Hughes, P. W., & Ellefson, M. R. (2013). Inquiry-based training improves teaching effectiveness of biology teaching assistants. PLOS ONE, 8(9).
This large study investigated whether grounding GTA training in inquiry-based learning theory would improve teaching performance in undergraduate biology labs. The authors are from the Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, U.K. A semi-randomized trial was conducted to compare two training regimens: one that was taught “best practices” associated with lab teaching (control), and one that explained inquiry-oriented pedagogy (experimental). Seminar activities for both groups are included. Teaching effectiveness for volunteer GTAs (n=54) was assessed by undergraduate students (n=352) using three measures: (a) the student evaluation of educational quality (SEEQ) questionnaire; (b) a cognitive learning evaluation (CLE) questionnaire; and (c) standardized mean student grade. GTAs who completed the inquiry pedagogy training were rated as better organized, provided better feedback on assignments, and were better overall teachers of both higher- and lower-order skills than GTAs in the control training. GTAs who completed the inquiry-based training also reported significantly higher standardized grades than those in the control training. The results indicate that GTAs are better able to teach undergraduates to “reason like scientists” after inquiry-based learning pedagogy training, even when training is limited to only five hours.