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in improvements in teacher presence. Specifically, many students identified the
microteach environment as a safe space for them to practice the implementation
process and develop confidence in delivering instruction. As one student shared,
“I think the microteaches were beneficial by allowing me to practice in a safe
environment even though I was graded. I would rather mess up and fix it there than
in the classroom and hurt student learning.” This supportive environment played an
important role in the development of students’ self-efficacy.
Dr. Andrea S. Karpf is an Students and instructors also agreed that microteaches provided beneficial
instructor at the University chances for preservice teachers to experience varied approaches to modeling and
of Nebraska at Omaha in teaching content, as well as to see different resources and tools available to support
the Teacher Education
Department. She is teaching and learning. These vicarious experiences offered students access to a wide
a former ESL teacher, range of lessons that varied in content, instructional strategies, and delivery. For
and her teaching and example, one student shared,
research interests include The microteaches also gave me a lot of new ideas. In field, I taught only
preparing all teacher reading lessons and so from the microteaches I was able to take away different
educators and teacher ways to teach predicting, making connections, etc., and then include those in
candidates to work with
multilingual learners. my future lessons.
akarpf@unomaha.edu These experiences allowed our students to diversify their instructional toolkits as
they planned and prepared for future lessons.

Initial Implementation Challenges
Although students and instructors alike identified benefits of the microteaches,
the experience also included challenges. One such challenge was simulating an
environment similar to an elementary classroom. Although peers took part in the
lesson and played the roles of the students, the “teachers” were not faced with the
same problems of classroom management or differences in student understanding
that they would experience in an actual classroom environment. One student shared
he or she “...never once had to use classroom management” when teaching a group
of peers. Another stated, “The on-campus microteachings...did not impact my
performance too much in field, as I did not teach any of the microteaching lessons
in my field experience classroom,” which perhaps decreased the significance of
the microteach as a mastery experience. Instructors echoed this same sentiment,
recognizing that teaching a group of adults is starkly different from teaching a group
of elementary students. One instructor stated,
It is impossible to recreate the actual environment of teaching children in a
classroom in any simulated setting. Our students did not have to worry about
issues such as classroom management, interruptions, or students who come
in with gaps in their background knowledge and understanding.
Another issue noted by both students and instructors was the quality of feedback.
Although students appreciated the opportunity to gain insights into what went well
and the potential changes they could make, both instructors and students agreed that
peers and instructors did not always provide targeted feedback. Instructors believed
that the feedback students offered lacked depth, and students shared similar concerns,
believing that instructors did not always deliver honest, critical feedback to support
them in their growth and development. One student shared,
I wish I had more feedback during the microteaching times. There was only
one professor that would provide me with ‘grows’ or things to consider,

28 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators