"Valuing the Everyday: A Verbal Study in GTA Response to Pre-Designed Curriculum" culminates in a verbal understanding of how four graduate teaching associates at the University of Arizona used and responded to pre-designed courses (PDC) and may suggest ways to structure training or learning management systems (LMS) themselves to better…

Given the potential impact of introductory science laboratories on postsecondary students' science learning, careful thinking is needed about how to support teaching assistants (TAs) to create opportunities for their students to reason about science. Research suggests that teachers are best positioned to improve their teaching practices when they…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Biology Teaching Assistants (TAs) were tasked with transitioning and adapting their instruction to an online environment by quickly implementing Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) practices. Effective online and in-person teaching requires student-centered approaches to support undergraduate student learning. Using…

This study reports on a four-year project to embed academic literacy within one core course of a Bachelor of Education program. It involves an interdisciplinary collaboration between learning advisors, as literacy specialists, and lecturers, as subject specialists. It examines their roles and responsibilities and lecturers' perspectives when…

This qualitative case study examined 11 teaching assistants' (TAs) awareness of the need to infuse culturally responsive pedagogy into undergraduate level courses. The TAs represented the fields of political science, history, English, psychology, world languages, and kinesiology at one public university. One-on-one interviews were conducted,…

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study examining the influence of professional development (PD) on tutors' teaching philosophies. It found that tutors construe their role in three ways: as transmitter, facilitator, or reflexive practitioner. The findings suggest most tutors, prior to a PD program, hold a teacher-focused conception…

This article explores the parallels between improvisational theater, commonly known as improv, and active teaching. Specifically, it focuses in the impact of improv techniques on instructor and teaching assistant professional development. The implementation of an active teaching seminar is analyzed, where improv techniques were used in developing…

The presentation of economics in introductory courses has been highlighted as potentially exacerbating the underrepresentation of women in economics. The authors study the impact of a gender-neutral change in content and instruction in introductory economics courses intended to increase student engagement. By implementing meaningful applied…

This study examines the perceptions of first-year, mathematics graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) participating in a six-week summer course designed to deepen their knowledge of collegiate mathematics teaching practices before being assigned to instruct undergraduate students in the subsequent fall semester. Through hybrid deductive-inductive…

Metacognition is the ability to monitor and evaluate one's thoughts about learning and has been shown in some studies to improve the effectiveness of instructors. With dissection-based gross anatomy, instructors dynamically use their metacognition to monitor student learning and adapt their teaching at tableside. This study explored the…

Graduate student and postdoctoral teaching assistants receive highly variable preparation for instructional methods because providing such training is often expensive. Therefore, we conducted an intensive, pedagogical boot camp followed by classroom observations, structured professional development discussions about leveraging the experience on…

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) hold a unique positionality as instructors and research mentors to undergraduate students, research mentees to faculty members, and employees to an institution. With limited pedagogical training and teaching resources, the enactment of planned teaching activities and learning resources may be influenced by how…

Recent reform efforts in postsecondary science teaching have called for shifts in instructional methods to include more evidence-based instructional practices. However, a myriad of factors play a role in whether an instructor adopts these more student-centered methods. One such factor is teaching perspective. In this study, we explored the…

Background: In college science laboratory and discussion sections, student-centered active learning strategies have been implemented to improve student learning outcomes and experiences. Research has shown that active learning activities can increase student anxiety if students fear that they could be negatively evaluated by their peers. Error…

Abstract concepts dominate university science teaching, and much of this content is taught without sufficient connection to students' prior knowledge or everyday experiences. As this can be problematic for students, the aim of this research was to determine the utility and effectiveness of a professional development module on using analogies to…