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(a)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
Texas Tech University
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