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Navigating Tensions of Research and Teaching: Biology Graduate Students' Perceptions of the Research-Teaching Nexus within Ecological Contexts.

ABSTRACT: Graduate students represent both a significant component of the instructional team for biology departments as well as being students themselves learning to become academics. However, little is known about how biology graduate students perceive the relationships among their academic roles, particularly research and teaching. The present study used a cross-sectional survey to elicit the perceptions biology graduate students hold about the relationship between research and teaching. This work is an important first step in understanding the socialization processes of graduate students. Findings indicated that the majority of biology graduate students (65.5% of n = 255) hold synergistic perceptions of research and teaching. This is in spite of the mixed messages that biology graduate students hear about this relationship, including both "Teaching detracts from research" and "Teaching supports research." Findings from this study have implications for multiple stakeholders in graduate education, including professional developers who need to be cognizant of the messages that are received and internalized by biology graduate students while engaged in professional development opportunities. Results also suggest that work is needed to address how messages are prioritized and internalized during graduate school.

SUBMITTER: Reid JW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8711825 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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To Cope or Not to Cope? Characterizing Biology Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) Coping with Teaching and Research Anxieties.

Project description:Recent evidence suggests a mental health crisis among graduate students, particularly with regard to anxiety. To manage anxieties, graduate students can employ coping strategies. Coping is an individual's response(s) to external stressors, often with the goal of reducing or tolerating the stress; these strategies are generally considered adaptive or maladaptive. Adaptive coping strategies advance individuals through problems, while maladaptive strategies prevent stressors from being resolved. We previously identified differences between teaching and research anxieties in a sample of biology graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). This study investigated whether coping with these anxieties differed in this population as well. We interviewed 23 biology GTAs twice over one year. Interview data were qualitatively analyzed using Skinner and colleagues' major coping families as categories. Biology GTAs most often used adaptive coping strategies, such as problem solving and information seeking, to manage both teaching and research anxieties. However, other coping strategies were preferentially employed for either teaching or research, suggesting differences in these aspects of graduate student life. Over one year, GTAs reduced the number of coping strategies they employed. Understanding how GTAs cope with teaching and research anxieties may inform the types of support faculty and professional development leaders can provide to graduate students.

| S-EPMC8715775 | biostudies-literature

The trade-off between graduate student research and teaching: A myth?

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| S-EPMC6016899 | biostudies-literature

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| S-EPMC8715784 | biostudies-literature

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| S-EPMC4710389 | biostudies-literature

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Project description:Research suggests there are potential benefits to students when taught by instructors who share the same gender and/or race/ethnicity. While underrepresented students have shown increased persistence and academic performance when they were taught by gender- and/or race/ethnicity-congruent faculty, there is little research that has explored the influence of matching for graduate student teaching assistants (GTAs). Given that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) GTAs spend a significant amount of time with undergraduates, measurable impacts on student outcomes have the potential to contribute to the success of undergraduates who have been underrepresented in STEM fields. This study evaluated the effects on academic performance of GTA (n = 50) matching for first-year students (n = 976) in an introductory biology lab course at a Hispanic-serving institution. There was no significant difference in academic performance for students who matched with the gender, race/ethnicity, income, and first-generation status of their GTAs. Results were consistent across multiple cohorts of students, after including statistical controls for prior academic performance and other demographic characteristics and accounting for the nested structure of the data. These results suggest there is a need of supporting GTAs to develop more effective teaching practices and to consider effects of GTA matching on other outcomes.

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| S-EPMC6889844 | biostudies-literature

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Project description:Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have a large impact on undergraduate instruction but are often poorly prepared to teach. Teaching self-efficacy, an instructor's belief in his or her ability to teach specific student populations a specific subject, is an important predictor of teaching skill and student achievement. A model of sources of teaching self-efficacy is developed from the GTA literature. This model indicates that teaching experience, departmental teaching climate (including peer and supervisor relationships), and GTA professional development (PD) can act as sources of teaching self-efficacy. The model is pilot tested with 128 GTAs from nine different STEM departments at a midsized research university. Structural equation modeling reveals that K-12 teaching experience, hours and perceived quality of GTA PD, and perception of the departmental facilitating environment are significant factors that explain 32% of the variance in the teaching self-efficacy of STEM GTAs. This model highlights the important contributions of the departmental environment and GTA PD in the development of teaching self-efficacy for STEM GTAs.

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