Developing Graduate Students' Knowledge of Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium through Lesson Study

Existing research on the development of graduate students' teaching competency focuses on the need for their learning opportunities to be contextualized to their specific content area and course structure. A group of graduate teaching assistants collaborated with a biology professor and a science educator in a Japanese Lesson Study to directly address this need for contextualized learning. During this lesson study collaboration, the participants designed a new laboratory focused on Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. This article overviews our application of lesson study and data we gathered about participants' learning. We found that the participants were able to articulate two types of rationales for their teaching: rationales for lesson design and rationales for the importance of including Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in undergraduate biology. We conclude with implications of lesson study for graduate teaching assistant development.