Visions for undergraduate biology education highlight student participation in rigorous scientific discussion as a cornerstone for learning. However, orchestrating scientific discussions is challenging for instructors, and especially difficult for novice teaching assistants (TAs) with minimal preparation for this instructional assignment. If laboratory TAs are expected to foster scientific discussions in the classroom, they need support through professional development (PD) and curriculum materials. While such supports have been described in the K-12 arena, there is a need for research that examines supports for TAs to orchestrate scientific discussions between undergraduate students. To address this need, our study examined a biology laboratory course designed to provide opportunities for students to engage in biology practices and discourses. Our research questions were: How were TAs supported to teach this curriculum? How did TAs engage with those supports? How was TA engagement with supports related to instructional practice? Our data sources included the student laboratory manual, the course instructional manual, transcripts of weekly PD sessions, and written teaching reflections. Using qualitative methods, we developed an a priori coding framework based on the literature, which remained open during the analysis for emergent codes. We iteratively and collaboratively classified the codes into general themes representing common ideas.
Results/Conclusions
Our findings aligned with K-12 literature that distinguishes between Knowledge for Teaching developed while planning for instruction and Knowledge for Teaching developed while in the act of teaching. However, our findings suggest that the postsecondary laboratory context, which typically includes weekly planning meetings focused on each laboratory investigation, provides unique PD opportunities to promote both types of Knowledge for Teaching that are not possible within most K-12 PD contexts. The unique opportunities we identified included opportunities for: (1) the curriculum designers to explain the rationale behind each lesson to the TAs implementing that lesson, (2) TAs to anticipate what learners may say during planned whole class discussions, (3) TAs to learn subject matter including both core concepts and scientific practices like scientific argumentation, (4) TAs to witness models of productive talk moves to promote scientific discussions, and (5) TAs to reflect on how specific talk moves promote or constrain scientific discussions. Engagement with each of these specific types of supports was variable across the 21 TA participants. Variation in TA engagement corresponded to variation in TA success to foster scientific discussions. Our findings have implications for transforming existing weekly TA meetings into PD sessions to support ambitious biology laboratory instruction.