Promoting Graduate Teaching Assistant Teaching Professional Development Through a Structured, Cohort-Based Program

About This Grant

This project aims to serve the national interest by implementing evidence-based teaching practices in biology. Recognizing the ongoing need to advance the quality of undergraduate biology education, the research team plans to develop training for administrators, STEM faculty, and staff (Scholars). Through their involvement, the Scholars will, in turn, prepare graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants at their institutions. The initiative will be designed to promote the adaptation and application of purposeful, validated teaching practices by graduate teaching assistants and undergraduate learning assistants through participation in teacher professional development (Teaching Assistant – Teaching Professional Development, TA-TPD). A set of six regional workshops are planned, extending the team's prior work supported by the NSF Research Coordination Networks for Undergraduate Education initiative. A change theory for teaching guides this undertaking. Research and evaluation activities will investigate the effectiveness of the workshops and the connection of project activities and elements with the anticipated outcomes of the project. There are three interconnected objectives: (1) Develop regional workshops that will each host Scholar teams from at least ten unique institutions, reaching over 50 institutions over four years, while minimizing travel costs; (2) Engage each Scholar team in a contextually relevant reflective process to develop or refine existing TA-TPD activities at their institutions; (3) Evaluate the efficacy of workshops and TA-TPD using a mixed-methods research design for formative and summative purposes and the generation of new knowledge. Drawing on teaching change theory in parallel with the evaluation, the research team will conduct a mixed-methods research effort guided by the following research question: What are the impacts of the program on Scholars, their teams, and their institutions? What are the results for TA who participate in TPD activities? A comprehensive set of data will be collected through pre-post surveys, focus groups, interviews, and document analysis using quantitative and qualitative approaches and frameworks that are grounded in empirical data and the change theory (including contextual factors, personal factors, teacher thinking and beliefs, and instructional practices). The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to enhance the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to evolve and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.