An undergraduate biology pedagogy course curriculum for instructional apprentices.

Abstract

Undergraduate instructional apprentices, which include undergraduate teaching assistants, learning assistants, or supplemental instruction tutors, must develop skills in facilitating student discussions while ideally gaining a deeper understanding of how students learn. A formal pedagogy course accompanying these teaching experiences is a key component of training. However, there are limited resources available for a complete curriculum that can be adopted for pedagogy courses for undergraduate instructional apprentices. Here, we present a pedagogy course aimed at first-time biology undergraduate instructional apprentices (typically second-, third-, and fourth-year students). The course is designed for 10 hours of instruction and introduces students to multiple topics: (i) classroom community and how students learn, (ii) mindset, (iii) instructor immediacy and non-content talk, (iv) questioning strategies, (v) active and collaborative learning, (vi) academic integrity, (vii) equity, diversity, and inclusion in the classroom, (viii) the science of learning, (ix) teaching with technology, (x) metacognition and self-regulated learning strategies, and (xi) student feedback. This curriculum draws on resources for training learning assistants and expands on topics that may be more applicable for training teaching assistants. In this curriculum article, we present our course curriculum, materials, and evidence that this course supported growth in student pedagogical skills. The curriculum as a whole can be implemented for new course development, but each module or individual assignment can also be adapted to existing pedagogy courses.