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This project focuses on the way that new graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in English develop both their professional identity as teachers and their view of Composition as a field. Drawing on social theories of disciplines (Prior, 1998; Hyland, 2004; Carter, 2007), disciplinary enculturation (Hasrati, 2005; Bazerman and Prior, 2005; Thaiss and Zawacki, 2006), and legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger 1998), this dissertation examines the transition that composition GTAs undergo during their first year of graduate school. Many of these GTAs move from little or no knowledge of Composition as a discipline to teaching their own writing courses. I focus on GTAs from MA and MFA programs at a large research university in their first year of teaching composition. Using multiple types of data, including in-depth interviews, observations of practicum and mentoring sessions, and teaching genres written by the GTAs, I construct a narrative that shows the role that teaching composition plays in the overall identity construction of graduate students as professionals. This wide data set has allowed me to see the various ways (and various genres) in which Composition is constructed in the lives of new GTAs. Teacher preparation programs offer a variety of assistance, including experience shadowing current teachers, practicum courses and individual or group mentoring. I study the ways these activities help GTAs in one first-year writing program move toward a fuller understanding of and participation in Composition, and how these experiences relate to the overall graduate student experience. Each of these experiences helps move GTAs toward participation as composition teachers. However, the degree to which these GTAs participate in Composition as a discipline has to do with their relationships with mentors and the connections they make between the multiple communities of practice that they must continually navigate. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 203-212).

This dissertation addresses three distinct areas of composition: literacy,technology, and teacher training. The research questions I investigate are as follows:Are graduate programs in rhetoric and composition offering preparation for teaching new literacies, especially with digital technology? If so, what is the nature of that training?Does the faculty within a program perceive that training to be effective? Is thattraining perceived to be effective by graduate students?How do individual programs shape their graduate technology training to reflectand manifest specific programmatic agendas and goals?The first two sets of research questions are investigated using survey research methods. The last research question is addressed via case study methods.Using a multi-methodological research design that includes a national survey and two institutional case studies allows me to combine methodologies to draw meaningful conclusions from the data. For example, the survey helps to provide a brief sketch of the state of technology training in rhetoric and composition programs as well as universities, while detailed case studies provide a context that illustrates how the integration of technology into both the university and rhetoric and composition program affects teacher training. The survey demonstrates that many programs do not require courses or workshops that extend special help to those teaching in computer classrooms especially as technology relates to new literacies. Information from the survey also indicates that rhetoric and composition programs have no procedures in place to assess the state of technology training for new teachers and TAs. This dissertation offers one way of assessing technology training.The case studies reveal that the two universities have grand visions and broad technology initiatives. However, a closer look at university mission statements and specific rhetoric and composition programs reveals that the integration of technology is sometimes a less than smooth one. In one case, the department struggles to implement technology at the grass roots level, while another department, despite the inconsistencies apparent at the university level, seems to succeed at both integrating technology and training new teachers to address the new literacies produced by those digital technologies. / Department of English

The employment of International Teaching Assistants in U.S. universities has caused concern with regards to the communicative competence of nonnative speaker TAs in undergraduate classrooms. Researchers such as Rounds (1985), Bryd (1986), Constantino (1986), Tyler (1990), Shaw (1994), and Hoekje and Williams (1994), among others have suggested that more research is needed on the performance of nonnative speaker TAs in specific disciplines.This study is an-attempt to describe the discourse skills of nonnative speaker TAs in Computer Science. The speech event of twelve nonnative speaker TAs was observed and video and audiotaped in teaching lecture and laboratory (programming session) classes. Three native speaker TAs of the same profession were also studied as a comparison group. A profile of each of the TAs was made based on field notes, interviews and student evaluations, to determine TA typologies along Bailey's (1982,1984) classification. The profiles also contributed to grouping the TAs into more skillful and less skillful TAs.The classroom observations were analyzed to determine whether NNSTAs encountered difficulty speaking comprehensibly and explaining the computer science concepts clearly. The other questions investigated included: the apparent degree and ease of student comprehension of the teachers; the amount of student participation allowed and encouraged; the degree of interaction in the classes; and the amount of rapport between the NNSTAs and their students.The rhetorical analysis of the discourse structure of the computer science classrooms revealed two genres. Descriptive discourse was predominant in the lecture sessions and procedural discourse was predominant in the programming sessions. Linguists have shown that there are interesting connections between discourse type and the interlocutor's choice of particular syntactic structures. The investigations in this study showed that the successful NNSTAs complied with these connections and the less successful NNSTAs did not. The discourse problems of nonnative speaker TAs stemmed mainly from their inability to use various cohesive ties and deictic markers appropriately.Finally, the study showed that despite pronunciation and grammatical deficiencies, NNSTAs' success in their classes was determined by their speech acts. The moreinteractive TAs who employed various illocutionary acts to transact disciplinary information were the more skillful TAs. / Department of English

The purposes of this study were to determine whether differences existed between the communication styles and teaching effectiveness, respectively, of native and non-native teaching fellows, as perceived by their undergraduate students. In addition, the study sought to determine whether a positive correlation existed between the final grades and the communication styles and teaching effectiveness, respectively, of native and non-native teaching fellows as perceived by their undergraduate students. In order to carry out the purposes of this study, six hypotheses were tested concerning the perception of native and non-native undergraduate students toward the communication style and teaching effectiveness of teaching fellows in North Texas State University.

This is an exploratory, interpretive study, focusing on classroom communication experiences of Chinese teaching assistants (CTA) in a U.S. university. The research asked: What are CTAs' experiences communicating in the U.S. university classroom? How do they interpret their experiences from their own perspective? And what is their emergent adaptation pattern to the U.S. university classroom?

In the last three decades, there has been a significant growth in the number of undergraduate students taking introductory statistics. As a result, there is a need by universities and community colleges to find well-qualified instructors and graduate teaching assistants to teach the growing number of statistics courses. Unfortunately, research has shown that even teachers of introductory statistics struggle with concepts they are employed to teach. The data presented in this research sheds light on the statistical knowledge of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) and community college instructors (CCIs) in the realm of probability by analyzing their work on surveys and task-based interviews on the p-value. This research could be useful for informing professional development programs to better support present and future teachers of statistics.

This study measures the effect of a model of explicit instruction (EMIT) on the: 1) physics graduate teaching assistants’ adherence to reformed teaching methods, 2) impact of the instructional model on GTAs’ beliefs about the nature of physics and physics problem solving and 3) undergraduate physics students’ understanding and performance in an introductory calculus-based physics course. Methods included explicit modeling for the treatment group GTAs of the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) and assessment of treatment and control GTAs and their students throughout the semester. Students’ understanding was measured using the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and Flash-mediated Force and Motion Concept Inventory (FM2CA). Students were surveyed about performance of GTAs using the Student Survey (SS). Results indicated changes were tied to individual GTAs’ beliefs about the nature of physics. Student conceptual understanding reflected a two-fold Hake gain compared to the control group. General application of the EMIT model presupposes explicit instruction of the model for GTAs.

This study measures the effect of a model of explicit instruction (EMIT) on the: 1) physics graduate teaching assistants’ adherence to reformed teaching methods, 2) impact of the instructional model on GTAs’ beliefs about the nature of physics and physics problem solving and 3) undergraduate physics students’ understanding and performance in an introductory calculus-based physics course. Methods included explicit modeling for the treatment group GTAs of the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) and assessment of treatment and control GTAs and their students throughout the semester. Students’ understanding was measured using the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and Flash-mediated Force and Motion Concept Inventory (FM2CA). Students were surveyed about performance of GTAs using the Student Survey (SS). Results indicated changes were tied to individual GTAs’ beliefs about the nature of physics. Student conceptual understanding reflected a two-fold Hake gain compared to the control group. General application of the EMIT model presupposes explicit instruction of the model for GTAs.