EXAMINING THE OPINIONS OF PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER CANDIDATES ON MICROTEACHING PRACTICES IN THE LIFE SCIENCE TEACHING COURSE

Abstract

The aim of this research is to examine the opinions of prospective classroom teachers about microteaching practices in the Life Sciences Teaching course. The research was structured in accordance with the case study, one of the qualitative research approaches. The study group of the research consists of 12 teacher candidates studying in the classroom teaching undergraduate program of a state university. In the research, a semi-structured interview form developed by the researcher was used as a data collection tool. The data obtained in the research were analyzed by content analysis. In the research, it has been determined that the Life Sciences Teaching course is a suitable course for microteaching applications, and the reasons for this are that the course and the method reflect real-life situations, it is suitable to contribute to the teaching process, it strengthens the teaching abilities of the pre-service teachers and enriches the teaching process. In addition, in the research, it was revealed that the microteaching practices carried out in the Life Sciences Teaching course contributed to the prospective teachers such as gaining experience while teaching, understanding the classroom management, having knowledge about the structuring of the lesson, instantly noticing, and correcting the problems and mistakes that may arise in the teaching process. In addition, pre-service teachers stated that they experienced various environmental, personal and instructional difficulties during microteaching practices, but these difficulties were increased by the increase in the number of microteaching practices, the application of the microteaching method in different teaching courses during their undergraduate education , the implementation of teaching activities in primary schools as a continuation of microteaching practices, and the implementation of microteaching practices. He stated that they can overcome it by taking the undergraduate courses that introduce them. At the end of the research, various suggestions were presented based on the results obtained from the research.