I have been following the discussion on GTA preparation with great
interest. In the summer of 2000 I was asked by our chair to develop a 3
credit hour graduate level “Pedagogy” course to be required of all
new GTAs entering our department beginning in the fall. This I did, and
new graduate students entering our department each fall term, 2000--2004, have
been required to take “Pedagogy” in addition to the usual 9 hour
load of traditional graduate math content course work.
I have a graduate student who just completed a Masters Thesis in which
he analyzed data from end-of-term course evaluations from several thousand
students in classes taught by GTAs and data from interviews with GTAs who have
taken Pedagogy. The primary conclusion supported by this analysis is that
the pedagogy course is having a significant positive effect on the GTAs’
level of confidence, with related impact on both their practice and attitudes
with respect to teaching.
I think the student as done some academically acceptable work and
obtained some interesting and timely conclusions. I have assigned him the
task of trimming his 60+ page thesis (double space) down to 25 pages, with the
idea of perhaps submitting an article to a journal. My question to this
list is “What are some reasonable journals for such submissions?”
I will be most grateful for any recommendations you might have.
Anyone interested in details pertaining to our pedagogy course can
contact me at gary.harris@ttu.edu and
I will be happy to provide you with more than you ever wanted to know about it.
Gary A. Harris
Professor and Director of Undergraduate Programs
Department of Mathematics and Statistics