Addressing the Challenge of Authentic Inquiry at Scale: Probing and Supporting Teaching Assistants’ Implementation of a Model-Based-Inquiry Curriculum

这个项目旨在通过帮助学生更好地理解科学研究的性质来服务于国家利益。为学生提供参与科学研究的机会会增加他们走上STEM职业道路的机会，特别是对于那些在STEM中还没有公平代表性的群体的学生来说。然而，许多学生并不是自己找到研究机会的，这表明需要进行课程改革，为所有学生带来研究经验。这个项目建立在真实的建模探究(AIM-Bio)的基础上，这是一个实验室课程，为学生提供提出科学问题的机会，并开发他们自己的实验来测试他们的问题。AIM-Bio记录了学生的好处，包括他们对工作的所有权的增加，他们作为科学家的身份，以及他们关于科学如何工作的技能和知识。该项目团队寻求将AIM-Bio课程带给亚利桑那大学每年1700多名学生，亚利桑那大学是一家拉美裔服务机构。迎接这一挑战将需要培养本科生和研究生，他们将担任AIM-Bio实验室的教学助理(TA)，因此他们将成为AIM-Bio的主要讲师。该项目计划开发一个培训计划，为助教做好准备，指导学生进行科学探究，即提出和回答基于科学的问题的开放式过程。该项目还打算研究助教的教学意图与他们在实验室与学生的实际互动之间的一致性。通过将重点放在助教教学决策和行动背后的理论基础上，该项目将提供新的见解来指导培训助教作为教学专业人员的努力。通过在实验室与学生的个人互动，助教在大规模实施真实探究课程方面发挥着至关重要的作用。先前的研究表明，助教最初可能会与探究式课程的开放性作斗争，往往倾向于使用与更传统的教学观相一致的直接教学形式。要制定支持助教实施真正探究式教学的能力的培训策略，理解助教对教学挑战的看法是至关重要的。为此，该项目旨在：1)开发专业发展课程，以支持以课程为基础的真实性探究教学中的助教；2)建立一个模型，以解释助教在教授以课程为基础的真实性探究课程时的意图和行为之间的关系。研究方法将包括刺激回忆访谈，要求助教反思自己的教学经历。将分析收集到的信息，以确定助教实施课程活动的意图与他们在这些活动中与学生互动所采取的行动之间的关系。除了访谈，还将使用一个独特的分析框架来调查实验室中的助教录音，该框架捕捉到在建模的科学实践中指导学生的过程。对访谈和课堂指导的综合分析将使项目团队能够全面了解助教对AIM-Bio课程的实施情况。最后，为了阐明助教意图和行动的潜在后果，项目团队将比较不同教学方法的助教之间的学生结果。该项目由NSF IUSE：EHR计划资助，该计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过参与的学生学习路径，该计划支持有前景的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by helping students better understand the nature of scientific research. Providing opportunities for students to participate in scientific research increases their chances of remaining on a STEM career path, especially for students from groups that are not yet equitably represented in STEM. However, many students do not find research opportunities on their own, suggesting that curricular reform is needed to bring research experiences to all students. This project builds on Authentic Inquiry through Modeling (AIM-Bio), a laboratory curriculum that provides students with opportunities to ask scientific questions and to develop their own experiments to test their questions. AIM-Bio has documented benefits for students, including increases in their ownership of their work, their identity as scientists, and their skills and knowledge about how science works. The project team seeks to bring the AIM-Bio curriculum to more than 1,700 students per year at the University of Arizona, a Hispanic Serving Institution. Meeting this challenge will require preparing the undergraduate and graduate students who serve as teaching assistants (TAs) for AIM-Bio laboratories, and who will thus be the principal instructors for AIM-Bio. The project plans to develop a training program that will prepare the TAs to mentor students in scientific inquiry, the open-ended process of asking and answering science-based questions. The project also intends study the alignment between TAs’ intentions about teaching and their actual interactions with students in the laboratory. By including a focus on the rationale behind TAs’ teaching decisions and actions, this project will provide novel insights to guide efforts to train TAs as teaching professionals. Through their personal interactions with students in laboratory sections, TAs hold an essential role in large-scale implementation of authentic-inquiry curricula. Prior research suggests that TAs may initially struggle with the open nature of an inquiry curriculum, often preferring to use forms of direct instruction consistent with more traditional views of teaching. To develop training strategies that will support the TAs’ ability to enact authentic-inquiry instruction, it is critical to understand TAs’ perspectives about teaching challenges. To this end, the project aims to: 1) Develop a professional development curriculum to support TAs in course-based authentic inquiry instruction, and 2) Build a model to explain the relationship between TA intentions and actions when teaching a course-based authentic inquiry curriculum. Research methods will include stimulated recall interviews, which will ask TAs to reflect on episodes of their own teaching. The collected information will be analyzed to identify the relationships between TAs intentions for implementing curricular activities and the actions they take to interact with students during those activities. In addition to the interviews, recordings of TAs in the laboratory will be investigated using a unique analytical framework that captures the process of mentoring students in the scientific practice of modeling. Combined analysis of interviews and classroom mentoring will allow the project team to gain a holistic view of TAs' implementation of the AIM-Bio curriculum. Finally, to shed light on the potential consequences of TAs intentions and actions, the project team will compare student outcomes between TAs with different teaching approaches. This project is funded by the NSF IUSE: EHR Program, which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.