Does Teaching as You Were Taught Make The

8/3/2019 Does Teaching as You Were Taught Make The

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Does Teaching As You Were

Taught Make The Grade?

Biology TAs and their beliefs about

teaching and learning


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I Googled famous scientists

Lets see how many you can guess


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So, this group of folks has led to THIS group of

folks..


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Where we come from is important in

shaping who we are

What kind of person is likely to become a

scientist?

How is science as a field structured to includeor exclude?

Science is empirical, does that mean its

factual?

Who gets to decide what is good research?


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Good research should be peer-

reviewed, right?

Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a

profession or a process of evaluation involvingqualified individuals within the relevant field.Peer review methods are employed tomaintain standards, improve performance and

provide credibility. In academia peer review isoften used to determine an academic paper'ssuitability for publication.


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The differencepersists even

among black andwhite scientistswho went tosimilar graduateschools, took partin the same NIHscientist trainingprograms, haveearned the same

number of grantspreviously andhave published thesame number ofscientific papers


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Can students find mentors?

"R01s are the coin of therealm," Kington explains.Whether a young scientistgets one often affects

whether she or he gets apermanent or tenure-track job at a university.

If NIH reviewers canidentify the applicants

they screen, then onefactor that may be at playis unconscious bias

And in fields like biology,reviewers might recognizeapplicants by the studiesthey propose because

there are so fewresearchers in the field.

"I think it's vitallyimportant thatinstitutions work to

strategically developpipelines to connectminority students andmentors early on,"


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So, how does that relate to me?

I teach Lab and Lecture here at Akron

NSB serves a large number of non-majors

There are a lot of TAs in NSB

We teach a diverse student population

Whether we want to or not, we are the face ofscience, and the role models for future

students. How do we guide TAs to be goodresearchers, teachers, students, andscientists?


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My research area is PCK

Pedagogical Knowledge

Content Knowledge

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Intersection

of PK and CK)


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Comparing 3 Groups

High School Biology Teacher

Graduate Student Biology TA

Biology Tenured Professor at a large research

university


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Pre-service TAs beliefs about good teaching

were influenced by their own experiences as

students.

As far as a teaching style, TAs model their

teaching after how they were taught.

Faculty the TAs are modeling their teaching

after you is that a good thing?


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TA beliefs

TAs often have inconsistent or conflicting

beliefs about teaching and learning.

They know they learn best by doing, but thenthey go right back to lecturing (as most

teachers do)

WHY? Because its easy and fun (for the

teacher)


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Do the TAs take a traditional or non-traditionalapproach to their teaching? Stand up and lecture? TA holds the power or -

TA as a resource, guiding students in a journey Science as exclusive to keep out students who learn

in different ways or -

Promoting Critical Thinking

Do the TAs see themselves as students, or asteachers, and how does that affect theirclassroom practice?


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Reforming TA Training

What if YOU had to design a new course from

scratch? Do you think you could do it?

Active learning

Assessment

Cooperative groups

Backwards Design

Blooms Taxonomy

Integration of technology


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NOW, what if you were hired to teach

somewhere besides a school exactly like

Akron?

Community college

Trade school

Nature center, museum,

Online school

Middle or High School


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My dissertation

Using Q Methodology

Looking at TA beliefs about students, and TA

beliefs about teaching and learning New TAs vs Veteran TAs

Masters vs Doctoral Students

Teaching Majors vs Non-Majors


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What is Q Methodology?

Q Methodology is a research method used to study people's"subjectivity" -- that is, their viewpoint. It has been used both inclinical settings for assessing patients, as well as in research settingsto examine how people think about a topic

The basic steps of the Q sorting procedure are as follows. Aheterogeneous set of items (called a Q sample) is drawn from theconcourse. A group of respondents (P set) is instructed to rank-order (Q sort) the Q sample along a standardized continuumaccording to a specified condition of instruction. Participants do this

according to their own likes and dislikes thus according to their own'psychological significance'. The resulting Q sorts are submitted tocorrelation and factor analysis. Interpreted results are factors of'operant subjectivity'.


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Thank you!!!

Any questions or discussion?

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Does Teaching as You Were Taught Make The