Instructional Issues for Teaching Assistants

This study examined teaching assistants' perceptions of various instructional issues and explored whether their perceptions were affected by nationality, gender, and academic discipline. The study generated significant, positive results. Logistic regression with dummy coding revealed significant predictors of teaching assistants' instructional roles, teaching style, instructional methods, communication strategies, and potential problems. Discussion of the results, implications, and recommendations for future research are included.where she coordinates the campus-wide TA training and development program     

Identifying threshold concepts: case study of an open catchment hydraulics course

The Threshold Concept Framework is used to initiate a dialogue on an empirically supported pedagogy that focuses on students’ conceptual understanding required for solving application-based problems. The present paper uses a triangulation approach to identify the threshold concept in a third-year undergraduate civil engineering course on open channel hydraulics. Evidence from teachers, students, and assessment data point to ‘critical flow’ as the threshold concept – a concept that is transformative, integrative, and troublesome. Identifying the threshold concept by engaging various course stakeholders in a dialogue about conceptual understanding and capabilities makes learning visible for all participants in the process. Implementing this approach can result in an empirically driven rationale for adjusting pedagogies and assessments to foster enhanced student learning outcomes.     

Forging links between parents and schools: a new role for Teaching Assistants?

Elaine Logan and Anthony Feiler discuss findings from the Literacy Early Action Project, a home based scheme for Reception children at risk of struggling with literacy. During the project, Teaching Assistants (TAs) made regular visits to children's homes, sharing ideas for literacy learning with parents and other family members. The article concludes that TAs are exceptionally well positioned to take on innovative roles, developing links between home and school.     

Instructional Design as a Professional Development Tool-of-Choice for Graduate Teaching Assistants

Institutions need effective and efficient methods of professional development for preparing graduate students to teach. These skills are important both for their immediate roles as teaching assistants (TAs) and for their eventual roles in the professoriate. An iterative process model from instructional design can function as a cognitive organizational framework for the development of teaching expertise. It facilitates expertise by supporting TAs in connecting new and existing knowledge about teaching and learning in meaningful ways that reflect the cognitive processes of expert teachers. Thus, it can support both the current and future development of teaching expertise and facilitate the application of knowledge in the form of teaching strategies. Patricia L. Hardré earned her Ph.D. in Education at the University of Iowa. She specializes in Instructional Design and Technology with emphases on cognition and instruction, human motivation, and educational assessment. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Oklahoma. Her current research pursuits include K-12 teacher education, TA training and development, high school students' motivation to learn and persist in school, and the effects of computer-based administration of research instruments.     

Student-faculty partnership in explorations of pedagogical practice: a threshold concept in academic development

Student-faculty partnerships position students as informants, participants, and change agents in collaboration with faculty members. Enacting one form of such collaboration, Bryn Mawr College’s SaLT program pairs faculty members and undergraduate students in explorations of pedagogical practice. The program provides both context and case study for this form of Student-faculty partnership as a threshold concept in academic development. Like all threshold concepts, the notion of Student-faculty partnership is troublesome, transformative, irreversible, and integrative. This article draws on faculty reflections to explore what constitutes this threshold, the insights and practices that are possible if faculty cross it, and implications for academic developers.     

大学“助教”的逝去:基于S大学三位教师的口述史研究

新中国成立以来,大学青年教师已经历了老、中、青三代,三代青年教师在不同历史时期,有着怎样的助教境遇？扫描三代青年教师走过的助教历程,发现第一代青年教师刻骨铭心的助教,到了第二代就变得顺其自然,到第三代就多了几分随意,并行将逝去。然而,助教的灵魂不应逝去,值得人们深思。     

自我形象与语音教学策略

文章作者认为,语音影响语言学习者的自我形象.克服外语学习者语音心理障碍的关键是学好英语语音.教师应在课堂教学中运用恰当的教学策略,减少学生的语音心理压力,树立学生良好的外语学习自我形象.     

The role of HE in professional development: some reflections on a foundation degree for teaching assistants

Rapid change in higher education (HE) has lead to a reappraisal and debate about the role and ‘mission’ of the university and the university teacher. In the diversification of the HE sector, it is possible to see a shift away from the ‘advancement of knowledge’ as the primary purpose of the HE sector as a whole. This article focuses on a particular dimension of this change referred to as the ‘vocationalisation’ of HE and evident in the growing role of work-based learning (WBL) in the academy. In particular, foundation degrees provide a context for examining the role of WBL and the university in professional development. Analysis of interviews with 19 students on, or progressing from a foundation degree for teaching assistants reveals how they construct their learning and the relationship between work-based and academic learning. The author concludes that notions of ‘equivalence’ between work-based and academic learning are flawed and fail to recognise HE's distinctive contribution to professional learning, and argues for recognition of the distinctive contributions that both WBL and ‘academic’ learning make to professional development.     

优质教学的教学论解读

有效教学是对教学的基本要求,优质教学是追求的目标,新课程呼唤优质教学。优质教学坚持三维目标整合的整体发展观,秉承注重思维过程、生活经验、开放建构和整体联系的知识观,倡导主动性、交往性、创新性和体验性学习的学习观,要求教师由传授者走向促进者,由拥有知识到拥有智慧。优质教学的核心是学生的优质发展,而促进学生的优质发展则需要优质的知识、优质的学习和优质的教师。     

The relationship between student understanding,satisfaction and performance in an Australian engineering programme

It has often been suggested that actual or anticipated final grades may influence the ratings given by students in student experience surveys but few studies have been able to test this using actual grades. A study was carried out involving six courses over all four year levels of an undergraduate engineering programme, where students were asked to identify themselves in an experience survey by providing their student ID on the survey form. The aim of the study was to investigate a number of questions related to the readiness of students to identify themselves, and to examine any correlation between final examination grades, ratings of student satisfaction and the students’ perception of their level of understanding of material in their courses. Students were discovered to have a poor idea of how well they understand the concepts presented in their courses. This lack of an accurate idea of their own understanding is particularly important because ‘student understanding’ correlated to the ratings they gave to the course. Ratings were largely unaffected by final marks but students who gave their ID outperformed those who did not in end‐of‐year examinations. Higher year level students were more inclined to identify themselves and ratings tended to increase with year level.     

A Window for a Purpose: Developing a Framework for Describing Effective Science Teaching and Learning

This paper describes the development of a framework – the SIS Components – for describing effective teaching and learning in science, to support a system wide change initiative. The methodology used and the analysis that led to their refinement, is traced to expose the different issues involved in constructing the notion of effective practice. These issues have to do with purpose, politics and audience. They determine features of the framework such as specificity, elements focused on, and the support structures that are put in place to establish the particular discourse being promoted. The paper describes the different research methods used to establish, to promote and to validate the components, and outlines the different senses in which this and any framework can be seen as contingent on the setting for which it is intended.     

Threshold concepts in higher education: a synthesis of the literature relating to measurement of threshold crossing

In relation to teaching and learning approaches that improve student learning outcomes, threshold concepts have generated substantial interest in higher education. They have been described as ‘portals’ that lead to a transformed way of understanding or thinking, enabling learners to progress, and have been enthusiastically adopted to inform teaching approaches and curriculum design. A growing body of literature has critiqued the relevance and applicability of the threshold concept theory and identified threshold concepts relevant to specific disciplines. More recent research has identified how students cross these thresholds and provided measures of the successful acquisition of threshold concepts. This literature synthesis critiques existing evidence on threshold crossing and acquisition to provide a succinct and informative overview of the outcomes to date. Key questions relevant to educators and researchers investigating whether students acquire the threshold concepts associated with their teaching, arose from the literature synthesis. These were: whether or not threshold crossing can be measured; how variation in student learning can be addressed during measurement; tools that can be used for measuring threshold crossing; whether the way units or concepts are taught should alter prior to measurement, and the challenges and limitations of measuring threshold crossing.     

Tackling Complexity In Mathematics Teaching Development: Using the Teaching Triad as a Tool for Reflection and Analysis

This paper reports research that attempts tomake sense of the complexity of mathematicsteaching and its development at secondaryschool level. The research was conducted inpartnership between two teachers and twoeducator/researchers over one school term intwo U.K. schools. A theoretical construct, theteaching triad, was used as an analyticaldevice (by the researchers) and as a reflectiveagent for teaching development (by theteachers). The focus of analysis was theinteractions between teacher and students atwhole class and small group level. Both micro-and macro-analyses were undertaken. We presentdetails of the processes involved in examplesfrom the teaching of one teacher as shetranslated theoretical aims into classroompractice. The use of the triad allowed accessto complexity, involving both psychological andsociological elements, and to the position of asincere teacher with respect to competingforces in the educational system. Thepotential of the triad for teacher and teachingdevelopment is discussed.     

Putting threshold concepts to work in health sciences: insights for curriculum design from a qualitative research synthesis

The idea of threshold concepts (TC) has been well received across the higher education community. However the concept’s framework is still evolving and the literature uses the framework in different ways. Just over a decade since the idea first captured interest, it is opportune to explore the nature of that discourse, and the kinds of enquiry undertaken to date. This article reports on a qualitative synthesis that analyses published research on TC in health sciences. It provides a fresh perspective on the literature to identify key themes. Inducting students into complex practices; beyond concepts and developing students’ agency, are the three themes to arise from our findings. These themes offer insights on the ways TC have been used to develop scholarly curriculum, teaching and learning practices. They not only reflect the concerns of the community, but represent a set of empirically based principles for curriculum and course design.     

Teaching strategies to promote concept learning by design challenges

Background: This study is the second study of a design-based research, organised around four studies, that aims to improve student learning, teaching skills and teacher training concerning the design-based learning approach called Learning by Design (LBD).

Purpose: LBD uses the context of design challenges to learn, among other things, science. Previous research shows that this approach to subject integration is quite successful but provides little profit on (scientific) concept learning. For this, a lack of (knowledge of) proper teaching strategies is suggested as an important reason. This study explores these strategies and more specific the interaction with concept learning.

Sample: Six Dutch first-year bachelor’s degree science student teachers, between the ages of 16 and 18, and two science teacher trainers (principal investigators included) were involved.

Design and methods: A mixed methods study was used to study LBD’s teaching practice in depth. Based on a theoretical framework of (concept) learning-related teaching strategies video recordings of a guided LBD challenge were analysed to unravel teacher handling in detail. Complemented by questionnaire and interview data and students’ learning outcomes (pre- and post-exam) the effectiveness of teaching strategies was established and shortcomings were distracted.

Results: Students reached medium overall learning gains where the highest gains were strongly task-related. Teacher handling was dominated by providing feedback and stimulating collaboration and only 13% of all teacher interventions concerned direct explication of underlying science. And especially these explicit teaching strategies were highly appreciated by students to learn about science.

Conclusions: In accordance with insights about knowledge transfer, LBD needs to be enriched with explicit teaching strategies, interludes according to poor-related science content important for cohesive understanding and de- and recontextualisation of concepts for deeper understanding.     

Exploring the impact of faculty reflection on weekly student evaluations of teaching

This exploratory study considered Larrivee’s assessment of teachers’ reflective practice levels by using a formative, weekly, online student evaluation of teaching (SET) tool through a virtual learning environment (VLE) as a means to encourage reflective practice. In‐depth interviews were conducted with six faculty members in three departments at a university college in the UK. The study found that: (a) faculty who experienced surface‐level reflection were more likely to have a reactive reflection style; and (b) faculty who experienced higher levels of reflection were more likely to have a proactive reflection style. Overall, the tool was found to be an efficient means of encouraging reflection by all participants and demonstrated that reflective practice could come about as a result of these weekly formative SETs. The study concludes with suggestions for academic development and future research on reflection that could be conducted using SETs via a VLE.     

Developing a Training Course for Undergraduate Teaching Assistants

An undergraduate teaching assistant (UTA) training course was developed using existing best practices and Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives as a framework. Course goals included developing assistants’ content knowledge, procedural knowledge, and metacognition regarding teaching. Across three semesters, UTAs’ (N?=?68) pre- and post-test responses showed significant increases in their teaching-related knowledge, confidence in their skills, consideration of a teaching-related career, and perceived benefits of being a UTA. The course provides an efficient method by which assistants learn to support students and faculty in a range of undergraduate courses, serving as a potential model for other teaching assistantship programs.     

Student Peer Teaching: An Innovative Approach to Instruction in Science and Engineering Education

This paper reports the results of a pilot-study in a senior paper science and engineering class, of an innovative instructional method designed to foster student problem-solving and in-depth learning of material, namely, student peer teaching. We review related literature focusing on active learning methods in science and engineering education, describe the method of student peer teaching used in this pilot-study, present the evaluation method and results, and discuss implications for further development of this method of instruction. Results suggest that students were able to effectively teach significant curricular content. In addition, the method of student peer teaching served important purposes in helping students develop in-depth understanding and expertise in the issues related to their teaching session, as well as teaching and presentation skills which will be useful in their professional practice. However, students expressed concern that, while achieving in-depth learning of the content of their teaching session, they tended to focus on the content area of their teaching session at the expense of other content areas and may not have learned as well from other students as from the Professor. We recommend a modified structure for student peer teaching which incorporates cooperative learning methods; increased Professor involvement in class sessions, in the role of the mentor; and modifications in performance evaluation methods to ensure ongoing student monitoring of progress and self-assessment. The method of student peer teaching, in science and engineering education, combined with cooperative learning methods, is viewed as a major extension of cooperative learning methods, used in the service of preparation for professional careers.