Premium
Capturing the Experiences of International Teaching Assistants in the US American Classroom
Author(s) -
Hebbani Aparna,
Hendrix Katherine Grace
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
new directions for teaching and learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.192
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1536-0768
pISSN - 0271-0633
DOI - 10.1002/tl.20097
Subject(s) - public speaking , presentation (obstetrics) , perception , psychology , qualitative research , pedagogy , public university , teaching method , higher education , medical education , mathematics education , sociology , medicine , political science , social science , public administration , neuroscience , radiology , law
This chapter presents findings from a qualitative study which investigated the perceptions of twenty‐five ITAs toward US American undergraduates. The participant cohort comprised fourteen PhD and eleven master's students, of which, three were male and twenty‐two were female ITAs teaching oral communication or a communication course requiring at least two graded assignments. The responses gathered via an online survey were content analyzed using Leximancer, a text analytic software program. We found that the master's students reflected more about issues pertaining to their own public speaking and confidence, while the PhD students were more concerned with the preparation and presentation of the course material. In addition to discussing these findings, one coauthor of this study adds her reflexive voice to the experience of being a nonnative English speaker teaching American students.