Program SAGES: Promoting collaborative teaching development through graduate student/faculty partnerships

Abstract

Each year, graduate students shoulder hours of instructional time with undergraduate students and some have more contact hours with students than academic staff in large introductory undergraduate courses. However, many graduate students are given minimal opportunities for teaching development, and there is a great need to help them develop a scholarly and reflective teaching practice (Kenny et al., 2014; Chick & Brame, 2015). Enhancing the teaching skills of graduate students is a critical investment that will also create a culture of educational leadership, and foster innovation and teaching development. To support STEM graduate students in the development of an evidence-based teaching practice, we designed and implemented the SAGES Program (SoTL Advancing Graduate Education in STEM) at a research-intensive university. This program was designed to provide graduate students with opportunities to learn about scholarly teaching and learning (SoTL) within the context of STEM through a semester-long course, followed by a semester-long practicum. The practicum gives graduate students an opportunity to apply their learning in an undergraduate class, in partnership with a faculty member acting as a mentor. Through a mixed-methods approach based on the use of semi-structured interviews and pretest and posttest surveys (DeChenne et al., 2012; Trigwell and Prosser, 2004), we will show that SAGES not only increased teaching self-efficacy, knowledge and skills in graduate students, but also led to collaborative teaching development for both mentors and mentees. We will also invite participants to conceptualize how such a program could be designed for their own institutions. Chick, N. L. & Brame, C. (2015). An investigation of the products and impact of graduate student SoTL programs: observations and recommendations from a single institution. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 9(1), article 3. DeChenne, S. E., Enochs, L. G., & Needham, M. (2012) Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduate teaching assistants teaching self-efficacy. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 12(4), 102-123. Kenny, N., Watson, G. P. L., & Walton, C. (2014) Exploring the context of Canadian graduate student teaching certificates in university teaching. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 44(3), 1-19. Trigwell, K. & Prosser, M. (2004) Development and use of the approaches to teaching inventory. Educational Psychology, 16(4), 409-424