It is necessary for student teachers, while undergoing practice teaching, to master a wide variety of teaching skills. This paper is on the process of acquiring these skills. Four representative teaching skills were selected : (1) lesson plan preparation, (2) classroom management, (3) instructional material selection, and (4) audiovisual material development and utilization. A group of student teachers were rated on their mastery of these skills and the results compared with the number of classes they conducted during practice teaching. Each skill was given a rating from one to ten on a scale of ten. Because of the differences in the way practice teaching is conducted at the lower secondary level, it was possible to gather data only for student teachers assigned to elementary schools. An analysis of the results of this study showed that the acquirement of teaching skills by student teachers during practice teaching fits into one of four basic modes or curves : (A) linear proportional, (B) negative accelerating, (C) positive accelerating, or (D) indeterminate. Most underachievers fall into the last of these four categories. The author found that because curves (B) and (D) predominate, during a minimum of five weeks of practice teaching, student need to conduct a minimum of ten, and an average of twelve, classes before he or she is able to master these skills.

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This paper presents a new method of evaluation, one based upon a practical analysis of the teaching/learning process, for courses in industrial arts at the junior high school level. It also puts greater emphasis upon student self-evaluation. This method adopts the idea of "matching," used in pattern recognition, to compare evaluations of the teacher's instructional activities with the students' self-evaluations of their learning activities. Called " Matched Evaluation," this method is unique in that (1) it is possible to understand the effectiveness of the students' learning as a function of time and (2) by determining the class average it is possible to evaluate the overall teaching/learning process. Applying this method to real situations shows that it permits classification of student learning activities based upon changes over time and that it also makes individualized instruction possible. Widespread use of this newly-developed method should dramatically improve Industrial Arts instruction in junior high schools in the future.

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