Top Laken M, Schoonraad Sarah A, Otero Valerie K
School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309 USA.
Int J STEM Educ. 2018;5(1):1. doi: 10.1186/s40594-017-0097-9. Epub 2018 Jan 8.
Successful outcomes of the Learning Assistant (LA) model include increased learning outcomes in STEM gateway courses and increased persistence to graduation among LAs and the students they serve. While there are many possible reasons that the LA program is effective, the pedagogical development of the LAs themselves has not yet been systematically studied. The research reported here investigated how deeply first-time LAs enrolled in a one-semester pedagogy course took up the language associated with the course's essential pedagogical principles. By reviewing prior research as well as assessing our target population and our pedagogy course learning goals, we developed a set of three essential pedagogical principles that are critical for effective classroom instruction and developed a coding scheme for identifying these principles in LAs' written work. We then looked at LA's development of language with respect to these principles by analyzing weekly teaching reflections submitted by LAs during five iterations of our pedagogy course.
Our research indicated that the language used to introduce particular pedagogical principles might play an important role in initiating LAs' uptake of these concepts.We found that LAs began to develop an understanding of the language that values students' prior ideas in learning, but the depth of this understanding varied. In addition, LAs did not demonstrate as much growth in their language with respect to the formative assessment or to the idea that students play a role in constructing knowledge.
In developing a pedagogy course for LAs, relating to their prior backgrounds in STEM appears to be critical. Using language that is accessible seems to increase LAs' ability to develop pedagogical principles. Although LAs' development of language related to the essential pedagogical principles is small, it may be enough to allow them to create contexts that facilitate learning.
学习助手（LA）模式的成功成果包括在STEM入门课程中提高学习成果，以及提高LA及其所服务学生的毕业率。虽然LA项目有效的原因有很多，但LA自身的教学发展尚未得到系统研究。本文报道的研究调查了参加为期一学期教学法课程的首次担任LA的人员对与该课程基本教学原则相关语言的接受程度。通过回顾先前的研究以及评估我们的目标人群和教学法课程学习目标，我们制定了一套对有效课堂教学至关重要的三项基本教学原则，并开发了一种编码方案，用于在LA的书面作业中识别这些原则。然后，我们通过分析LA在我们教学法课程的五次迭代中提交的每周教学反思，研究了LA在这些原则方面的语言发展情况。
我们的研究表明，用于介绍特定教学原则的语言可能在促使LA接受这些概念方面发挥重要作用。我们发现LA开始对重视学生学习中先前想法的语言形成理解，但这种理解的深度各不相同。此外，LA在与形成性评估或学生在构建知识中发挥作用的概念相关的语言方面没有表现出同样大的进步。
在为LA开发教学法课程时，结合他们在STEM方面的先前背景似乎至关重要。使用易懂的语言似乎能提高LA制定教学原则的能力。虽然LA在与基本教学原则相关的语言发展方面进展不大，但这可能足以让他们创造促进学习的环境。
