Some graduate students in science, technology, engineering and math—or STEM—only do research, under the guidance of a mentor. Other STEM grad students also have teaching responsibilities, for example, instructing undergrads or local high schoolers. Now a study finds that grad students who also teach show significant improvement in written [--1--], compared with grad students with no teaching requirement. The finding appears in the journal Science.

Researchers followed almost a hundred grad students attending three different institutions. About half of the students also taught. All the grad students were asked to submit written research proposals at the beginning of an [--2--] and a revised version again at the end. And those grad students who spent the year doing research and teaching showed bigger improvements in coming up with [--3--] hypotheses and in the design of valid experiments.

Differences in overall written quality among the students could not account for the results, because only [--4--] among those analyzed showed improvement as a function of the teaching experience. So teaching may make STEM grad students better scientists. Not to mention better teachers.
【視聽版科學(xué)小組榮譽出品】