Evaluation of a Workshop Series in University Science Education

Extract

Most faculty take teaching seriously, and good teaching is usually required for tenure and promotion. However, most faculty members in the sciences have little or no background in the pedagogical issues of science education at the university level. This problem is compounded by the limited time most faculty can devote to exploration of the science education literature for new approaches to teaching. Furthermore, faculty seldom have time to consider many of the philosophical issues faced by science educators, such as what nonmajors should be taught about science and how misconceptions influence our students' perceptions of science.

However, the greatest opportunity for reform in university teaching may be in training graduate students how to teach (PHERP 1990), because these students have considerable contact with undergraduates and are the future faculty. Although graduate students can be adept at answering specific questions and clarifying points for undergraduates, they have little experience with undergraduates who do not ask questions or who have difficulty integrating information. Consequently, graduate teaching assistants mainly emphasize acquisition of information. Most are inexperienced in teaching and so are uncomfortable with implementing strategies that can lead to higher-order thinking and problem solving. University-wide teaching orientations tend to introduce general topics without specific application to the sciences. Departmental teaching orientations tend to emphasize the “how-to's” (e.g., make a good first impression, use overheads and the chalkboard, lead a simple question-and-answer session, conduct a laboratory session). But graduate students need more than a few days of general instruction and guidance to become effective instructors. For example, in our department, an informal poll of graduate teaching assistants about the use of cooperative learning in classroom instruction revealed that 83 percent were not convinced, by reading about it or recalling their limited undergraduate experience with it, that cooperative learning was a viable approach they could use in their teaching.