Many engineering programs have a common content based first-year curriculum that all engineering students are required to take.  These courses tend to be large in size, having multiple sections requiring the use of Teaching Assistants (TAs) who may be graduate students (GTAs) or undergraduate students (UTAs).  The roles of TAs in first-year engineering courses vary from instructional staff to lab supervisors to graders, but despite their widespread use, little is known about the TAs' experiences.  This study fills a gap in the literature by taking a participant centered approach to GTA motivation to teach and identity development as a teacher specifically in the context of first-year engineering programs (FYEPs). To guide this research, a combined motivation and identity framework was developed based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Possible Selves Theory (PST).  In the framework, PST serves as the foundation for the SDT constructs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy.  The framework supports that the various constructs lead to increased motivation and identity development but that each experience through the process is based on one's own identity and views of themself in the future.  This was studied through an exploratory sequential mixed methods design where 12 semi-structured interviews representing five different FYEPs served as the foundation for the development of a national survey completed by 33 GTAs representing seven different FYEPs.  Priority was ultimately given to the qualitative strand, but mixing occurred throughout the study. The results indicate that there are seven factors that affect GTA motivation and identity and there are profiles, lenses, and filters can be used to understand GTAs' experiences in FYEPs.  While each individual is unique, general trends among experiences were observed.  Additionally based on the results, the framework was found to be an appropriate tool but that a slight modification was needed to better align the framework with GTA developmental trends.  This research allows future research-based GTA training programs and appointments to be developed that specifically aim towards meeting the motivational and identity developmental needs of GTAs, ultimately improving the quality of higher education. / Ph. D.

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Master of Science / Department of Psychology / Richard J. Harris / The increasing number of non-native English-speaking instructors in American universities constitutes an issue of controversial debate, concerning the interaction of native English- speaking students and non-native English speaking instructors. This study investigated the effects of native or non-native speakers and audiovisual or audio-only lecture mode on English native speakers’ comprehension and memory for information from a classroom lecture, measuring both factual memory and strength of pragmatic inferences drawn from the text. College students (N = 130) were tested on their comprehension of information derived from basic entomology lectures given by both an English native speaker and an English non-native speaker GTA. Participants also evaluated both lecturers in terms of communication skills. Results indicated that participants evaluated the native speaker as having better communication skills, which is in accordance with previous studies suggesting that both the difficulty of understanding non-native-accented speech (Reddington, 2008) and the possibility of prejudice triggered when listeners hear a non-native accent (Bresnahan et al., 2002) influence listeners’ evaluations of English non-native speaker instructors. Results revealed that familiarity with the topic also played an important role in listening comprehension, especially for lectures given by the non-native speaker. Likewise, the access to visual cues (gestures and facial expressions) enhanced understanding, but it was not a pre-requisite for adequate comprehension when the topic of the lectures did not require visual information. These findings were consistent with the polystemic speech perception approach (Hawkins, 2003), in that it is not essential to recognize all words in text in order to make connections with previous knowledge and construct meaning. Furthermore, overall participants took longer to answer questions from lectures given by the non-native speaker than by the native speaker. This suggests that non-native-accented speech may require more time to answer questions related to that speech, although listeners can adapt to it quickly (Derwing, 1995). Findings from this study are important in suggesting tools for thinking about how different aspects of a lecture can contribute to the learning process. Implications for further research are addressed.

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The purpose of this study was to identify in which areas of teaching assistant responsibilities graduate teaching assistants, professors, and students viewed TAs as knowledgeable, and in which areas of teaching assistant responsibilities graduate teaching assistants, professors, and students viewed TAs as utilized. Specifically, the purpose of the study was to determine whether teaching assistants were utilized or perceived as knowledgeable in curriculum development, course maintenance, teaching responsibilities, and mentoring. Teaching assistants, students, and instructors (n = 233) were administered a survey purposed to measure TAs' effectiveness based on their utility and knowledge in four areas of TA responsibilities: curriculum development, course maintenance, teaching responsibilities, and mentoring. All three participant groups perceived that TAs were utilized in course maintenance and mentoring, and they perceived the TAs were knowledgeable in course maintenance, teaching responsibilities, and mentoring. Overall, instructors viewed TAs as more knowledgeable than did the TA participant group, and the TA participant group viewed themselves as more knowledgeable than did the student participant group.

This yearlong dissertation study focused on understanding the experiences of domestic graduate mathematics teaching assistants (GMTAs) and the context in which they shape and develop their teaching views and practices. The intent of the study was to detail the teaching development of several GMTAs, determine the impact that their preparation programs had on their teaching, and identify other sources that influenced their teaching practices. Utilizing qualitative research methodology, consisting of interviews substantiated by observations, eight GMTAs were purposively selected and studied. Analysis provided the following findings.GMTAs are not a homogenous group; they bring with them different experiences, knowledge, preparation, and attitudes, all of which influence the way that they teach. In addition, a number of factors, many of which are external, played strong roles in shaping GMTAs' teaching practices. This study both identifies such factors and describes how they impacted the GMTAs' teaching practices.Preparation (training) programs were among these factors. Preparation programs can impact the teaching practices of GMTAs. This impact, however, is affected by the influence of other factors (such as course structure, time management, and limited pedagogical knowledge), which can support, constrain, or even counter-act the impact of training programs; this provides insight into why research has found programs to have limited impact on GMTAs' teaching. Furthermore, GMTAs are not always aware of the ways in which these programs impact their teaching; positive testimonials and attitudes toward training do not guarantee influence or impact on teaching practices, nor do negative ones; this suggests caution in using interviews as the sole basis for the evaluation of training programs.This dissertation provides detailed data stories for three of the participants. A list of factors and discussion of how they impacted their teaching practices is given. Some connections are made to research on K-12 teacher preparation. It shows the need for extended GMTA preparation programs, programs which provide significant instructional knowledge and which include guided instructional practices. For researchers, it shows the need to include classroom observations when studying and evaluating preparation programs, discussing the limitations of solely interview based findings.

abstract: The advancement of technology has substantively changed the practices of numerous professions, including teaching. When an instructor first adopts a new technology, established classroom practices are perturbed. These perturbations can have positive and negative, large or small, and long- or short-term effects on instructors’ abilities to teach mathematical concepts with the new technology. Therefore, in order to better understand teaching with technology, we need to take a closer look at the adoption of new technology in a mathematics classroom. Using interviews and classroom observations, I explored perturbations in mathematical classroom practices as an instructor implemented virtual manipulatives as novel didactic objects in rational function instruction. In particular, the instructor used didactic objects that were designed to lay the foundation for developing a conceptual understanding of rational functions through the coordination of relative size of the value of the numerator in terms of the value of the denominator. The results are organized according to a taxonomy that captures leader actions, communication, expectations of technology, roles, timing, student engagement, and mathematical conceptions. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Mathematics Education 2017

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