Abstract:

The subject Practicum, which implies an internship, is usually a highly valued subject among students for allowing them to connect to the professional world and put into practice their theoretical knowledge and teaching skills. But if a methodology such as Microteaching is also used, better results are obtained in the development of professional competences.

In the first place, microteaching gives the students, future teachers, the advantage of being more reflective about their own practices, since they videotape themselves by teaching a group of students and can observe the details that occur in the classroom. Secondly, it allows the university trainer to evaluate the practices in greater detail and provide a very detailed qualitative feedback on how to improve it.

Most of our students are already teachers in service and they are enrolled to become teachers in one of the International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes (Primary Years Programme, 3 to 12 year-old students, Middle Years Programme, 12 to 16 year-old students, and Diploma Programme, 16 to 18 year-old students). The students of this online programme in Higher Education have a new option to do their internship.

One of the main characteristics of this option is that, on the one hand, students should watch and comment videos about innovative methodologies. And on the other hand, they should plan a lesson or a unit following the IB planner and record themselves teaching it. They also should comment the videos of their classmates becoming a "critical friend". They reflect together on their educational practice building up a real learning community.

The results reflect their satisfaction for this methodology since they are trained in competences, they receive detailed feedback on their performance based on microteaching techniques and are assessed following a rubric for teachers who implement inquiry as a main methodology.

Keywords:

Microteaching, internship, professional competences, teacher training.