Developing Conceptual and Teaching Expertise in Physics Graduate Students: An Integrated Approach

虽然已经有许多培训助教的项目，但很少有研究侧重于这些挑战的具体性质。该项目详细介绍了研究生助教对教育改革的期望、态度和认识论，并开发了一个学习环境来帮助他们克服问题。该项目解决了围绕物理研究生的教育和专业发展的两个问题。研究生助教(TA)通常被期望在实施“协作主动学习”课程中发挥重要作用，即学生以小组形式工作。然而，许多助教在这种形式的教学中遇到了困难，部分原因是他们对学生如何学习的看法。此外，一些物理研究生没有继续发展概念专业知识，对核心物理概念达到了深入的定性理解，从而促进了研究和教学。这是因为研究生课程往往强调数学方法，而不是概念上的专业知识。物理系助教的专业发展通常与物理研究生教育分开进行。然而，研究表明，以统一的方式培养概念专长和教学专长可能是有效和高效的。在这个试点项目中，研究人员正在创建和教授一个专业发展研讨会，旨在帮助研究生发展复杂的教学实践和“学习理论”，以便将其应用于他们的教学和自己的学习。该项目正在研究一门改革后的物理入门课程中助教研讨会和相关教学的结构如何改变助教的教学、概念专长和认识论--他们对知识和学习的本质的看法。教师的认识论在很大程度上影响着他们能否成功实施协作主动学习材料。一个问题是助教认为学生可以从听迷你讲座与自己解决问题的过程中学到多少东西。另一个是他们重视解决日常经验和先入为主的概念，作为学习物理的一部分。因此，研究人员使用各种方法(包括定期访谈和录像观察他们的教学)来观察参与这一项目的研究生，以探索他们的认识论和教与学的方法。通过将项目中的助教与有效实践的绝对标准进行比较，并通过深入分析他们的认识论和教学实践的轨迹，研究人员正在开发假说，这些假说可以在随后的项目中得到严格测试。科学方面的助教几乎包括所有下一代大学理科教员；在物理学方面，他们参与了物理入门课程的大部分实际教学，通常负责所有小组环境。由于许多为大学物理入门课程开发的最有效的教学创新都是在小组环境中进行的，助教提供改革后的教学的能力对改革的成败至关重要。

Although there have been many projects for training TAs, little research has focused on the specific nature of the challenges. This project details the expectations, attitudes, and epistemologies of graduate teaching assistants towards educational reform, and develops a learning environment to help them overcome problems. The project is addressing two issues surrounding the education and professional development of physics graduate students. Graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) are often expected to play significant roles in implementing "collaborative active learning" sessions, where students work in small groups. However, many TAs have trouble teaching in this format, partly because of their views about how students learn. Also, some physics graduate students do not continue to develop conceptual expertise, reaching a deep level of qualitative understanding of core physical concepts that facilitates both research and teaching. This is because graduate coursework often stresses mathematical methods rather than conceptual expertise. The professional development of TAs in physics departments is typically handled separately from graduate education in physics. Research suggests, however, that it might be effective and efficient to foster conceptual expertise and teaching expertise in a unified way. In this pilot project the investigators are creating and teaching a professional development seminar designed to help graduate students develop sophisticated teaching practices and "learning theories" to apply both to their teaching and to their own learning. The project is conducting research on the ways in which the structure of TA seminars and associated teaching in a reformed introductory physics course changes TAs' teaching, conceptual expertise, and epistemologies - their views about the nature of knowledge and learning. Teachers' epistemologies strongly affect their success at implementing collaborative active-learning materials. One issue is the extent to which TAs think students can learn from listening to mini-lectures vs. working through problems for themselves. Another is the importance they attach to addressing everyday experiences and preconceptions as part of learning physics. Thus, the investigators are observing graduate students who are participating in this project using a variety of methods (including periodic interviews and videotaped observations of their teaching) to probe their epistemologies and their approaches to teaching and learning. By comparing TAs in the program to an absolute standard of effective practice and by analyzing in depth the trajectories of their epistemologies and teaching practices, the investigators are developing hypotheses that can be tested rigorously in a subsequent project. TAs in the sciences include almost all of the next generation of university science faculty; in physics they are involved in much of the actual delivery of introductory physics classes, typically responsible for all small-group environments. Since many of the most effective instructional innovations developed for introductory college-level physics are delivered in small-group environments, the ability of TAs to deliver reformed instruction is critical to the success or failure of a reform.