Through in-class observations of teaching assistants (TAs) and students in
the lab sections of a large introductory physics course, we study which TA
behaviors can be used to predict student engagement and, in turn, how this
engagement relates to learning. For the TAs, we record data to determine how
they adhere to and deliver the lesson plan and how they interact with students
during the lab. For the students, we use observations to record the level of
student engagement and pre- and post-tests of lab skills to measure learning.
We find that the frequency of TA-student interactions, especially those
initiated by the TAs, is a positive and significant predictor of student
engagement. Interestingly, the length of interactions is not significantly
correlated with student engagement. In addition, we find that student
engagement was a better predictor of post-test performance than pre-test
scores. These results shed light on the manner in which students learn how to
conduct inquiry and suggest that, by proactively engaging students, TAs may
have a positive effect on student engagement, and therefore learning, in the
lab.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures. v2: Revised for clarity and concision. Version
accepted to Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Researc