The design, implementation and evaluation of a teacher development programme to empower graduate students teaching in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory

Graduate students who fulfil teaching roles in the undergraduate laboratory play an important role in establishing a positive learning environment. A host of graduate-student teacher training programmes have been developed, implemented and evaluated accordingly in order to enhance their teaching capability. In addition, research has also investigated the varied or sometimes complex factors that influence graduate students' teaching behaviours. However, much of the extant literature on graduate-student teacher development has prized a transmission model of teacher education whereby information about what good teaching involves is transmitted to graduate students as a means of developing their teaching capability. Further, evaluations of chemistry graduate-student teacher development programmes have grappled with evidencing significant advancements made to the instructional practices of its participants. This research set out to develop, implement and evaluate a teacher development programme for graduate students who teach in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory. The 'Teaching as a Chemistry Laboratory Graduate Teaching Assistant' (TCL-GTA) programme sought to employ an alternative way of catalysing graduate students in their laboratory teaching roles by enhancing their sense of psychological empowerment. In order to achieve this, it was sought to nurture the conditions of teacher empowerment that are linked to enhanced student performance during the programme. The 'Meaningful Learning in the Laboratory' (MLL) instructional model was designed to guide graduate students’ conceptualisation of how students learn meaningfully in the laboratory, as well as informing how they instruct and interact with students in the laboratory. This research was carried out over four phases that involved informing, designing, implementing and evaluating the TCL-GTA programme. Underpinned by pragmatic philosophy and subscribing to various philosophical underpinnings of the positivistic, postpositivistic and constructivist paradigms, this research employed a mixed method approach of collecting and analysing both quantitative and qualitative forms of data from questionnaires, interviews and laboratory audio recordings. A range of analyses including thematic analysis, category development and statistical analysis were employed. The findings of this research indicates misalignment in the perceptions of the role of laboratory demonstrators which subsequently informed the design of the TCL-GTA programme. The implementation of the TCL-GTA programme nurtured empowering teacher development conditions. This positively influenced graduate students' sense of psychological empowerment in their laboratory instructor roles while concomitantly enhancing their verbal interactions with general chemistry students in the laboratory.