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Characterizing different enactments of instructional reform approaches is key to improving science education. The Learning Assistant (LA) model leads to many positive student outcomes in a wide range of STEM courses. However, discrepancies in outcomes in different introductory STEM courses have led to a call for more work investigating how the LA model is implemented. This multiple-case study seeks to bridge that gap by providing a high-resolution comparison of three LA-facilitated physics and chemistry courses at two institutions. We used cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to characterize the activity systems of LA-facilitated interactions and the whole class discussion immediately following these interactions, to understand how instructors leveraged these interactions in their instruction and the roles LAs played in that integration. We found that integrating small group interactions lies on a spectrum based on the extent to which the instructors used student ideas (developed during small group discussion) as mediating artifacts in the whole class discussion, enabled by different divisions of labor and driven by instructors’ different goals. Furthermore, we found that LAs provided both conceptual and emotional support to students to support the integration. Implications for teaching with LAs, and for research on instructional reform more broadly will be discussed.
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Expansive learning in the learning assistant model: how instructors’ goals lead to differences in implementation and development of LAs’ practices
Abstract BackgroundThe learning assistant (LA) model supports student success in undergraduate science courses; however, variation in outcomes has led to a call for more work investigating how the LA model is implemented. In this research, we used cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to characterize how three different instructors set up LA-facilitated classrooms and how LAs’ understanding and development of their practices was shaped by the classroom activity. CHAT is a sociocultural framework that provides a structured approach to studying complex activity systems directed toward specific objects. It conceptualizes change within these systems as expansive learning, in which experiencing a contradiction leads to internalization and critical self-reflection, and then externalization and a search for solutions and change. ResultsThrough analyzing two semi-structured retrospective interviews from three professors and eleven LAs, we found that how the LA model was implemented differed based on STEM instructors’ pedagogical practices and goals. Each instructor leveraged LA-facilitated interactions to further learning and tasked LAs with emotionally supporting students to grapple with content and confusions in a safe environment; however, all three had different rules and divisions of labor that were influenced by their perspectives on learning and their objects for the class. For LAs, we found that they had multiple, sometimes conflicting, motives that can be described as either practical, what they described as their day-to-day job, or sense-making, how they made sense of the reason for their work. How these motives were integrated/separated or aligned/misaligned with the collective course object influenced LAs’ learning in practice through either a mechanism of consonance or contradiction. We found that each LA developed unique practices that reciprocally shaped and were shaped by the activity system in which they worked. ConclusionsThis study helps bridge the bodies of research that focus on outcomes from the LA model and LA learning and development by describing how LA learning mechanisms are shaped by their context. We also show that variation in the LA model can be described both by classroom objects and by LAs’ development in dialogue with those objects. This work can be used to start to develop a deeper understanding of how students, instructors, and LAs experience the LA model.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2000603
- PAR ID:
- 10532592
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Journal of STEM Education
- Volume:
- 11
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2196-7822
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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