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The Impact of a Pedagogy Course on the Teaching Beliefs of Inexperienced Graduate Teaching Assistants

There has been little attention given to teaching beliefs of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), even though they represent the primary teaching workforce for undergraduate students in discussion and laboratory sections at many research universities. Secondary school education studies have shown th...

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Autor principal: Lee, Star W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Society for Cell Biology 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6757226/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30707641
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-07-0137
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author Lee, Star W.
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description There has been little attention given to teaching beliefs of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), even though they represent the primary teaching workforce for undergraduate students in discussion and laboratory sections at many research universities. Secondary school education studies have shown that teaching beliefs are malleable and can be shaped by professional development, particularly for inexperienced teachers. This study characterized inexperienced GTAs’ teaching beliefs about student learning and how they change with a science-specific pedagogy course that emphasized student learning. GTA teaching beliefs were characterized as traditional (providing information to students), instructive (providing activities for students), and transitional (focusing on student–teacher relationships). At the start of the course, traditional, instructive, and transitional beliefs were emphasized comparably in the concept maps and presentations of inexperienced GTAs. At the end of the course, although GTAs’ beliefs remained mostly teacher focused, they were more instructive than traditional or transitional. GTAs included teaching strategies and jargon from the course in their concept maps but provided minimal explanations about how opportunities for active student engagement would impact student learning. These results suggest there is a need to provide ongoing discipline-specific professional development to inexperienced GTAs as they develop and strengthen their teaching beliefs about student learning.
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spelling pubmed-67572262019-10-01 The Impact of a Pedagogy Course on the Teaching Beliefs of Inexperienced Graduate Teaching Assistants Lee, Star W. CBE Life Sci Educ Article There has been little attention given to teaching beliefs of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), even though they represent the primary teaching workforce for undergraduate students in discussion and laboratory sections at many research universities. Secondary school education studies have shown that teaching beliefs are malleable and can be shaped by professional development, particularly for inexperienced teachers. This study characterized inexperienced GTAs’ teaching beliefs about student learning and how they change with a science-specific pedagogy course that emphasized student learning. GTA teaching beliefs were characterized as traditional (providing information to students), instructive (providing activities for students), and transitional (focusing on student–teacher relationships). At the start of the course, traditional, instructive, and transitional beliefs were emphasized comparably in the concept maps and presentations of inexperienced GTAs. At the end of the course, although GTAs’ beliefs remained mostly teacher focused, they were more instructive than traditional or transitional. GTAs included teaching strategies and jargon from the course in their concept maps but provided minimal explanations about how opportunities for active student engagement would impact student learning. These results suggest there is a need to provide ongoing discipline-specific professional development to inexperienced GTAs as they develop and strengthen their teaching beliefs about student learning. American Society for Cell Biology 2019 /pmc/articles/PMC6757226/ /pubmed/30707641 http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-07-0137 Text en © 2019 S. W. Lee. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2019 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
Lee, Star W.
The Impact of a Pedagogy Course on the Teaching Beliefs of Inexperienced Graduate Teaching Assistants
title The Impact of a Pedagogy Course on the Teaching Beliefs of Inexperienced Graduate Teaching Assistants
title_full The Impact of a Pedagogy Course on the Teaching Beliefs of Inexperienced Graduate Teaching Assistants
title_fullStr The Impact of a Pedagogy Course on the Teaching Beliefs of Inexperienced Graduate Teaching Assistants
title_full_unstemmed The Impact of a Pedagogy Course on the Teaching Beliefs of Inexperienced Graduate Teaching Assistants
title_short The Impact of a Pedagogy Course on the Teaching Beliefs of Inexperienced Graduate Teaching Assistants
title_sort impact of a pedagogy course on the teaching beliefs of inexperienced graduate teaching assistants
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6757226/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30707641
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-07-0137
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