Abstract
Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) are key partners in the education of undergraduates. Given the potentially large impact GTAs can have on undergraduate student learning, it is important to provide them with appropriate preparation for teaching. But GTAs are students themselves, and not all of them desire to pursue an academic career. Fully integrating GTA preparation into the professional development of graduate students lowers the barrier to engagement so that all graduate students may benefit from the opportunity to explore teaching and its applications to many potential career paths. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of a GTA Preparation course for first-year Ph.D. students at the Georgia Tech School of Physics. Through a yearly cycle of implementation and revision, guided by the 3P Framework we developed (Pedagogy, Physics, Professional Development), the course has evolved into a robust and comprehensive professional development program that is well-received by physics graduate students.
Highlights
Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are essential partners in the education of introductory physics students
The pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) framework was developed with K–12 teachers in mind, and there are some notable differences in the needs and beliefs of novice teachers and GTAs [1,74], we find that it is a useful foundation for the intersection of physics and pedagogy
Under the 3P framework, our GTA preparation course has evolved from “pedagogy and logistics with sparse physics content” into a robust and comprehensive professional development program that is well received by the GTAs, is considered useful for their first teaching assignment, and that highlights the ways in which teaching can help them hone their transferable professional skills
Summary
Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are essential partners in the education of introductory physics students. In a large-enrollment introductory physics class, students spend nearly as much in-class contact time with GTAs as they do with faculty [1]. It is crucial to lower the barrier to engagement in GTA preparation by fully integrating it into the graduate students’ professional development. In this paper we describe the development and implementation of a Physics GTA Preparation course that fully integrates pedagogy, physics, and professional development strategies. The course has evolved into a robust and comprehensive program that has been well received by the GTAs and has had a measurable positive impact on their self-efficacy and approaches to teaching. We hope that in offering details of the history, development, and content of our curriculum, we can aid other institutions in the planning of their own GTA preparation programs
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