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whereas the others only provided me with some ‘glows.’ This feedback is
vital to me, and I am always wanting to find areas to improve upon.
With feedback and verbal persuasion being significant sources of self-efficacy,
instructors and students believed more explicit opportunities for feedback were
needed.
A logistical concern expressed by both instructors and students was the amount
of time and management the microteaches took across the 6 weeks of the field
experience. Students expressed concerns with planning and preparing for both Dr. Sheryl McGlamery,
practicum lessons and the weekly microteach, while instructors expressed concerns a member of Omega
about providing and managing timely feedback each week. Instructors wondered if Chapter in Nebraska
State Organization, is
the expectations of the experience were “too much” to sustain. We reflected on all Professor of Science
the concerns raised about the structure and implementation of the microteaches in Education at the University
order to improve the experience the following semester. of Nebraska at Omaha.
Her research interests
include science teacher
Moving Forward: Revising the Implementation of Microteaches development, teacher
In spring 2021, due to ongoing concerns for safety, our university continued induction, and gender
to implement a de-densified approach for on-campus classes and practicums. equity in STEM. She serves
Using the feedback gathered from the fall semester, our team set forth making both as principal investigator
on a national grant aimed
logistical and structural changes to the microteach model. In response to faculty’s at the education of middle
and students’ concerns regarding the amount of planning and preparation that went school girls in STEM
into microteaches, we condensed the experience so that candidates taught and subjects. smcglamery@
implemented two microteaches. We utilized the same format for these microteaches unomaha.edu
as in the initial round, but we distributed them across the practicum experience to
balance the workload and allow students more time to engage in the planning process.
During the weeks that students did not implement microteaches, they participated
in both professional learning sessions and instructor-led reflective conferences.
The professional learning sessions, facilitated by instructors and local area teacher
leaders, provided students with tips, tools, and strategies to enhance their instructional
performance. The reflective conferences afforded students the opportunity to debrief
a video-recorded practicum lesson with an instructor individually and to engage in
the goal-setting process.
Our team also worked in spring 2021 to enhance the opportunities for students
to receive meaningful, targeted feedback from both instructors and peers during
the microteaches. First, we recruited additional university faculty to assist with the
microteaches. This eliminated the burden of the instructor observing two students
simultaneously and ensured that every student received specific written and verbal
feedback immediately after the lesson. To assist students in providing meaningful
feedback, we implemented the use of sentence frames to help students structure their
comments. These sentence frames, which provide specific vocabulary and structure
for response and discussion (Echevarria, 2016), assisted students in constructing
focused feedback that assisted their peers in enhancing specific components of
their lessons and instructional performance. Examples of sentence frames included
phrases such as “The best aspect of the lesson presented was __________________”
or “I have the following suggestion to improve _________________ aspect of the
lesson.” The peer reviewers were encouraged to list and describe two to three areas
for improvement and at least one aspect of the lesson that they liked.

Schools Fostering a More Equitable World 29