Through the Looking CLASS: When Peer Leader Learning Attitudes Are Not What They Seem

Abstract

The Teaching Internship is a credit-bearing program comprised of undergraduate near peer instructors (Teaching Interns, or TIs) that offers supplemental assistance for students in the General Chemistry courses. With fellow undergraduates serving as a role model and student-faculty liaison, the benefits of near peer instruction have been well-documented. Because TIs develop a dual role of student and instructor over time, they afford a unique opportunity to explore the middle area of the expert/novice spectrum. Identifying the most influential components of the TI role may allow practitioners to implement these components in other ways for different groups of students. The present work provides a description of the TI model and uses a mixed-methods approach to analyze how the peer leadership role impacted the TIs' attitudes about learning chemistry. Quantitative results show that TIs do hold predominantly expert-like learning attitudes compared to the General Chemistry population from which they are selected; however, evidence of novice thinking is still observed in some areas. This survey data was then used to inform a qualitative approach. Further analysis indicated that TIs' responses on survey items were context-dependent, and that peer leadership experiences were associated with expert learning attitudes and appear to be influential in the development of these attitudes. These findings suggest that these factors should be taken into account when drawing general conclusions from survey results.

Keywords: Chemical Education Research; Collaborative/Cooperative Learning; Constructivism; First-Year Undergraduate/General; Student-Centered Learning; TA Training/Orientation.

Figure 1.

(a) The reported majors of all TIs from Fall 2015 - Spring 2018 as a percentage (N=179; 2 TIs reported double-majors). (b) The gender and racial make-up of General Chemistry students (Fall 2015; N=1,510) and Teaching Interns (Fall 2015-Spring 2018; N=177). Please note that the gender abbreviation “NB” refers to “non-binary”.

Figure 2.

A Venn Diagram displays all nine categories of the CLASS. “PS” is shortened for “Problem Solving.” The size of the circle corresponds to the number of items in that category; the size of the overlap refers to the number of items that sit in two or more categories. The PS-Sophistication and PS-Confidence categories have only items that also live in other categories, while the Atomic-Molecular Perspective of Chemistry items exist entirely in their own category.

Figure 3.

Matched CLASS pre-test and post-test results for all first-year TIs. Pre-tests were administered in the Fall semesters, prior to the first week of the program. Post-tests were administered in the Spring semesters during the final week of the program. Blue outlines denote large (p≤0.05) expert shifts, while red outlines denote novice shifts (p≤0.05). Biserial-rank correlations are provided as effect size (N = 48).

Figure 4.

This data is based on responses from the interviews with TIs, in which TIs were asked to provide the context that informed their responses on specific CLASS items. CLASS categories are listed on the left, while the courses appear across the top. The bubbles represent the instances in which a CLASS item, belonging to one or more categories, was associated with a specific course. The number of instances is written in the middle of each bubble, and the size of the bubble is commensurate to this number. If an item belonged to two or more categories, it was included as such. Please note that “PS” is abbreviated for “Problem-Solving” and “AMPC” is abbreviated for “Atomic-Molecular Perspective of Chemistry.” An alternative representation of this data may be found in the Supporting Information (Fig. S1).

Figure 5.

Interviewees recalled the cause of any shifts from their CLASS results. The main causes were classified as the TI Program, Organic Chemistry (Org. Chem.), or another science course. General Chemistry and non-science courses were not identified by any of the TIs as a cause of a shift. Red indicates a novice shift, while blue indicates an expert shift.