Do Graduate Teaching Assistants Benefit from Teaching Inquiry-Based Laboratories?

Although the debate about the balance between research and teaching at the university level has yet to be settled (Brand 2000), it is indisputable that a principal role of the research university is to teach students to do research (Gonzàlez 2001). Because learning takes place most rapidly when students are actively involved in the learning process (Leonard 1989), students should learn how to do research not by listening or reading about it, but by doing it. This has been the basis of graduate education for decades and, increasingly, the path taken at the undergraduate level as well (Gonzàlez 2001). Moreover, it has been stated that people learn as much as 95 percent of what they teach (Uno 1999), which, if true, makes teaching the most effective of all learning activities. If this is so, does it not follow that graduate students, who commonly serve as teaching assistants (GTAs), benefit from teaching others how to do research?