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.

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Each year, the Faculty of Education, Chiba University, offers a "Practice Teaching Orientation" course to 370 undergraduate elementary school teacher training program students. This course is designed to give the students fundamentals in the content, goals and methodologies used in elementary school education as well as to prepare them for actually undergoing later practice teaching which they take later on in order to qualify for a teaching certificate. As of the 1986 academic year this program has been conducted for 20 years. In this study, the authors used questionnaires given to both students and teachers in order to analyze the content and methods of this orientation program. The results showed that 93.6% of the students as well as the majority of their teachers replied that what the students learn in this orientation program is helpful in later practice teaching, thereby proving that the program is effective. Utilization of audiovisual materials and aids, and of television in particular, was rated as one of the most effective techniques used in this group orientation program. The authors concluded that it is necessary to develop additional instructional programs and expand facilities in the future.

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