With the rise in implementation of peer-led learning in higher education, the interactions between peer instructors and their students warrant further investigation as an increasingly critical component of student learning. In this work, Teaching Interns (TIs) are undergraduate peer instructors that lead supplemental learning sessions in General Chemistry. Each week, TIs participate in pedagogy training and complete written reflections on their learning sessions. For this multicase study, six TIs were observed in their office hours over varying time periods. A qualitative approach was taken to analyze their verbal behaviors and the extent to which those behaviors matched their beliefs about teaching. Specifically, discourse analysis allowed for the characterization of the interactions between TIs and students, while analysis of TIs’ weekly written reflections provided insight into their teaching beliefs and perception of their own teaching sessions. The results presented here suggest that even at the start of the program, TIs hold some productive beliefs about teaching, though these beliefs were not always evident in their interactions with students. Over time, TIs generally shifted toward more student-centered discourse and honed their abilities to convey or elicit deeper knowledge among their students. Further, evidence from the TIs’ reflections suggest that they became better at self-monitoring their own teaching behaviors, shrinking the gap between their practices and espoused beliefs about teaching, and that they turned their focus toward student learning versus simply managing their sessions. Taken together, this work provides additional support for the further development and study of peer instruction programs.

As the conversation in higher education shifts from diversity to inclusion, the attrition rates of students in the STEM fields continue to be a point of discussion. Combined with the demand for expansion in the STEM workforce, various retention reforms have been proposed, implemented, and in some cases integrated into policy following evidence of success. Still, new findings, technological advances, and socio-cultural shifts inevitably necessitate an ongoing investigation as to how students approach learning. Among other factors, students who enter college without effective study skills are at much greater risk of being unsuccessful in their coursework. In order to construct an equitable learning environment, a mechanism must be developed to provide underprepared students with access to resources or interventions designed to refine the skills they need to be successful in the course. Early, reliable assessments can provide predictions of individual student outcomes in order to guide the development and implementation of such targeted interventions. In the present study, a model is developed to predict students’ odds of success based on their study approaches, as measured by their responses to twelve survey items from an existing instrument used in the Chemistry Education Research literature designed to measure students’ deep and surface learning approaches. The model’s prediction specificity ranges from 66.5% to 86.9% by semester. Two distinct sets of lower-performing students are identified in the data: those who align predominantly with surface approaches to learning versus those who indicate using both deep and surface approaches to learning. This supports the idea of a tailored approach to interventions, rather than a one-size-fits-all solution. Results from this instrument were correlated to students’ reported study methods and beliefs.

The Teaching Internship is a credit-bearing program composed of undergraduate near peer instructors (teaching interns, or TIs) that offers supplemental assistance for students in the General Chemistry courses. With fellow undergraduates serving as a role model and student–faculty liaison, the benefits of near peer instruction have been well-documented. Because TIs develop a dual role of student and instructor over time, they afford a unique opportunity to explore the middle area of the expert/novice spectrum. Identifying the most influential components of the TI role may allow practitioners to implement these components in other ways for different groups of students. The present work provides a description of the TI model and uses a mixed-methods approach to analyze how the peer leadership role impacted the TIs’ attitudes about learning chemistry. Quantitative results show that TIs do hold predominantly expert-like learning attitudes compared to the General Chemistry population from which they are selected; however, evidence of novice thinking is still observed in some areas. This survey data was then used to inform a qualitative approach. Further analysis indicated that TIs’ responses on survey items were context-dependent, and that peer leadership experiences were associated with expert learning attitudes and appear to be influential in the development of these attitudes. These findings suggest that these factors should be taken into account when drawing general conclusions from survey results.