Today I was involved in a TA mentoring retreat. When I first came to UMass, I had grandiose ideas for what we might accomplish in the intro labs and argued hard, in the face of skepticism from other faculty, that we could create an environment where TAs could lead students to achieve constructivist learning goals. Although we various successes and failures, I was eventually forced to admit that we were unable to adequately prepare TAs to achieve the goals we had originally set. The TA mentoring program is a step toward trying to fix that.
In the introductory session, the TAs turned to each other to learn enough to subsequently introduce one other person to the group at large. We asked them to also find out about one thing they could remember where they learned about science from elementary school. This is an activity I've done for years, which in nearly every case reveals that students remember doing something, although there's always one or two students who remember a nmemonic or story that a teacher taught them.
Randy conducted the next session on the "first day" in which he pretended to be a terrible lecturer. He started out by singling out a student who had come in late in order to emphasize deadlines. He gave a flat disjointed talk punctuated by diconnected overheads with complex diagrams, tiny images, and huge lists of text (which he read to students). When a TA innocently went to ask a question, he was shot down with an imperative to wait. Randy's cell-phone rang and he stepped out to answer the call. The coup de grace was when Randy "remembered" suddenly that it was time to order the sandwiches. He had constructed a menu with an elaborate set of instructions that began "On a half sheet of paper, write your name along the top" and went on for another 20 or 30 steps. Elizabeth was unable to keep a straight face and, eventually, Randy fessed up and admitted it was a ruse. He let a spirited discussion and asked the students to help him elaborate a list of the "10 fatal errors you can make as a teacher". The list made it clear that many of the TAs have very transmissionist goals regarding student learning.
I was a bit nervous about presenting right after Randy (who is a great and personable speaker), but it felt like my session went very well. I asked students to do the "black box" activity. Our "black box" is actually a white tube with four rope segments extending out of it. Students construct models for how the ropes might connect inside the box and draw them on the board. We propose hypotheses based on the models and test the hypotheses by pulling the ropes. The students constructed some wonderful initial models, all of which we could falsify by pulling the ropes. We constructed a second round of models -- at first there was just one, but then another was added and then a third and finally a fourth. We were able to falsify one of these models, but the others would have required a quantitative approach -- measuring rope segments or something. I then facilitated a discussion about how else we might explore what was in the box and whether we should open it -- whether or not opening it would really be as revealing as they hoped. It was a great introduction to discussing the goals of science and their goals as instructors teaching students science. The goal of science isn't to just to teach people to remember what's in the box, but to help people figure out and make educated guesses about what might be in the box.
There was a lot more too. Afterwards, I was exhausted. I had woken up in the early morning and felt like I might be coming down with something, but I got up and pushed through it to attend the workshop. So I came home and took a nap for a couple of hours. I'm sure glad I don't have to give up all my Saturdays, but it was nice to contribute to an event that felt so successful.