Developing graduate teaching assistants of biology laboratories with semester-long teaching professional development

Nearly all college students take a science course with a laboratory component at some point before graduation, whether it is part of their major or a general education requirement. Most of these students will have a graduate teaching assistant (GTA) as their instructor. Some current evidence suggests that while many GTAs receive little training in teaching skills, semester-long teaching professional development (TPD) can increase confidence, perception of conceptual knowledge, and effective instructional practices. Moreover, there are many specific research-based teaching strategies that can be taught to GTAs by incorporating them into TPD. This objective of this research was to perform an exploratory study on potential outcomes of a semester-long TPD for GTAs based on research-based strategies. I hypothesized that a semester-long GTA TPD course for the GTAs of biology labs that focuses on research-based methods would improve GTA confidence, pedagogical content knowledge in biology, instructional practices, and satisfaction of their students. These constructs were measured during the pre-training phase of this study. Then the GTAs completed a semester-long TPD course called Biology Pedagogy. Afterward, in the post-training phase, the measurements were repeated and analyzed for change. The statistical results of the study suggested a positive impact from the completion of the TDP to (1) GTA pedagogical content knowledge and (2) satisfaction of the students of the GTAs. However, the results showed no effect from TPD on (1) GTA confidence nor (2) GTA teaching practices and interactions. Nevertheless, this exploratory study has generated many implications for future avenues of research on improving GTA teaching ability through research based TPD.

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