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

该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可以增加他们继续走STEM职业道路的机会，特别是对于来自STEM中尚未得到公平代表的群体的学生来说。然而，许多学生没有找到自己的研究机会，这表明课程改革是必要的，使所有学生的研究经验。该项目建立在通过建模（AIM-Bio）进行真实探究的基础上，这是一门实验室课程，为学生提供了提出科学问题和开发自己的实验来测试他们的问题的机会。AIM-Bio记录了学生的好处，包括增加他们对工作的所有权，他们作为科学家的身份，以及他们对科学如何运作的技能和知识。该项目团队旨在将AIM-Bio课程每年带给亚利桑那大学（一个西班牙裔服务机构）的1,700多名学生。迎接这一挑战将需要准备本科生和研究生谁担任教学助理（TA）的AIM-Bio实验室，谁将因此是AIM-Bio的主要讲师。 该项目计划开发一个培训计划，将准备助教指导学生进行科学探究，提出和回答基于科学的问题的开放式过程。 本研究亦将探讨助教的教学意图与他们在实验室中与学生的实际互动之间的一致性。通过关注助教教学决策和行动背后的基本原理，本项目将提供新的见解，以指导将助教培养为教学专业人员的努力。 通过与学生在实验室的个人互动，助教在大规模实施真实探究课程中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课程的开放性作斗争，往往更喜欢使用与更传统的教学观点相一致的直接教学形式。 为了制定支持助教实施真实探究教学能力的培训策略，了解助教对教学挑战的看法至关重要。为此，该项目的目的是：1）开发一个专业发展课程，以支持助教在课程为基础的真实探究教学，2）建立一个模型来解释助教的意图和行动之间的关系时，教学课程为基础的真实探究课程。研究方法将包括刺激回忆访谈，这将要求助教反思自己的教学片段。收集到的信息将进行分析，以确定之间的关系的助教意图实施课程活动和他们采取的行动，在这些活动中与学生互动。除了采访，TA在实验室的录音将使用一个独特的分析框架，捕捉指导学生在建模的科学实践的过程进行调查。对访谈和课堂辅导的综合分析将使项目小组能够全面了解助教对AIM-Bio课程的实施情况。最后，为了阐明助教的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成果。 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STEM教育的有效性。 该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.