Prolonged Exposure to Simulated Teaching and the Academic Performance of Education Students

Research on superior performance has shown that important characteristics of students’ achievement and the acquisition of cognitive skills are acquired through practice and appropriate use of teaching methods [1].
Aim: This study examined the effect of using simulated teaching in learning a college content course.
Methodology: A total of 88 third year college education students went through a pretest-posttest experimental study with 44 participants in each of the control or reporting group and the simulated teaching or experimental group, respectively. It was assumed that prolonged exposure to simulated teaching would enhance education students ‘academic performance in a specified academic subject. The data were analysed using means, standard deviation, T-Test for Paired Samples and T-Test for Independent Samples.
Results: Findings revealed a highly significant difference between the mean gain of the control and experimental groups (p-value=.000) indicating that the level of academic performance of students who had more exposure to simulated teaching was significantly higher than students who stopped using the method. The result suggests that the students who had prolonged exposure to simulated teaching performed better in learning a content subject than those who had less exposure to the method.
Conclusion: The study concludes that prolonged exposure to simulated teaching results in a higher academic performance. It further strengthens the notion that ‘when we teach, we learn twice’.