ABSTRACT
In his overview of the skills approach, Argyle (1999, p. 142) noted: ‘One of the implications of looking at social behaviour as a social skill was the likelihood that it could be trained in the way that manual skills are trained.’ This in fact proved to be the case. As discussed in the Introduction to this book, many professionals now undergo some form of specialised training in interpersonal communication as a preparation for practical experience. The most widely utilised method of training for professionals is the microtraining approach, which can be traced back to the development of microteaching in teacher education. Microteaching was first introduced at Stanford University, California, in 1963, when a number of educationists there decided that existing techniques for training teachers ‘how to teach’ needed to be revised. In recognising the many and manifold nuances involved in classroom teaching, the Stanford team felt that any attempt to train teachers should take place in a simplified situation (Allen & Ryan, 1969). Attention was turned to the methods of training used in other fields, where complicated skills were taught by being ‘broken down’ into simpler skill areas, and training often occurred in a simulated situation, rather than in the real environment.
