the real classroom teaching in high schools. The ‘students’ have
better self-control and discipline than high school students. They can draw themselves
back to the lecture after a heated discussion or debate, which ensures the smooth oper-
ation of the class as scheduled. Because of the similar academic and intellectual levels,
the teaching plan only needs to suit one level without losing the attention of any part
of the class. (Linda)
 Teaching Education 297

Finally, the general use of the multimedia facilities was commonly felt to be
inapplicable in most secondary schools, especially in generally under-resourced
rural areas, where only chalk and boards are commonly available. The microteach-
ing in the well-equipped classroom seemed to have been taken for an opportunity
by some student teachers to showcase their competence in using powerpoint for its
own sake and therefore was regarded as cosmetic and ineffective without thorough
consideration of the purpose of the technology. As one student said:

The well-equipment microteaching classroom makes us achieve a better success with

the help of the multimedia. However, most high schools can’t afford the multi-media.
Teachers in schools just write on blackboard with chalk. Many vivid teaching materi-
als can’t be employed. Therefore, if microteaching had been done without multi-
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media, the result would be more meaningful. (Joan)

The second most endorsed drawback was the lack of feedback from school
teachers, although the benefit from the feedback from the teacher educator and the
classmates was acknowledged. The limitation of this form of feedback was per-
ceived to be due to the lack of secondary school teaching experience of both
groups, which may have led to the failure to more precisely and practically address
school realities which the student teachers will be confronted with in their future
teaching practicum and teaching career.

We are judged by our classmates and college teachers, who have never been a real high
school teacher and know little about the current situation in high school teaching. (Jessica)

The third commonly perceived drawback was the limited opportunity for the
students to apply what they had learned and improve their pedagogical experience
and competence. One experience of microteaching in the four undergraduate years
prior to their six-week-long teaching practicum was felt to be far from enough for
the student teachers to learn from the practical experience. It was felt that more
opportunity was extremely necessary for them to improve on the basis of identify-
ing their pedagogical weaknesses.

We don’t have a chance to revise our errors since we only have one chance to stand
on the platform. We have no chance to put into practice the suggestions from our
classmates. (Sarah)

Views on measures for improvement

A range of suggestions for improvement emerged from the data. These included:
theoretical instruction, integration of theory and practice, creation of authentic class-
room settings, opportunities for teaching practice and school experience, practical
guidance by school teachers, and support from the university and department. When
addressing theoretical instruction, it was noted that there was a need for more up-
to-date theoretical input well integrated with the practice to inform the student
teachers’ teaching practice. As two students said:

Teachers should give us more extra materials to read or learn, so we can know the
newest trend of English education. (Eudora)
 298 C. He and C. Yan

The second solution is to combine teaching practice with teaching theories. In learning
theories, students should always think about the problems existing in real teaching.
Then we are in the process of teaching practice, we should apply what we have
learned into practice and solve the problems in real teaching situation (Charles)

The second was the necessity of fostering a more authentic classroom environ-
ment. A few options were mentioned, for example, involving students whose Eng-
lish was less advanced to address the issue of classroom management and discipline
as replacement for their classmates in the microteaching, e.g., ‘inviting high school
students’, ‘lower cohorts’; ‘deliberately making mistakes and trouble’, ‘mixing dif-
ferent classes to reduce the familiarity’.
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Teaching unfamiliar ‘strangers’ with a weaker academic background can force the stu-
dent teachers to think of every possible way to attract their attention and keep them
focused. (Lily)

To make it more real, let the audience constantly make some mistakes to create diffi-
culties for the teacher or raise some questions. (Joyce)

The third was the need to increase the opportunity for practice to help the stu-
dent teachers to ‘learn from their errors’. One solution is to lengthen the teaching
methodology course: one semester for the lectures, and the other for microteaching.
As some student teachers suggested, microteaching can be integrated in the different
stages of the teaching methodology course, e.g., can be conducted immediately after
finishing lectures on a topic to enhance a particular teaching skill, which entails the
modification of the course design of the theory-based teaching methodology course.

In general the ELT methodology course was relevant, but some knowledge gained
from it is not much use in reality. The information is redundant and the course deals
with methods and techniques that exist and the history of their development and use,
but many times we had no clue about what techniques could be used in the real condi-
tions that we will encounter in actual classroom teaching. (Shirley)

Besides theoretical knowledge, practical experience is very important in teaching pro-

fession. You may know all the techniques of class management or dealing with disci-
pline problems in classes, but when you go into the classroom, you may find yourself
hopeless in situations you have studied. We may be too concerned with form and for-
getting the content and purpose of the course. (Dianna)

Student teachers provided some suggestions for them to experience authentic

school teaching, for example, visiting and receiving practical guidance from univer-
sity teacher educators and schoolteachers, watching videos of teaching by exem-
plary schoolteachers, and obtaining chances to teach in high schools. More active
communication between student teachers and teacher educators and among student
teachers was considered as a facilitator. A few quotes are revealing of these poten-
tial measures for improvement:

We should go to schools to observe and learn about the real situations and advise our
classmates to do as much as they can to be more like middle school students. We can
do some research about the high school students’ characteristics and performance,
learn from high school teachers on how to plan a lesson, how to manage the class-
room and so on, and learn about their evaluation systems. (Austen)
 Teaching Education 299

Authentic high school teaching practice should be provided. Though it’s not realistic
to get everyone to have high school teaching experience, two or three representatives
can be selected from the class, and the rest act as observers. Representatives would
give a lesson first of all to their classmates, then to high school classes. The compari-
son of the two classes can help both the trainees and observers understand the gap so
that they can better prepare themselves for their internship. Analysis of the gaps as an
assignment can enhance the effectiveness of this method. (Vivian)

More teachers should be available to guide us, not only giving comments in the class, but
giving advice during our preparation. We need senior high school English teachers to
observe our class and give us more professional and practical advice on teaching. (Chris)
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Student teachers should often communicate with each other and their tutors about
problems to overcome them and get rid of the misleading effects, and to really recog-
nize the nature of teaching, which should be student-centred rather than a show by the
teacher. (Ivy)

Finally, support from the department and the university was considered as a facili-
tating factor. It was suggested that the department should ‘initiate courses related to
teaching skills early’ and the university should make supportive policies and create
necessary conditions to make the microteaching experience more effective.

The university should provide conditions to make it more like a real teaching situa-
tion, including the length of class, the number of students and the level of students to
ensure the effects of microteaching. (Linda)

Discussion
The study looked at the perspectives of a cohort of EFL student teachers of their
microteaching experience. It supports some positive views of microteaching of some
researchers. It indicates that the microteaching experience, a bridge between theoret-
ical and practical issues (Ogeyik, 2009), was conducive to ‘developing specific
teaching skills and eliminating errors, enabling understanding of behaviours impor-
tant in classroom teaching, increasing the confidence of the student teacher with the
provision of expert supervision and constructive feedback’ (Ananthakrishnan, 1993,
p. 143). As Ogeyik (2009, p. 209) put it, ‘understanding the possible role for micro-
teaching and using it in legitimate functional contexts would be a useful tool for
student teachers’.
Meanwhile, similar to Ananthakrishnan’s (1993) criticism of microteaching, the
study revealed that a lack of authenticity was a major drawback, despite its inten-
tion of orienting student teachers to gain teaching experiences for natural classroom
environments (Amobi, 2005), i.e., the microteaching as a form of play-acting in
unnatural surroundings, which may lead to the acquired skills being not internalised.
This drawback suggests that the practice of microteaching alone would be inade-
quate in preparing the student teachers for targeting real-life school teaching con-
texts due to the artificial students, classroom atmosphere, and the lack of
involvement of schoolteachers. It highlighted the importance of identifying more
effective ways of integrating microteaching with the acquisition of pedagogical
knowledge, creating an authentic classroom setting, providing more opportunity for
teaching practice, more school experience, more practical guidance from school
 300 C. He and C. Yan

teachers, and enlisting more support from the university and department. In contrast
with Cripwell and Geddes’ (1982) view about the suitability of microteaching for
the development of organizational skills and instruction-giving, the study indicates
that microteaching was disadvantaged in developing these skills due to the artificial
classroom setting, with the far advanced English proficiency of the ‘students’ and
excessive support from them in the practice process.
Therefore, authenticity of teaching emerged as a major concern, the lack of
which appeared to have undermined the effect of the student teachers’ pedagogical
skill development. The study reveals the lack of connection between campus-based
teacher education programmes and schools. It underscores the need to strengthen
the integration of both practical and theoretical input, experience, and reflection,
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through continual interaction between the theoretical and practical components of a

course (Ur, 1992, p. 61) via re-design of the pre-service teacher education curricu-
lum and the pedagogy-related courses. It suggests the necessity of establishing
strong links between teacher education programmes and schools via student teach-
ers’ increased school experience realized through, as Legutke and Schocker-v. Dit-
furth (2009) suggested, indirect classroom-based learning (e.g., research documents
from the classroom, studying teachers’ reports, exploring task-based learning experi-
ence, experiencing teacher educators as teaching models, engaging in microteach-
ing), and direct classroom-based learning environments (e.g., the practicum as a
core component at different stages and classroom-based action research projects) to
enhance the authenticity of microteaching activities.
The study also reveals the inherent drawbacks of the rationalist model of teacher
education adopted by the pre-service teacher education programme investigated.
The student teachers were provided with only one experience of microteaching in
the third year, and six weeks’ teaching practicum in the fourth year with one week’s
national holiday included. The study reveals that practice has been largely neglected
and separated from theory in pre-service teacher education programmes as com-
pared to language skills development, subject knowledge and pedagogical theories.
This confirms the observation of Morrison (2010) that most novice Chinese teachers
leave university as language graduates and immediately begin teaching with little or
no initial pre-service teacher training. The study suggests that a holistic perspective
of the pre-service teacher education programme, one which addresses the integration
of theories and practice, would be necessary to facilitate student teachers’ profes-
sional learning. More opportunities should be created for teaching practice for stu-
dent teachers, including peer teaching, teaching a class specially recruited for the
course and teaching their own regular class. The increased opportunity for practice
may help to provide back-up and input for theory sessions, develop student teach-
ers’ self-confidence in the use of different teaching techniques, self-reliance and
self-evaluation of their teaching skills, enable student teachers to learn from each
other in the improvement of their teaching skills, relate the elements of a course
that is necessarily designed with the ‘typical’ entrant in mind to the individual, and
bring the various elements of the course together in the context of a lesson in a
‘real’ teaching context (Morrison, 2010, p. 19).

Conclusion
This study examined the pros and cons of microteaching from the perspective of a
cohort of Chinese EFL pre-service teachers. A series of positive impacts show that
 Teaching Education 301

microteaching was a useful tool for pre-service teachers’ professional development.

On the other hand, the experience was not without any problems. The most impor-
tant drawback of the experience derived from the nature of the experience centred
on the artificiality, which appeared to have to some extent limited the student teach-
ers’ development of real-life classroom teaching competence, e.g., classroom man-
agement and organizing interactions, etc. The study suggests that microteaching, as
a beneficial learning tool, should be exploited fully via improving the current condi-
tions to maximize its potential benefit to student teachers. Meanwhile, on account of
its inherent deficiencies, it is necessary to supplement microteaching with alternative
forms of school experience and practice, which entails an overall reassessment and
modification of the existing pre-service teacher education programme if necessary.
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