Graduate Teaching Assistant Training: A Basis for Improvement of College Biology Teaching & Faculty Development?

T HE recent growth and enhanced pedagogical activities of the Two-Year and Four-Year College Sections of the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) indicate a desire on the part of college faculty members to improve the quality of college biology teaching. NABT's Standards in College Biology Teaching Committee, an ad hoc committee appointed by the president of NABT in 1989, has completed a literature review regarding college biology teaching. After analyzing the literature, this committee made several recommendations and proposed a research agenda. The Standards Committee's review (Gottfried et al. 1993) provided several important questions for the research agenda in college biology teaching. Some of these questions are: Do models for faculty preparation exist? Which institutions are preparing college biology faculty to teach? What form do these programs take? The College Faculty Preparation Committee, a standing committee of the Four-year College Section of NABT, has focused on the above questions during the past two years. Based on personal experiences of the committee members as well as information from the literature, the Faculty Preparation Committee has agreed with several authors (Lawrence et al. 1992; Ebel Moore 1991) that graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are used extensively in lower division laboratories and recitation classes and that in many cases the GTAs have more direct contact with undergraduate students than do professors. The Faculty Preparation Committee also accepts the fol-