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Does Context Matter? Convergent and Divergent Findings in the Cross-Institutional Evaluation of Graduate Teaching Assistant Professional Development Programs

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play important instructional roles in introductory science courses, yet they often have little training in pedagogy. The most common form of teaching professional development (PD) for GTAs is a presemester workshop held at the course, department, or college level....

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Autores principales: Reeves, Todd D., Hake, Laura E., Chen, Xinnian, Frederick, Jennifer, Rudenga, Kristin, Ludlow, Larry H., O’Connor, Clare M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Society for Cell Biology 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007778/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29351911
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.17-03-0044
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author Reeves, Todd D.
Hake, Laura E.
Chen, Xinnian
Frederick, Jennifer
Rudenga, Kristin
Ludlow, Larry H.
O’Connor, Clare M.
author_facet Reeves, Todd D.
Hake, Laura E.
Chen, Xinnian
Frederick, Jennifer
Rudenga, Kristin
Ludlow, Larry H.
O’Connor, Clare M.
author_sort Reeves, Todd D.
collection PubMed
description Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play important instructional roles in introductory science courses, yet they often have little training in pedagogy. The most common form of teaching professional development (PD) for GTAs is a presemester workshop held at the course, department, or college level. In this study, we compare the effectiveness of presemester workshops at three northeastern research universities, each of which incorporated scientific teaching as the pedagogical content framework. The comparison of GTA PD program outcomes at three different institutions is intended to test theoretical assertions about the key role of contextual factors in GTA PD efficacy. Pretest and posttest surveys were used to assess changes in GTA teaching self-efficacy and anxiety following the workshops, and an objective test was used to assess pedagogical knowledge. Analysis of pretest/posttest data revealed statistically significant gains in GTA teaching self-efficacy and pedagogical knowledge and reductions in teaching anxiety across sites. Changes in teaching anxiety and self-efficacy, but not pedagogical knowledge, differed by training program. Student ratings of GTAs at two sites showed that students had positive perceptions of GTAs in all teaching dimensions, and relatively small differences in student ratings of GTAs were observed between institutions. Divergent findings for some outcome variables suggest that program efficacy was influenced as hypothesized by contextual factors such as GTA teaching experience.
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spelling pubmed-60077782018-07-02 Does Context Matter? Convergent and Divergent Findings in the Cross-Institutional Evaluation of Graduate Teaching Assistant Professional Development Programs Reeves, Todd D. Hake, Laura E. Chen, Xinnian Frederick, Jennifer Rudenga, Kristin Ludlow, Larry H. O’Connor, Clare M. CBE Life Sci Educ Article Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play important instructional roles in introductory science courses, yet they often have little training in pedagogy. The most common form of teaching professional development (PD) for GTAs is a presemester workshop held at the course, department, or college level. In this study, we compare the effectiveness of presemester workshops at three northeastern research universities, each of which incorporated scientific teaching as the pedagogical content framework. The comparison of GTA PD program outcomes at three different institutions is intended to test theoretical assertions about the key role of contextual factors in GTA PD efficacy. Pretest and posttest surveys were used to assess changes in GTA teaching self-efficacy and anxiety following the workshops, and an objective test was used to assess pedagogical knowledge. Analysis of pretest/posttest data revealed statistically significant gains in GTA teaching self-efficacy and pedagogical knowledge and reductions in teaching anxiety across sites. Changes in teaching anxiety and self-efficacy, but not pedagogical knowledge, differed by training program. Student ratings of GTAs at two sites showed that students had positive perceptions of GTAs in all teaching dimensions, and relatively small differences in student ratings of GTAs were observed between institutions. Divergent findings for some outcome variables suggest that program efficacy was influenced as hypothesized by contextual factors such as GTA teaching experience. American Society for Cell Biology 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC6007778/ /pubmed/29351911 http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.17-03-0044 Text en © 2018 T. D. Reeves et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2018 The American Society for Cell Biology. “ASCB®” and “The American Society for Cell Biology®” are registered trademarks of The American Society for Cell Biology. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License.
spellingShingle Article
Reeves, Todd D.
Hake, Laura E.
Chen, Xinnian
Frederick, Jennifer
Rudenga, Kristin
Ludlow, Larry H.
O’Connor, Clare M.
Does Context Matter? Convergent and Divergent Findings in the Cross-Institutional Evaluation of Graduate Teaching Assistant Professional Development Programs
title Does Context Matter? Convergent and Divergent Findings in the Cross-Institutional Evaluation of Graduate Teaching Assistant Professional Development Programs
title_full Does Context Matter? Convergent and Divergent Findings in the Cross-Institutional Evaluation of Graduate Teaching Assistant Professional Development Programs
title_fullStr Does Context Matter? Convergent and Divergent Findings in the Cross-Institutional Evaluation of Graduate Teaching Assistant Professional Development Programs
title_full_unstemmed Does Context Matter? Convergent and Divergent Findings in the Cross-Institutional Evaluation of Graduate Teaching Assistant Professional Development Programs
title_short Does Context Matter? Convergent and Divergent Findings in the Cross-Institutional Evaluation of Graduate Teaching Assistant Professional Development Programs
title_sort does context matter? convergent and divergent findings in the cross-institutional evaluation of graduate teaching assistant professional development programs
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007778/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29351911
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.17-03-0044
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