Television in the Education of Teachers: a Case Study

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Abstract
Videorecording has become increasingly used in teacher education during the past decade, largely in connection with microteaching. The balance of evidence so far reported suggests that microteaching programmes result in the acquisition of skills by students in tightly‐structured laboratory sessions: however, when the criteria of success are aspects of subsequent classroom teaching the research findings are inconsistent.This small‐scale study sought to compare the relative effect of two short courses in the general methodology of teaching on the subsequent classroom performance of student teachers. One course was wholly lecture‐based, while the other required students to develop their teaching competence through devising lessons and teaching them to groups of approximately fifteen top junior pupils. These lessons were videorecorded and the videorecordings were discussed in the presence of a supervisor, who guided the discussion towards matters covered during the lecture course.The relative effectiveness of the two treatments was assessed by comparing the subsequent classroom teaching performance of seven volunteer students from each group, the criterion being the performance of their pupils on a test constructed by the author. No significant difference was found between the two groups.The study illustrates a number of the problems associated with investigations into two important, and surprisingly neglected, areas of research—the validity and transferability of skills required during courses of teacher education.