VDM Joan Kwako: Assessment Task Design

Due to the nature of the institutions from which they come, many doctoral students receive little, if any, preparation in how to teach. Because of this, their conceptions of teaching are often naïve and unconscious, based on their past experiences as students and emulation of former teachers. Although training programs exist for teaching assistants (TAs), they are often woefully inadequate in preparing TAs to fulfill their future roles as faculty. In particular, TAs are provided little preparation in assessment, a critical component of teaching. This book investigates how the assessment conceptions of five calculus TAs developed during a semester-long seminar focused on assessment task design. This book also addresses the need for increased attention not only to the assessment practices of graduate students, but also to their conceptions of that practice. In addition, this book demonstrates that conceptual change is possible using a simple model of professional development requiring a limited number of resources, information of interest to all in teacher and graduate education.