Assessing graduate assistant teacher communication concerns

Exploring teaching concerns and characteristics of graduate teaching assistants

“…GTAs tend to simultaneously identify with two different roles: student and teacher. Because of these seemingly dual roles, some researchers reported that GTAs have concerns about role conflicts (Feezel and Myers 1997;Muzaka 2009). Second, GTAs' role conflict concerns are linked to communication concerns because they need to know how to communicate effectively depending on the dual roles they play.…”

“…Notwithstanding these training efforts, unless their teaching concerns are appropriately recognised and addressed, new GTAs may still consider college teaching as an insurmountable challenge (Feezel and Myers 1997). Therefore, identifying specific GTA concerns and addressing those concerns in development programmes is a key to enhancing programme effectiveness.…”

“…Although graduate teaching assistants' (GTAs') roles and responsibilities have substantially increased, especially for teaching undergraduate courses (Austin 2002;Darling and Dewey 1990), many new GTAs arrive in the classroom unprepared to fulfil their responsibilities Á they have little or no formal background in education or instructional methods (Civikly and Hidalgo 1992), they often receive no systematic training (Prieto 1999) and little teaching experience (Feezel and Myers 1997). Therefore, they may feel overwhelmed, resulting in negative emotions and attitudes towards teaching, such as teaching anxiety (Allen and Rueter 1990), which can interfere with teaching effectiveness.…”

Teacher Communication Concerns Revisited: Calling into Question the Gnawing Pull Towards Equilibrium

“…Additionally, the situations that lead to the hiring of GTAs (undergraduate excellence in a subject area) are distinct from those that lead to the hiring of K-12 teachers (subject competence and pedagogical competence/certification; Feezel & Myers, 1997). Research on GTAs communication concerns suggests that GTAs also express concerns about teaching, although the research provides conflicting evidence as to whether GTAs experience similar phased patterns of concerns as was found in past research (Darling & Dewey, 1990;Myers, 1995;Potee, 1993).…”

“…1 Whereas past studies explored the developmental nature of teacher communication concerns over time (e.g., Darling & Dewey, 1990) and teacher communication concerns as mapped against particular scales-self, task, impact (Staton-Spicer, 1983); class orientation, role conflict, communicating with students, credibility (Feezel & Myers, 1997)-this study focuses on exploring, inductively, the kinds of concerns today's teachers face at the beginning of their teaching career. Given the exploratory nature of this study and my commitment to giving voice to today's GTAs, I chose not to use prior typologies or measurement scales so that I was not methodologically constrained by past categorizations.…”