“My Eyes Have Been Opened”: Pre-Service Secondary Teachers Exploring Behavior Management through a Microteaching Project

ABSTRACT One of the primary concerns of pre-service secondary teachers is negotiating student behavior and classroom management, and novice teachers cite this as one of the reasons why they leave the profession in the first three years. This study examines the learning outcomes of a microteaching project with a student behavior component. The participants were 79 pre-service secondary teachers enrolled in four sections of a general methods and assessment course. Participants engaged in a two-and-a-half-week microteaching project in which they were confronted with various behavior disruptions during their teaching as their classmates became “high school students.” The results show that the participants gained a deeper understanding of the complexity of teaching and student behavior and also identified strategies to take with them into their future classrooms.