Teaching in classroom
This stage is known as “Teaching practiceâ€. Student teachers while teaching in the classroom passes through different steps of his/her teaching (Introduction, Presentation, Recapitulation) and concerned teacher/ supervisor assesses/ observes his/ her lesson.
Evaluation of Teaching Practice
In order to evaluate the teaching practice, supervisor observes the student teacher while teaching in the classroom. Supervisor evaluates/ observes the punctuality, lesson planning, teaching methods, use of audio visual aids, adequacy of audio visuals, pitch of voice, dress, start and end of lesson, interest of the students, discipline of class, use of black/ white board, students’ notebooks and objectives of the lessons.
Micro Teaching and Teaching Practice
What is Micro teaching? It is a modern approach developed by Allen in Stanford University California in the early 1960s for training Prospective teachers. Since year 2000 many Colleges of Education and the University training Institutions in Nigeria have adopted the use of Micro teaching to provide a training environment as a prerequisite for participation in Micro teaching exercise. The basic assumption or philosophy behind Microteaching is that “Teaching†consists of different skills which can be learned by Practice (Ibrahim 2010). This microteaching can be used to teach certain skills or techniques such as: Questioning, use of Instructional materials, response to silence or non-verbal cues, classroom management sets of behaviour or acts of the teacher that facilitate learning. It should be noted that the exercise started out with recognition of only 20 identified teaching skills which are now been expanded to 30 different skills etc. This skills form the essential component of behaviour among the criteria used in the assessment during teaching practice supervision. It is expected that micro teaching will offer new and different opportunities to pre-service teachers in the area of lesson planning, used of instructional materials and lesson presentation among their peers or mates. This approaches to teaching is characterized by having students in a group usually not more than ten (10), with each students given between 10-15 minutes to present a lesson.
During the lesson presentation, the students colleagues are instructed to make observation and offer feedback inform of assessment. It is an approach which have contributed a great deal to the understanding of teaching process and its complexities. On the other hand, Teaching practice exercise is a Six(6) credit course conducted for a period of 26 weeks and assessed by a teacher or` a Supervisor before a student teacher is certified as a trained and qualified professional teacher. According to Daramola (1991) & Hamilton Ekeke (2015) Teaching practice in teacher training Institutions is intended to provide prospective teachers with the opportunity to practice what is learned theoretically in the classroom and have their lesson assessed or evaluated by supervisor(s). They argued that no professional training in education is complete without a teaching practice.
Theoretical Framework
Learning can be described as a change in behavior. Atherton (2013) claimed that education and training are professional rather than academic discipline that is full of contaminations and assumptions. Therefore, there needs to be careful selection of the way in which theories of learning are approached, adopted and developed for educational training. According to Kharbach (2013), a learning theory is a set of concepts on how people learn. It is an investigation of the strategies and the underlying cognitive process that are involved in learning. Learning theories describe how learners absorb, process and retain information during learning.
Learning theories are very important in education researches especially those that relate to learning and training. Jones, Foster, Groves, Parker, Straker and Rutler (2004), Rice (2007) and Atherton (2013) believed that learning theories are of great importance to educational training. All educational training activities make use of learning theories as basic materials. The more one understands learning theories, the better he or she will be able to make decisions and apply them to achieve the objectives. In a nut-shell, learning theories inform and guide practice in any content area.
Three sets of learning theories were identified by Darby (2003). They included: behaviorism, cognitivist and constructivism. In another development, Atherton (2013) identified three sets of learning theories which are generally used in educational circle named behaviorists, humanistic and cognitive. There are many educational psychologists who had made great contributions in the three sets of learning theories. Examples are: Edward Lee Thorndike, Burrhus Frederic Skinner, Ivan Pavlov, Clark Leonard Hull, Carl Rogers and Granville Stanley Hall.
This study will be based on three (3) theories of training and learningof Edward Lee Thorndike Behavioral Theory of Learning, Burrhus Frederic Skinner’s Reinforcement Theory and Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory because the three theories make use of observational or modeling learning. According to Denier, Wolters and Benzon (2013), observational or modeling learning is as a result of watching the behavior and consequences of models in the environment. Observational learning can take place if there are effective models. There needs to be live demonstration of a behavior or skill by an educator or classmates in teacher training using verbal or written descriptions and video or audio recordings. Allen and Ryans 1969) warned that video is not compulsory for microteaching practicum. Also Yusuf (2006) found no significant difference in the use of video and audio recording.
Behaviorism has interest in looking at behavior and observable changes. Darby (2003) noted that behaviorists focus on generating new behavior patterns. Thorndike propounded the theory of classical conditioning where the behavior becomes the reflex response to stimulus. As a behaviorist, learning is viewed by Thorndike in terms of establishing connection or bond between stimulus and responses. Learning can take place from a familiar and an unfamiliar situation. Thorndike maintained that a skill should be introduced when a learner is conscious of the need for such skill. McLeod (2007) explained that Thorndike worked on animals’ behavior and learning process. He was interested in whether animals could learn tasks through observation and imitation. In order to test this, the father of educational psychology created puzzle boxes. Each box contained a cat and had a door that was pulled open by a weight attached to a string that ran over a pulley which was attached to the door. The spring attached to the door led to a lever or button inside the box. When the animal passed the bar or pulled the lever, the string attached to the door would cause the weight to lift and the door to open. The puzzle box was arranged so that the animal would be required to perform a certain response (pulling a lever or pushing a button).
Thorndike measured the amount of time it took them to escape. Once the animals had performed the desired response, they were allowed to escape and were also given food as reward. When hungry cats were put in the boxes, food was put on the other side. The cats wandered restlessly and meow to get to where the food was but they could not escape because they could not perform the action except when the cats stepped on the switch on the floor accidentally and the door would open. Thorndike wanted to see if cats could learn through observation and imitation. He had them observed other animals escaping from the boxes. He compared the times of those who got to observe others escaping with those who did not and he found that there was no difference in their rate of learning. Thorndike graphed the times it took for the animals in each trial to escape, resulting in a learning curve. The animals had difficulty escaping at first but eventually ‘caught on’ and escaped faster and faster with each successive puzzle box trial until they eventually level
The quickened rate of escape resulted in the S- Shape of the learning curve also suggested that different species learned in the same way but at different speeds. To Thorndike, learning is developed from the organism doing something. According to Tega (2007), the following observations were made by Thorndike;
1. The cats behaved aimlessly on trial and error at the first attempt.
2. The cats responded correctly by accident.
3. The cats repeated the successful operation.
4. The cats were able to get the food (satisfier) as a reward of his effort.
5. The reward the cats got strengthened the connection between the stimuli and the response made before the reward (satisfier). From the observations, Thorndike formulated three (3) laws:
a. Law of effect.
b. Law of readiness and
c. Law of exercise.
