ABSTRACT
A deliberate shift in the distribution of teacher attention along these lines has, of course, considerable implications, the investigation of which was beyond the scope of the ORACLE programme. The evidence from experiments designed to monitor the effect of using micro-teaching or interaction analysis in teacher training suggests that these techniques do result in an improvement in general performance. Micro-teaching concentrates on improving a limited number of specific behaviours. An area relevant to teacher training is that of assessment; specifically what we have called teacher-based assessment in the ORACLE project. Observation of actual classroom practice under skilled guidance, perhaps utilizing simplified observational schedules, is one technique now increasingly used in teacher education. The use of structured exercises, as on the ORACLE programme, could provide relatively standardized situations where the development of such skills could be assessed in a more systematic way than in the past.
