Master Graduate Teaching Fellows: A Pilot to Improve Science Teaching

Authors: Jennifer Frank, David May, Spencer Benson, Susan Bilek, Nancy Shapiro

This paper presents an evaluation of a pilot Master Graduate Teaching Fellows (MGTF) program at a public flagship research university. The MGTF program was part of a broader MSP called Vertically Integrated Partnerships K-16 (or VIP K-16). The MGTF program sought to enhance the capacity for teaching excellence in graduate students in the sciences through the provision of intensive professional development and peer mentoring. The pilot involved 6 graduate fellows ("MGTFs") who worked with approximately 30 graduate teaching assistants (TAs). MGTFs were assigned to lower-level science courses which traditionally enroll large numbers of first-year undergraduate students and employ large numbers of TAs. In addition to their own professional development and teaching responsibilities, MGTFs were responsible for mentoring new TAs, providing direct support to struggling TAs, administering mid-term and end-of-term TA evaluations, running weekly TA meetings, revising lab manuals and other instructional materials for their courses, and delivering professional development workshops for TAs. Fellows received 12-months of funding at current departmental stipend levels, including tuition and fees.

The ability to compete globally requires that our nation recruit STEM (science, teaching, engineering, and mathematics) professionals, and while the need to produce them in ever greater numbers cannot be over-emphasized, our educational system has long failed to do so.¹  This need has a cascading effect.  The training of professionals qualified to do STEM research begins early in life, so well-qualified elementary and secondary STEM teachers are in high demand.  Both the training of scientists themselves and the training of elementary and secondary science teachers culminates with their postsecondary education, creating a demand for faculty in postsecondary institutions with both expertise in the art of teaching and commitment to the recruitment of students to STEM disciplines.  The production of faculty members who possess these teaching skills (along with the ability to do quality research and the willingness to offer service to the institution and community) poses both the mandate and the challenge to institutions of higher education to provide for the professional development of STEM graduate students whose career plans include a faculty position. 

In Preparing Future Faculty in the Sciences and Mathematics: A Guide for Change, Pruitt-Logan, Gaff, and Jentoft (2002) noted the well-known "mismatch" that exists across disciplines between graduate student expectations, training practices employed by academic departments, and actual career opportunities. While graduate students are predominantly trained for careers in research universities, such faculty positions are in short supply. Students often do not have a clear idea of other career paths that exist, nor are they well trained for the faculty positions they seek, insofar as their training in good teaching practices is minimal or lacking altogether.²  The authors point out that this institution-wide problem is particularly relevant in STEM disciplines, where many of the undergraduate students with whom TAs interact "lack adequate background, fear their own inadequacies, and seek to avoid these subjects altogether."³

Pruitt-Logan. et al, reported that research in the professional development of graduate students indicates that these students benefit from multiple mentoring relationships with faculty, both in their own institution and in others where emphases and practices differ. Future faculty also require training in pedagogy, particularly in the areas of experiential learning, the use of educational technology, and techniques to address the diverse needs of individual learners. To add to the complexity of the dynamics of such professional development, experiences cannot demand more of the student than his or her schedule can accommodate, taking into account the need to complete coursework and engage in research that is often emphasized by academic advisors at the expense of attention to teaching.⁴ Likewise, Henry (et al., 2007) claimed that programs designed to train future faculty in teaching suffer from a particular drawback-the difficulty of assessing the impact of mentoring on the actual classroom performance of TAs.  In fact, this has been seen as a problem general to all teacher reform and improvement programs, as there are no evaluation instruments available ready-made that address all the possible techniques and practices focused on in the training sessions.  Yet development of a valid and effective assessment instrument that is tailor-made can be quite time consuming and impractical.  Because of these considerations, such programs often rely on self-reports, with all of the deficiencies inherent in that method of assessment.⁵

While the MGTF program in this study incorporated many aspects of professional development discussed in the literature, it was innovative in several respects. First, as a mentoring program, it utilized peer mentors to provide advice and support in the area of teaching STEM courses. Second, the mentoring in question occurred at two levels-the mentoring of less experienced TAs by MGTFs, and the mentoring of more experienced MGTFs by faculty involved with the campus's Center for Teaching Excellence. Third, it did use feedback and consultation as a mentoring technique, but depended on mentor evaluations rather than student evaluations in the consultation process. Fourth, it avoided the problem of added stress and workload by awarding a graduate fellowship to the MGTFs so that they could focus on their professional development in teaching for one year. It also required their enrollment and participation in UNIV798a, a teaching and learning seminar. The final innovative aspect of the MGTF program was its focus on STEM inquiry instruction with undergraduate students.

¹ U.S. Department of Education. (2000). Before it's too late: A report to the nation from the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century. p. 9.  See also Business-Higher Education Forum. (2007). A commitment to America's future:  Responding to the crisis in mathematics and science education.

²  Pruitt-Logan, A.S., Gaff, J.G., & Jentoft, J.E. (2002). Preparing future faculty in the sciences and mathematics: A guide for change. Washington, DC: Council of Graduate Schools & Association of American Colleges and Universities. p. vi. See also Hardr-, P.L. (2005). Instructional design as a professional development tool-of-choice for graduate teaching assistants, Innovative Higher Education, 30(3).

³  Ibid, p. 15.

⁴ Ibid, pp. 18-19.  See also Hardr-, 2005.

⁵ Henry, M.A., Murray, K.S., & Phillips, K.A. (2007). Meeting the challenge of STEM classroom observation in evaluating teacher development projects: A comparison of two widely-used instruments. Click Here to view PDF.