Abstract

This study aimed to explore the pre-service English teachers’ metacognitive awareness and microteaching problems at four universities in Indonesia. The participants were eighty pre-service English teachers selected through purposive sampling. This study used a mixed-method design, combining quantitative and qualitative research. The researcher used questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and reflections from pre-service English teachers to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The researcher used statistical calculation using SPSS through descriptive statistics to analyze the quantitative data, whereas for the qualitative data, the researcher conducted a thematic analysis. The findings showed that the pre-service English teachers have high metacognitive awareness. Furthermore, pre-service English teachers faced several problems during the microteaching process, such as managing time and class, teaching strategy, and communication. Additionally, how metacognitive awareness influenced their teaching performances was explained in this article. The study provided practical recommendations for educational institutions to develop more efficient teacher training programs. Moreover, it offered recommendations for enhancing metacognitive awareness within the educational setting. Additionally, it contributed to the literature on teacher education by addressing a previously unexplored area of research and offering a fresh viewpoint that can be utilized to develop more comprehensive and efficient training approaches and tactics, specifically emphasizing microteaching and metacognitive awareness.