Abstract
Teaching assistants (TAs) often lead courses using curricula they did not design. Therefore, examining how curriculum and professional development (PD) interact to influence TAs’ teaching practices is critical. This study describes the effects of a curriculum and PD intervention in two contexts: when TAs are teaching curriculum that is explicitly linked to PD, and when teaching curriculum that is not linked to PD. The Intervention curriculum featured structured opportunities for reform-oriented teaching practices. The Intervention PD was situated in the context of these specific curriculum activities and modelled the desired teaching practices. TAs that participated in the intervention implemented more student-centered teaching practices than TAs that did not participate in the intervention, even when teaching curriculum that was not designed to be student-centered and was not linked to PD. A linear model of TAs’ teaching practices that included PD type, task cognitive demand and curriculum type indicates that cognitive demand has the largest relationship with teaching practices, followed by PD type. These results have implications for policy. They suggest that investment in curriculum-linked TA PD can be effective even when teaching curricula that is not linked to PD. Additionally, investment in development of higher-cognitive-demand tasks may be an effective strategy to support implementation of student-centered practices.
Highlights
Undergraduate biology instruction is shifting from an instructor-centered to a student-centered pedagogical style that engages students in more cognitively demanding exploration of core concepts and practices in biology [1,2,3,4]
This study indicates that reform-oriented curriculum implemented alongside curriculum-linked professional development (PD) supports Teaching assistants (TAs)’ enactment of student-centered teaching practices, with a relatively short time investment
The structure of PD appears important: TAs that participated in curriculum-linked PD that incorporated modelling of teaching practices and instructor-driven reflection about those practices (Intervention PD) taught curricular tasks in a more student-centered manner than TAs that participated in PD in which instructors learned about teaching practices and designed small changes to the traditional curriculum to incorporate those strategies (Traditional PD)
Summary
Undergraduate biology instruction is shifting from an instructor-centered to a student-centered pedagogical style that engages students in more cognitively demanding exploration of core concepts and practices in biology [1,2,3,4]. These curricular changes demand more of students and require elevated teaching practices [4, 5]. We examine the effects of the PD program on TAs’ teaching practices in two contexts: 1) when teaching PD-associated versus un-associated curricular tasks, and 2) when teaching curriculum that varies in cognitive demand
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