Theses and Dissertations
Date of Award
2019
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Department
Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice
Advisor
Michelle Tenam-Zemach
Committee Member
Jennifer Reeves
Committee Member
Kimberly Durham
Keywords
experiential learning, graduate teaching assistants, higher education, PCK, professional development
Abstract
While graduate teaching assistants teach the majority of introductory lab and discussion sections at colleges and universities across the United States, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how to adequately prepare graduate teaching assistants for faculty roles and responsibilities outside of research. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to address a gap in the literature by examining a professional development activity that encouraged pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development in conjunction with experiential learning for biology graduate teaching assistants. Specifically, this study sought to understand how: (a) the Teaching Triangles professional development activity supported biology graduate teaching assistants’ perceived PCK development, (b) the biology graduate teaching assistants’ PCK experiences informed their perceptions of PCK development, and (c) the biology graduate teaching assistants’ experiences revealed their perceptions of PCK development.
The researcher created and distributed novel quantitative and qualitative survey instruments to the participants and developed an innovative professional development model (the Prism Model) with which to interpret the convergence of the two quantitative and qualitative data strands. The pre- and post-assessments indicated an increase in PCK self-perception along with biology graduate teaching assistants expressing a novel scientific literacy orientation towards teaching biology. Additionally, the biology graduate teaching assistants noted an array of PCK approaches utilized by their triad partners and reflected on ways they could actively experiment with these approaches in their own classroom.
NSUWorks Citation
Catharine Mattox. 2019. The Prism Model: Increasing Graduate Teaching Assistants’ Self-Perceptions of Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Doctoral dissertation. Nova Southeastern University. Retrieved from NSUWorks, Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice. (1093)
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/fse_etd/1093.