Assesing teaching assistant programmes as a tool facilitating the learning process of Physiology / Avaliação do modelo de monitoria como ferramenta facilitadora para o processo de aprendizagem em Fisiologia

A teaching assistant programme is an extracurricular activity in which an advanced student (the assistant) is guided and supervised by the lecturer to provide support to the curricular unit. The aim of the present study was to asses the contribution of teaching assistant programmes based on problem cases towards the acquisition of a medicine course content. The study was cross-sectional and involved 153 students divided into two groups: the present and the absent at teaching assistant sessions. All the participants responded to standardised questionnaires that have been used to analyse their perception of content acquisition, their active participation in learning and the contribution of teaching assistant sessions. The results showed that the perception of complete content acquisition among the present group was at 38.4%, while for the absent group only at 29.7%. The negative perception of content acquisition was at 13.6 % for the absent group and at 6.1% for the present group. Within the present group 73.5% of the students studied the topics covered in lectures within two weeks. For the absent group this number fell to 49.4%. In addition, 86% of the present group said that the teaching assistant sessions contributed towards their learning. As the main reason they pointed to the opportunity to answer questions. On the whole, the results suggest that teaching assistant programmes based on problem cases can be effective in facilitating the perception of learning. The reason appears to be a more intense involvement of the participants in a more active study routine.

Comparison of beginner and advanced chemistry student teachers’ perspective on creativity – does it play a role in the chemistry classroom?

Creativity has become an increasingly important competence in today's rapidly changing times. It is a central aspect of social development, but it is hardly discussed in schools and often neglected in the natural sciences. In order to promote creativity in science teaching in a targeted way, it is important to understand the perspectives and views of prospective teachers on this topic. For this purpose, a qualitative cross-sectional study was conducted with 83 German chemistry student teachers at the beginning and at the end of their study programme. We used concept maps and questionnaires to characterize changes in students’ perspective on creativity in the chemistry classroom during their course of study. The quantitative analysis of the concept maps and the content analysis of student's proposition revealed similarities and differences in students’ perspective on creativity between beginners and advanced student. All student teachers showed a diverse range of conceptions and views on creativity in general and in the context of chemistry education. Furthermore, almost all of the students had a positive attitude towards creativity and its integration in chemistry lessons. Although, there are no large differences in the perspective on creativity from beginner to advanced student teachers, subtle differences in students’ perspectives revealed that advanced students had a more sophisticated perspective on fostering creativity in students in their prospective classrooms.

Peer mentoring for undergraduates in a research-focused diversity initiative

To provide multi-dimensional support for undergraduates from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds who aspire to careers in research, the BUILD EXITO project, part of a major NIH-funded diversity initiative, matches each scholar with three mentors: peer mentor (advanced student), career mentor (faculty adviser), and research mentor (research project supervisor). After describing the aims of the diversity initiative, the institutional context of the BUILD EXITO project, and the training program model, this article devotes special attention to the rationale for and implementation of the peer mentoring component within the context of the multi-faceted mentoring model.

“What I want you to remember is…”

This article offers some background on notions related to intersubjectivity in applied linguistics, specifically as studied in EAP. The study takes a reflexive approach to metadiscourse, investigating audience orientation in three monologic academic genres: advanced student writing, published academic prose and spoken lectures. Specifically, audience orientation involving second person you is examined from the perspective of the discourse functions in which the word is involved. A randomly selected dataset of 150 examples from each of the three genres was coded for metadiscursive functions, applying Ädel’s (2010) taxonomy. The results showed that the distribution of discourse functions was similar in the three registers; however, the highest frequency of metadiscourse was found in the spoken lectures, not in the written modes.