Pre-service Classroom Teachers' First Step to Teaching: Micro Teaching Practices

In the study, it is aimed to reveal the effects of the practices carried out within the scope of the micro teaching course on the development of pre-service classroom teachers' professional knowledge, content knowledge and general culture-ability and their cognitive perceptions towards the concept of micro teaching. The research was conducted with 26 (14 male and 12 female) pre-service teachers studying at the Faculty of Education, Department of Classroom Education in the 2022-2023 academic year of a state university. Exploratory sequential design from mixed research was used in the study. As data collection tools; Micro Teaching Method Measurement and Evaluation Form (MTMMEF) was used to reveal the effectiveness of micro teaching method through peer evaluations, word association test was used to reveal the cognitive perception of the concept of micro teaching (MTWAT), and semi-structured interview form was used to reveal the views on the concept of micro teaching. While parametric analysis methods were used in the quantitative part of the study, content analysis was used in the qualitative part. According to the findings obtained from the research, it was concluded that micro teaching method had positive effects on the development of pre-service teachers' teaching professional knowledge, content knowledge and general culture-abilities and that they had various opinions about the advantages and disadvantages of micro teaching method. In addition, it was revealed that they had cognitive perceptions about the development of teaching professional knowledge, content knowledge and general culture- abilities, the nature of micro-teaching method, evaluation processes and peer teaching.