Designing a Lesson Study approach to train Teaching Assistants.

At the faculty of Science, senior students are employed as teaching assistants (TAs) to support students during tutorials and practicals. They often have little or no prior teaching experience and this sometimes results in ineffective teaching and interpersonal problems between TAs and students. Our teaching assistant training prepares TAs for five main tasks: preparing the learning process of the student, diagnosing student needs, asking activating questions, giving feedback and providing a productive learning environment. However, transfer of these pedagogical solutions to their actual teaching practice appears ineffective. To address this problem and link theory to teaching practice, we have developed a Lesson Study approach (Fernandez, 2002; Lewis, Perry & Murata, 2006). In our Lesson Study approach we engage TAs in 1) preparation of a lesson, 2) teaching and observation of the lesson and 3) evaluation and redesign of the lesson (de Vries, Verhoef & Goei, 2016).

04-03-2021 11:50 - 12:10