Research: Learning by Teaching

by Tasha Bergson-Michelson and Sara Zoroufy, May 2020

My librarian colleagues and I often discuss tacit knowledge, information literacy skills we possess but which are so ingrained in our thinking that we no longer consciously recognize when we use them. We ask ourselves: how can we figure out what skills we activate without even realizing that they are in play? How do we identify when we say something that has meaning to librarians but not to our students (for instance, "Just use the important words in your search.")?

I am fortunate to collaborate with a cadre of research teacher's assistants (TAs) each year who help attack these questions. Our library has a long-standing, robust TA program of high-school juniors who give one free period a week to write for our website, update our Pinterest, shelve books, and create art for our marketing and programming. We added research TAs four years ago, when one of our students was daily coming with questions that pushed my thinking and ultimately helped sculpt our curriculum. Sara's thoughtful questioning, research, and efforts to help her peers helped forge the program and proved to be mutually beneficial.

Sara Zoroufy

My curiosity about research skills emerged from a sense of deficiency. I would often feel while sitting in class that there was an important idea or skill that I didn't quite understand fully, and I was motivated to fill in that gap. When, for instance, one of my peers remarked: "CNN reports that the Justice Department collected the following statistics," I remember feeling perplexed as to why she had chosen to attribute one piece of information to two sources. Moreover, this confusion threw into doubt my own understanding: I felt that what she had done was incorrect, but I couldn't quite identify why it was wrong. This ambiguity was intriguing to me, and I wanted to unpack both my own tacit knowledge and my classmate's misunderstanding to get at the underlying concept.

As I reflected on this question, I mapped how I understand sources and evidence. In the process, I realized that librarians frequently use the same words to describe different components of source evaluation: for instance, the word "source" refers to both the article a student is reading as well as the publication in which the article appeared. This ambiguity unsurprisingly confuses students as they are asked to unpack the evidence they are handling. Once I identified this issue, I began to wonder if there were other distinctions students had trouble making. Over time, I was compelled to ask: how do we students think about differentiating between evidence and argument? I initially approached this question by coding anonymized student work to identify how a range of students were using evidence. I culminated my work by reviewing and coding all of my own argumentative writing from eight to twelfth grade to understand how I had grown in my perception of evidence and argumentation.

The TA program granted me a space to contemplate the research and critical thinking skills I encountered in my classes. Focusing on the skills themselves, rather than the context in which they were presented, transformed me as a student. With a mandate for metacognitive reflection and synthesis, I was able to piece together seemingly disparate skills from across my classes. Sharing and discussing my work gave me the vocabulary, context, and insight to push my thinking. I could see the web of skills and concepts stretching out before me, and it was the TA program that gave me the occasion and guidance to draw in new connections. These observations helped me to paint a more complete picture of how my peers and I encounter and develop these skills throughout our educational careers.

Throughout my time as a TA, I was constantly amazed that anyone was taking the time to listen to and seriously consider my ideas and observations. It took quite some time before I could comfortably grant myself permission to share my thoughts with educators whose knowledge and experienced far outstripped my own. What could I possibly contribute in such company?

Realizing that my thoughts were valued by the educators I so admired was immensely empowering. It endowed me with a sense of capability, of believing that I could participate in the scholarly conversation. With this new confidence in my thinking, I felt like a stakeholder in my own education. Moreover, I felt that I had assumed agency over how I learned and developed my research and critical thinking skills. None of this would have been possible without the research TA program. Because people were willing to listen, I learned to trust my own voice.

What Do the Current Students Say?

Our research TAs continue to be a valuable part of our library program. No two TAs bring the same skill set or have the same objectives. They each give an hour a week to write, test, or lead lessons; brainstorm approaches; or consult on strategies for effectively communicating a skill to students. But don't take my word for it:

Alexa Crowder

During my year as a TA I really appreciated how flexible the program was. From the start, I was especially interested in mentoring younger students, as well as gaining experiential practice with research. I explored the current literature on how best to teach a wide range of research skills (namely source literacy, note-taking, and paraphrasing) to middle-school-aged students. I then worked on a variety of projects for classes across grade levels at my school. A highlight was my time in a 7th grade history classroom, where I helped students navigate databases to find information on Renaissance figures. I also enjoyed leading my own classmates in an activity on the freedom of the press and violence against journalists around the world.

Reflecting back on my year as a research TA, I realize that there was a nice duality to the experience—I did my own research, which in turn allowed me to teach research. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to hone my skills, both as a mentor and as a researcher myself.

Alexa Crowder is a senior at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, CA. She was a teacher's assistant for research in the library for the 2018-2019 school year.

Alana C. Stull

I am collaborating with our team of librarians to create mini-courses to guide research skill development and supplement the underclass curriculum. Our goal was to craft mini-courses that honor myriad cultural perspectives, address personal biases, and introduce students to both traditional and modern news sources—including social media platforms.

This program lies at the intersection of my scholastic and creative interests—discovering modern solutions to help teach research skills to secondary students. For example, a recent mini-course investigated Instagram and Twitter to analyze and decode the use of hashtags and their role in distinguishing reliable information from fake news. Through our learning modules and larger discussion, students were better able to determine the reliability of news accounts—particularly those whose sources are anchored in personal social media preferences and filters.

My favorite part of being a research TA is the academic freedom that interdisciplinary research encourages. Research has allowed me to step beyond knowledge which is commonly memorialized and seen to investigate voices and histories that are perpetually invisible and might otherwise be trampled or forgotten.

Alana C. Stull is a junior at Castilleja School in Palo Alto. She is a teaching assistant for the library and an avid researcher and visual artist enlivened by the intersection of social media, creative expression, and social justice.

Grace Kim

As a research TA, I have had the opportunity to engage in projects for the benefit of the community around me. One example is the Instagram guide that we are working on now.

During the summer of 2019, I became interested in the influence of social media platforms on my news consumption. The Sudanese government cut off access to the Internet as a response to protests, and there was a huge movement on Instagram to raise awareness. At first, I did not question the information that people were sharing. I looked for ways I could take action and found organizations asking for money, but almost all of them could only be found on Instagram and I was not able to find any other information about them online. Looking back at the information I had read, I realized it was mostly screenshots from Twitter, a format of communication I was so accustomed to that I initially did not even question it.

Following this event, I knew that navigating news on social media was definitely a topic that students needed to discuss, and fortunately, my fellow TAs agreed. We dedicated one of the library mini-courses to exploring different aspects of social media such as influencers, news reportage, fundraising, and how information can be verified. Our workshop allowed us to gather ideas and thoughts from our classmates and to encourage them to be conscious about their everyday interactions with social media platforms.

By considering my perspective and experience as a student, the library produced a workshop centered on students' actual needs, consequently making the lesson more engaging. The adults on campus benefited too; because the workshop was a response to obstacles that students face, it gave teachers the opportunity to better understand the factors that influence our lives.

Grace Kim is a junior at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, CA. She is a teaching assistant for the library and is interested in expanding the use of art, particularly dance and visual art, as a medium to reach a wider audience.

Conclusion

Whether TAs create videos for middle school science students showing how taking drawn notes can promote reading comprehension or design lessons to help ninth grade history students learn to identify countable evidence for abstract topics (e.g., what statistics can they find from 19th-century France to demonstrate rises in nationalism?), the research TAs regularly strengthen the impact of teaching at Castilleja. While it can feel risky to take the vulnerable stance necessary to ask TAs for these types of input, it has habituated listening more closely for the comments from all our students that inspire stronger or more necessary lessons.