College of Science
91 Because Ideas Matter: Preparing Teaching Assistants to Recognize & Respond to Sensemaking
Nathan Mellish and Jordan M Gerton
Faculty Mentor: Jordan M. Gerton (Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah)
Preface
This summer’s research experience has been transformative for me, both academically and personally. I would like to thank Dr. Jordan Gerton and Dr. Kelby Hahn as my mentors, who have been supportive all the way along, and additional support from Professor Kevin Davenport and Lauren April Barth-Cohen, who have contributed valuable personal insights and literature backgrounds in supporting the project. I would like to thank Lilian Arriaza for being my peer on this project and for discussing the questions we encountered.
I would like to thank the new friends I made along the way from REU 2025: Ryan, Zoe, Hannah, Coleman, Ethan, Hyrum, Mia, and many more. I will never forget the road trips we took together this summer and all the laughs that came along with them. They will forever hold a place in my memories.
I would also like to offer special thanks to my advisor, Ms. Robin Wheelwright, for her gentle and faithful encouragement to go through the steps of applying with me and to Professor David Stroupe, who not only introduced me to this opportunity but also offered generous support and encouragement from the very beginning.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my friends and family. I owe so much to their quiet support and unwavering belief in me, which, as always, has made every milestone possible.
About the Project
Introductory physics labs provide fertile ground for students to engage with scientific concepts through hands-on, evidence-based inquiry. At the University of Utah, the redesigned Introductory Physics Laboratories for the Life Sciences (IPL2S) course aims to promote such engagement by establishing sensemaking as a central pillar of instructional design. In practice, however, students’ opportunities for sensemaking vary significantly, often depending on the extent to which teaching assistants (TAs) and learning assistants (LAs) notice and build on emerging student thinking. Despite their integral role in facilitating laboratory instruction, many TA/LAs receive limited direct preparation in recognizing and supporting sensemaking as it unfolds in the moment.
To bridge this gap, this project developed a set of flexibly structured training exercises within a larger Instructional Ecosystem (IE) that address four foundational areas: community, pedagogy, sensemaking, and equity. Based on video studies of previous lab meetings, we had earlier identified moments in instruction in which student thinking was being productively supported or inadvertently steered off course. These insights guided the design of training resources such as reflective journaling, video vignette observation (on topics of the individual’s choosing), and pedagogic-scenario discussion questions designed to encourage TA/LAs to attend to sensemaking cues and, in a timely and positive way, intervene.
Outcome & Future
Complements with the lab’s three-week A–B–C teaching cycle for instruction, with a further emphasis on sensemaking during the time students progress from designing to defending investigations. The scale implementation is scheduled for Fall 2025, but this design time is a critical marker on the path toward enabling TA/LAs to understand student reasoning more consistently and equally. By helping teaching teams develop a sense of comfort with the processes of sensemaking as they unfold over time, this work enables more responsive teaching practices and more abundant, diverse learning in undergraduate STEM labs.
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