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ABSTRACT Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) teach undergraduates directly, and many are future faculty, making it particularly important for them to be trained in using evidence-based instructional practices. We implemented and assessed a teaching professional development program for 19 biology GTAs aimed to help them develop their teaching perspectives and improve their teaching self-efficacy. The program consisted of a pre-semester bootcamp of pedagogical workshops, mentoring sessions throughout the semester, crafting a teaching philosophy statement, and reflective peer teaching observation. We surveyed and interviewed students throughout the program to assess their growth and identify elements of the program that supported their growth. We found that participants’ self-efficacy improved immediately following the pre-semester bootcamp, but these improvements did not persist throughout the semester. At the end of the semester, participants’ teaching self-efficacy did not differ from GTAs in the department who did not participate in our program. Throughout the semester, our participants shifted toward the social reform perspective of teaching, which views good teaching as encouraging students to critically evaluate information and give them power to take social action to improve their lives. At the end of the semester, our participants more strongly endorsed the social reform perspective of teaching than GTAs who did not participate in our program. Our results suggest that pre-semester workshops supported novice GTAs before their class, but more sustained interactions may be needed for these boosts to persist. Our results also suggest that encouraging GTAs to reflect on what makes good teaching can help them solidify a coherent teaching perspective. 

An assessment of latent factors of learning gains and student reflections are used to explore the intersecting factors that impact students practicing science in an immersive, culturally-responsive CURE and describe how these factors may contribute towards building an undergraduate research experience within a Native Hawaiian Place of Learning. 

This study presents the development of a new measure of the mentoring that undergraduate researchers experience with evidence of seven distinct types of mentoring experience that are supportive or destructive in nature. 

Students’ beliefs about their abilities (called “lay theories”) affect their motivations, behaviors, and academic success. Lay theories include beliefs about the potential to improve intelligence (mindset), who (i.e., everyone or only some people) has the potential to be excellent in a field (universality), and whether reaching excellence in a field requires raw intellectual talent (brilliance). Research demonstrates that each of these beliefs influences students’ educational experiences and academic outcomes. However, it remains unclear whether they represent distinct latent constructs or are susceptible to the “jangle fallacy” (i.e., different names given to the same underlying construct). We conducted a multiphase, mixed-methods study to 1) evaluate whether mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs represent conceptually and empirically discriminable concepts, and 2) evaluate whether mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs contribute unique explanatory value for both psychosocial (e.g., sense of belonging) and academic outcomes (e.g., course grades). To address these questions, we developed and collected validity evidence for a new measure of science and math undergraduates’ lay theories, called the Undergraduate Lay Theories of Abilities (ULTrA) survey. Factor analyses suggest that mindset, brilliance, and universality are distinct and empirically discriminable constructs. Structural Equation Models indicate that each lay theory contributes unique predictive value to relevant outcomes. 

Undergraduate research experiences in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields are championed for promoting students’ personal and professional development. Mentorship is an integral part of undergraduate research, as effective mentorship maximizes the benefits undergraduates realize from participating in research. Yet almost no research examines instances in which mentoring is less effective or even problematic, even though prior research on mentoring in workplace settings suggests negative mentoring experiences are common. Here, we report the results of a qualitative study to define and characterize negative mentoring experiences of undergraduate life science researchers. Undergraduate researchers in our study reported seven major ways they experienced negative mentoring: absenteeism, abuse of power, interpersonal mismatch, lack of career support, lack of psychosocial support, misaligned expectations, and unequal treatment. They described some of these experiences as the result of absence of positive mentoring behavior and others as actively harmful behavior, both of which they perceive as detrimental to their psychosocial and career development. Our results are useful to mentors for reflecting on ways their behaviors might be perceived as harmful or unhelpful. These findings can also serve as a foundation for future research aimed at examining the prevalence and impact of negative mentoring experiences in undergraduate research. 

This report provides a broad overview of the 2019 Undergraduate Biology Education Research Gordon Research Conference, titled “Achieving Widespread Improvement in Undergraduate Education,” and the associated Gordon Research Seminar, highlighting major themes that cut across invited talks, poster presentations, and informal discussions.