Learning to Teach Under Pressure: Anxiety and Coping in Pre-Service English Teachers’ Microteaching

Abstract

Microteaching gives pre-service English teachers teaching practice, but its performance and evaluative demands can provoke anxiety, and how specific sources of anxiety relate to specific coping strategies is unclear. Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design in one class, this study examined relationships between dimensions of teaching anxiety and coping strategies among pre-service English teachers who had completed a microteaching course and explained them through participants’ accounts. Twenty students completed an adapted Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale and a coping questionnaire, and Spearman’s correlations were exploratory and corrected for multiple comparisons. Six respondents, selected at the extremes of each anxiety category, were interviewed, and reflexive thematic analysis was combined with the questionnaire results in a joint display. Fifty-five percent of respondents were in the high anxiety category, with evaluation and observation rated highest, and the interviews linked anxiety to evaluation by the lecturer and classmates and to perceived readiness. Preparation and practice and learning through observation were rated the most helpful strategies. Two correlations (communication apprehension–learning through observation, ρ = .56; anticipatory performance anxiety–acceptance and avoidance, ρ = .48) were not significant after correction, and total anxiety was unrelated to total coping; coping differed across individuals, not by level of anxiety. The study adds a dimension-level mapping of anxiety sources and coping strategies in microteaching. Because anxiety appeared to be shaped by evaluation and readiness, lecturers can state assessment criteria early and provide structured rehearsal and peer observation. The small, single-class sample makes the findings exploratory.