Abstract
Teacher trainees at Fukui University must enroll in a specific pre-training program. In addition to other topics, this paper outlines the development of the Fukui University pre-training curriculum and the features of its microteaching programs, programs which must be taken by all third-year students. Microteaching must, of course, concentrate upon fundamental teaching skills but that does mean it it possible to ignore content. Based upon this philosophy, the authors have developed a series of 20-minute microteaching modules and accompanying evaluation charts. An analysis of the evaluation chart results shows that student teachers are able to improve their teaching skills through repeated observation of micro-lessons correlated with parallel self- and other student evaluations. It was also found that the degree of difficulty in evaluation varies greatly from item to item and that skill-related items are the most difficult to evaluate properly. This indicates that there is a strong relationship between students' observational skills and their learning of teaching skills.
