Discipline-specific education research has exposed problems in student learning and suggested various solutions. A growing number of lecturers are familiar with this research, however fewer teaching assistants (TAs) doing research in their own fields have knowledge of the education issues relevant to their teaching. This paper describes a semester-long course designed to provide TAs with a working conceptual knowledge of the cognitive theory of learning, problems with student understanding, rationales underlying instructional reforms and so on. The main activity of the course was the discussion of education research articles and chapters from a textbook (Redish, 2003). The short presentations and essays submitted at the completion of the course as well as the course survey suggest that most of the short term objectives have been attained. The objectives, design and evaluation of the course could easily be adapted to suit any departmental TA development program.

Keywords: development course, teaching assistant, education research