Teaching Skills for Becoming a Professional Teacher

          Teaching is a profession that requires special skills. To become a professional teacher, a person must master various aspects of teaching and education that have been learned and mastered as a result of pre-service or specific education. The main task of a teacher is to teach, with the aim of adding to learners' knowledge. This teaching activity can only be carried out by certain individuals, namely those who have gained sufficient experience and training. The government categorises the teaching role as a professional occupation. As a professional occupation, teachers must have three competencies, namely personal, social, and professional competence. As educators, they must have good teaching ability. Every prospective educator will acquire the necessary teaching ability by taking part in microteaching training. What is microteaching?

          Microteaching comes from two words: “micro”, which means small, narrow, and limited, while “teaching” means to teach. Therefore, judging by its form, the term is defined as teaching activity in which every aspect is reduced or simplified.

          Microteaching was first tried at Stanford University, United States, in 1963. Microteaching was introduced as one effort to improve the quality of professional educators. Microteaching began to be used in Indonesia by several higher education institutions, namely IKIP Yogyakarta, IKIP Bandung, and IKIP Ujung Pandang.

          Asril (2011) states that microteaching is a scaled-down teaching model. The word “scaled-down” refers to several things, namely a limited number of students, a limited classroom, limited learning time, and many more. Microteaching helps teachers gain new experiences in the teaching and learning process. Through the microteaching technique, both teachers and prospective teachers can gather information about their weaknesses and strengths in the teaching process.

          According to Barnawi and Arifin (2016), teaching skills in microteaching are divided into several aspects, as follows:

1)Skills in Opening and Closing a Lesson

          Opening a lesson is an effort to create a classroom atmosphere before the learning activities so that students' attention and thoughts can be focused on what will be learned during the lesson. If a teacher does not start the lesson well, all the plans and preparations  made before teaching will be in vain. Closing a lesson is an activity that aims to give a conclusion about the core activities of the lesson. Closing a lesson must be done to give a deeper understanding of what has been learned, the level of students' achievement in understanding the material, and the level of the teacher's success in the learning activities. Closing activities are not only done at the end of each lesson, but can be done at the end of each segment of activity or each time the lesson moves on to a new object or subject.

 

 

1. Explaining Skills

Explaining skill is the ability to convey information organised in an orderly way as a meaningful whole so that the material is easy for students to understand. Mastering explaining skills is very important for teachers because it enables them to improve their use of time and the delivery of explanations, improve students' understanding, help them broaden their knowledge, and overcome the scarcity of books as a learning resource. Explaining aims to increase student engagement, improve their understanding of concepts, laws, and procedures, help them understand questions, and help them understand reasoning processes.

1. Variation Skills

Skill in using stimulus variation is the teacher's ability to use various teaching abilities to encourage students and ensure that the learning atmosphere remains interesting, so that students are interested in receiving the material while learning proceeds effectively.  The purposes of using variation are to eliminate students' boredom in following the learning process, to maintain an ideal learning environment, to improve the condition and attention of the students being taught, and to make it easier for teachers to deliver material. The components of variation skills are divided into three groups: the teacher's teaching style and methods, the use of teaching media and tools, and patterns of interaction.

 

4)Skills in Providing Reinforcement

Giving reinforcement is an action taken to encourage students to improve the quality of their behaviour or actions. Reinforcement skill is the skill of giving positive responses that aims to increase and maintain a behaviour so that it can be repeated in later lessons. Reinforcement techniques in learning activities can be delivered verbally and nonverbally. Verbal reinforcement is praise expressed orally, while nonverbal reinforcement is expressed through facial expressions, body movements, giving something, and so on. Reinforcement can increase students' attention to the lesson, encourage good behaviour, and foster self-confidence.

 

1. Questioning Skills

Questioning skill is the ability to elicit responses from others. In every instance of teaching, assessment, and questioning is used to assess students' understanding of the material that has been taught. Questioning is more effective when the questions asked are weighty enough, easy to understand, or relevant to the topic being discussed. The purposes of a teacher asking students questions include arousing students' curiosity, improving thinking ability, sharpening students' focus of attention, identifying students' learning problems, conveying the teacher's expectations to students, stimulating conversation, showing attention to students' ideas and circumstances, and encouraging students to dare to take part in learning interaction and express their opinions. Educators, whether beginners or professionals, are strongly encouraged to master this questioning skill, because by asking questions both teachers and students receive feedback about the material and can also capture the attention of students or learners.

6)Skills in Classroom Management

Classroom management skill is the ability to create and maintain an ideal learning environment. It also means being able to change the situation when obstacles arise during the learning process. The components and principles of classroom management skills are preventive, which relates to the teacher's ability to take the initiative and control the lesson, and repressive, which relates to the teacher's response to continuing student disruptions so that the teacher can take remedial action to create ideal learning conditions.

 

7)Skills in Teaching Small Groups and Individuals

Teaching small groups and individuals allows teachers to give greater attention to each student and to create closer and healthier interpersonal relationships between teacher and students. This learning format is characterised by students having the opportunity to learn according to their own interests, abilities, and pace, to receive help from the teacher, and to participate in designing activities. This skill consists of the ability to take a personal approach, the ability to organise, the ability to guide and facilitate students, and the ability to plan and carry out learning activities.

 

8)Skills in Guiding Group Discussions

The ability to guide discussions is very important for teachers to master. There are times when teachers carry out this activity in the middle of the learning process. However, in discussion activities it is still common to find some students speaking off topic. In fact, the main purposes of holding a discussion are to share experiences or information, draw conclusions, or solve problems. This is where the teacher's role is greatly needed to ensure that the discussion can proceed effectively. The skill of guiding group discussions aims to give students the opportunity to think, interact with others, and learn to be positive.