Graduate teaching assistants’ perceptions of teaching competencies required for work in undergraduate science labs

Deacon, Christopher G.; Hajek, Allyson; Schulz, Henry

doi:10.1080/09500693.2017.1367110

Cited by 14 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…De Putter-Smits et al ( 2012) pointed out that the teaching focus of STEM disciplines or scientific subject matter should be intended to develop teaching competencies of science teacher. And teaching competencies in science education mainly include teaching practice, preparedness, engagement with students and learning of evaluation (Deacon et al, 2017). The Science Teacher Education Committee of the United States (1974) obtained 23 basic elements of teaching competencies of science teacher such as evaluating student achievement, selecting and designing teaching materials, clarifying courses and units of learning objectives, and directing practical work, etc.…”

Section: Science Teaching Competencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing Core Teaching Competency Indicators for Secondary School Science Teachers in China

2021

JBSE

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Science teachers play a key role in successfully implementing science education reforms and providing all students with meaningful science learning opportunities. Therefore, what core teaching competencies do science teachers need to have in their practice? This study uses fuzzy Delphi technique and Analytic Hierarchy Process to approach the above problems. Experts from Chinese universities, secondary schools and educational research institutions were invited to participate in two rounds of Delphi process. The research results show that the four domains of core teaching competencies of science teachers and their 21 competencies have high content validity. Additionally, it can be concluded that the weights of core competencies of making learning objectives, raising pedagogical questions, stimulating learning motivation and analyzing course content ranked high, while the weights of core competencies of using information technology and multimedia, evaluating practical work, and presenting research results have received less attention. It is believed that the results of this study can enlighten the education reform of science teachers and promote the professional development of pre-service/in-service science teachers. Keywords: teaching competence, science teacher, fuzzy Delphi, Analytic Hierarchy Process

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Section: Science Teaching Competencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing Core Teaching Competency Indicators for Secondary School Science Teachers in China

2021

JBSE

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“…On the other hand, disorganized teaching and lack of clarity tended to elicit confusion, frustration and, not surprisingly, disengagement. This reinforces the importance of clarity and communication skills as critical aspects of TA teaching [42], [58], [59].…”

Section: Clarity and Organizationsupporting

confidence: 67%

“…Research shows that TA training has the potential to bolster teaching self-efficacy among TAs regardless of prior teaching experience [59], [65] and has demonstrated the value of TA training for building teaching self-efficacy specifically among STEM TAs [31], [35], [36], [54]. However, whether this potential is realized depends on a number of factors relating to how TA PD is carried out.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s Not Just What TA's Know: Exploring the Role of Teacher Efficacy among Engineering TA's

Wright

Summers

Wilson

2019 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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Do students explicitly value the self-efficacy of their teaching assistants? If so, how does the self-efficacy of their TAs affect how students engage in their courses? This study explores these two questions in a variety of TA-intensive undergraduate engineering courses through qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with 30 students from those courses.Student interviews were first coded to identify references to how important a TA's self-efficacy was to students in their choices to engage and participate in the learning experience. Almost 50% of students interviewed explicitly spoke to how important it was for TAs to be confident in their teaching. Students' use of the terms confidence, confident, or self-confident were interpreted to mean self-efficacy given the task-oriented context in which these terms were used.A second coding pass with the interview data looked at the implications and potential benefits of building teacher self-efficacy among TAs to better serve student learning and engagement. Teachers with high teacher self-efficacy are known to exhibit certain behaviors more often or more effectively than those teachers with lower self-efficacy. Previous research studies have identified these behaviors, allowing the second phase of this study to use these behaviors as a basis for further deductive coding of student interview data. The second phase of this study evaluated the impact and importance of these self-efficacious behaviors as discussed by students in our interview pool. Of those behaviors that result from high teacher efficacy, many students look for indications that the TA puts effort into teaching, teaches with clarity and organization, will support students through difficulty, and demonstrates enthusiasm. Although mentioned by fewer students, other valued teacher efficacy behaviors that emerge from this study include refraining from criticizing student mistakes or knowledge gaps, preparing adequately for class, being willing to experiment instructionally, facilitating small-group work, and being fair. These results reinforce existing research by confirming that content knowledge is only part of what students seek in good teachers, and also provides insight into which behavioral benefits of high teacher efficacy are most salient to undergraduate students in engineering.

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“…There has been an intensified move towards professionalizing the practice of TAs at the university level in the last few decades, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom (e.g., Park, 2004; Winter, Turner, Gedye, Nash, & Grant, 2014). Concurrently, researchers have explored the topic empirically and started to unveil TAs' instructional perceptions and practices (Addy & Blanchard, 2010;Deacon, Hajek, & Schulz, 2017), concerns and challenges (Cho, Kim, Svinicki, & Decker, 2011;Muzaka, 2009), as well as roles and identities (Fairbrother, 2012;Winstone & Moore, 2016). Improvement of students' attitudes towards international student TAs was the focal point of Manohar and Appiah's (2015) study.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Action Research Endeavor with International Student Teaching Assistants for Their Development as Teaching Professionals

Hiratsuka

2021

JLTR

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Research on the experiences of international student teaching assistants (TAs) in the context of Japan is scarce even though for the majority of TAs the position provides them with their first experience of being an educator at the university level. In this research, I used an action research methodology to better understand and improve the quality of classroom life with three international student TAs. Data were gathered, using interviews, picture drawing, and classroom field notes. Overall, there was an agreement among the participants that the action research endeavor enabled them to feel empowered as teacher professionals in that they reported increases in both their collaboration with me (the course instructor) and the frequency and quality of their engagements with their students. They also noted that the feedback they received from and offered to me became more insightful and wide-ranging. I will conclude this article with my recommendations for future research on TAs.

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Graduate teaching assistants’ perceptions of teaching competencies required for work in undergraduate science labs

Cited by 14 publications

References 20 publications

Constructing Core Teaching Competency Indicators for Secondary School Science Teachers in China

Constructing Core Teaching Competency Indicators for Secondary School Science Teachers in China

It’s Not Just What TA's Know: Exploring the Role of Teacher Efficacy among Engineering TA's

An Action Research Endeavor with International Student Teaching Assistants for Their Development as Teaching Professionals

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