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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. 

Abstract BackgroundLearning assistants (LAs) increase accessibility to instructor–student interactions in large STEM lecture classes. In this research, we used the Formative Assessment Enactment Model developed for K-12 science teachers to characterize LA facilitation practices. The Formative Assessment Enactment Model describes instructor actions as eliciting or advancing student thinking, guided by their purposes and the perspective they center as well as by what they notice about and how they interpret student thinking. Thus, it describes facilitation practices in a holistic way, capturing the way purposes, perspectives, noticing, interpreting, and actions are intertwined and working together to characterize different LA actions. In terms of how perspectives influence actions, eliciting and advancing moves can be enacted either in authoritative ways, driven by one perspective that has authority, or in dialogic ways, driven by multiple perspectives. Dialogic practices are of particular interest because of their potential to empower students and center student thinking. ResultsOur analysis of video recordings of LA–student interactions and stimulated recall interviews with 37 introductory physical science lectures’ LAs demonstrates that instead of as a dichotomy between authoritative and dialogic, LA actions exist along a spectrum of authoritative to dialogic based on the perspectives centered. Between the very authoritative perspective that centers on canonically correct science and the very dialogic perspective that centers the perspectives of the students involved in the discussion, we find two intermediary categories. The two new categories encompass a moderately authoritative perspective focused on the LA’s perspective without the claim of being correct and a moderately dialogic perspective focused on ideas from outside the current train of thought such as from students in the class that are not part of the current discussion. ConclusionsThis spectrum further adds to theory around authoritative and dialogic practices as it reconsiders what perspectives can drive LA enactment of facilitation other than the perspective of canonically correct science and the perspectives of the students involved in the discussion. This emerging characterization may be used to give LAs and possibly other instructors a tool to intentionally shift between authoritative and dialogic practices. It may also be used to transition towards more student-centered practices. 

Small group interactions and interactions with near‐peer instructors such as learning assistants serve as fertile opportunities for student learning in undergraduate active learning classrooms. To understand what students take away from these interactions, we need to understand how and what they learn during the moment of their interaction. This study builds on practical epistemology analysis to develop a framework to study this in‐the‐moment learning during interactions by operationalizing it through the lens of discourse change and continuity toward three ends. Using video recordings of students and learning assistants interacting in a variety of contexts including remote, in‐person, and hybrid classrooms in introductory chemistry and physics at two universities, we developed an analytical framework that can characterize learning in the moment of interaction, is sensitive to different kinds of learning, and can be used to compare interactions. The framework and its theoretical underpinnings are described in detail. In‐depth examples demonstrate how the framework can be applied to classroom data to identify and differentiate different ways in which in‐the‐moment learning occurs. 

Learning environments are vastly different across in-person and remote instruction. In undergraduate STEM courses, learning assistants (LAs) have been working in both settings, however, little is known about how the affordances and constraints of each setting influence LA facilitation practices in small group interactions. Thus, in our study, we explore the ways different contextual factors act as drivers of LA actions in both contexts of a hybrid course, and how these LA actions influence student in-the-moment learning. To do so, we recorded LA-student interactions and conducted interviews with the professor and LAs of a hybrid general chemistry course. We used a sociocultural perspective to provide an explanatory account for the drivers of action on LA facilitation practices and student learning, which revealed the following: When LA purposes/goals and social context were the same, but the conditions and means by which they could enact these purposes/goals were different between the in-person and remote conditions, LAs took different actions in each setting resulting in differences with respect to student in-the-moment learning. With our examples, we present evidence that there are multiple conditional factors that drive LA actions during LA-student interactions. Implications for theory and reform of practice will be discussed. 

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.