The purpose of this mixed method study was to better understand undergraduate students' perceptions of international teaching assistants (ITAs) at a major research institution. For the purpose of this inquiry data were collected from surveying a sample of 436 of undergraduate students from different colleges and at different class levels. Survey data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Through the qualitative analysis of the open-ended survey data, undergraduate students' perceptions were derived from their responses, which resulted in themes both established in previous research (e.g., language), and original ideas (e.g., learning to understand ITAs language). Qualitative analysis of the survey data revealed that undergraduate students' perceptions of ITAs were varied and complex. For example, one perception identified was the connection of language to pedagogic difficulties, while another perception focused on the interactive construct of communication. Further, the quantitative analysis revealed a statistically significant relationship between these two relational perceptions and undergraduate students who reported having experienced problems with ITAs in their classes. More specifically, students who indicated that they did not have problematic experience with ITAs were not very likely to articulate perceptions that were relational, whereas more students that did report having a problem in courses taught by ITAs articulated perceptions that involved an interaction (e.g., communication and language as a barrier interfering with pedagogic performance of ITAs). The findings from this study thus provide a critical understanding of undergraduate students' perceptions from their perspectives. In addition, the finding that language-pedagogy and communication were connected by undergraduate students who had encountered problems with ITAs, suggests that instead of ITA education programs addressing the challenges of accommodating the needs of individual departments and/or colleges in a university (Jia & Bergerson, 2008), ITA education would benefit more from focusing on language in relation to pedagogy.

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Many international graduate students serve as teaching assistants at US universities. As teaching assistants, they carry out significant responsibilities such as leading lab sessions, grading student work, holding office hours, and proctoring exams. When these international teaching assistants (ITAs) cross national boundaries to teach at US universities, they may experience significant differences in the educational cultures. Teaching in a new educational culture offers ITAs both challenges and opportunities for growth. To better understand the experiences of this population within engineering, data were collected from seven engineering ITAs using a multiple-case study approach with each ITA representing a case. Data were collected in the form of weekly reflections and in-person interviews at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester, at an R1 university representative of national averages in terms of international graduate student population in the US. The participant pool represented diversity in the form of nationality, gender, prior teaching experience with the same course, and engineering discipline. Data were analyzed using both a priori codes and inductive coding emerging from the data, with particular attention given to experiences specific to engineering. Based on data analysis, codebooks were developed that operationalize ITAs' experiences and navigational strategies in the context of engineering. While illuminating the intersections of ITAs' teaching experiences with their international and GTA identities, the results point to the complexity and variations in participants' experiences based on various social and contextual factors such as gender, cultural background, prior exposure to the English language, prior engagement with the course material, and interaction with the teaching team. The results point to several contributions, and implications for engineering departments and universities, faculty, and ITAs to better engage ITAs in the process of undergraduate engineering education. In terms of contributions, this study uses intersectionality, a critical framework, which accounts for the complexity of engineering ITAs' experiences to provide systematic accounts of their experiences and navigational strategies while illuminating the nuances related to social, cultural, and disciplinary identities. Implications for the engineering departments and universities include creating an educational environment that values the cultural and linguistic diversity brought by ITAs, and collaborating with ITAs to organize training programs that help ITAs strengthen their communication, workload management, and intercultural skills; those for faculty include helping ITAs manage their teaching and research requirements by allowing for flexibility in ITAs' schedules, and treating ITAs as budding colleagues by using ITAs' existing pedagogical knowledge and scaffolding them when needed; those for ITAs include resisting the institutional pressure to "fit" into the US educational norms by using the pedagogical and cultural knowledge they bring from their home countries to better support student learning, and develop students' intercultural skills; and those for undergraduate students include engaging with ITAs to learn the engineering course content and simultaneously develop intercultural competence. / Ph. D.

Institutions of higher education (HEIs) in the United States recruit numerous international graduate students, many of whom serve as teaching assistants. HEIs’ motivations for employing international teaching assistants (ITAs) include not only economic incentives but also humanistic aims of internationalization, for example, increasing cross-cultural cooperation. However, integrating ITAs into the institution, making them welcomed and respected members of the community, has proven difficult. In particular, problems in ITA-student communication have been reported for decades. I argue that the crux of these integration difficulties lies in how linguistic diversity is approached. Policymakers and researchers usually treat ITAs’ Englishes as the cause of communication difficulties, with the implication that ITAs should more closely conform to norms of ‘native’ English. I propose instead that the primary problem is not linguistic diversity itself but ideological perceptions of other Englishes and unproductive responses to the difficulties that arise in trying to communicate across linguistic difference. This study examined policies and perceptions related to ITA-student communication at one internationalizing university through document collection, interviews, and classroom observation. I found that, despite its strategic plan calling for preparing students to enter a globalizing world, the institution’s response to ITA-student communication difficulties targets only ITAs’ competencies, mainly by assessing and remediating their language proficiency. Discussions with students and observations of classroom interaction revealed that many students appeared to orient to communication with ITAs in ways that did not help promote successful communication or prepare them to communicate across linguistic difference in a globalizing world. I also found that available ideological stances and strategies for addressing linguistic difference made it difficult for ITAs to be simultaneously liked and respected as instructors. This study has implications for HEIs seeking to create internationally inclusive communities and prepare their students and other stakeholders for communication across linguistic difference. First, ITA preparation should be reframed so as not to stigmatize ITAs’ Englishes. It should also prepare ITAs to become active agents in socializing students into productive and respectful orientations to linguistic difference. Second, HEIs must more comprehensively seek to confront students’ deficit language ideologies and unproductive responses to communication difficulties.

This dissertation follows an oral language assessment tool from initial design and implementation to validity analysis. The specialized variables of this study are the population: international teaching assistants and the purpose: spoken assessment as a hiring prerequisite. However, the process can easily be applied to other populations and assessment goals.While evaluating the TBEST (Task-Based English Speaking Test) and TAST (TOEFL Academic Speaking Test), I search for a preponderance of evidence for assessment validity that indicate the most appropriate tool for evaluating potential ITAs. The specific evidences of assessment validity that are examined are:1. Evidence of Domain (Content) Validity: Which test, the TBEST or the TAST most closely measures the actual skills needed to be an ITA?2. Evidence of Predictive Criterion Validity: Which test, the TBEST or the TAST, is more valid in predicting ITA teaching success based on end of semester student evaluation (TCEs)?Following the analyses of these points of evidence, the results of a follow-up survey of ITA impressions about the ITA training and evaluating process are reviewed. Reviewing the results of this survey places the language assessment and hiring process recommendations within its larger context, directing attention toward suggestions for improvement of ITA training and evaluating procedures.Over the course of 18 months, 335 ITAs were assessed using the TBEST. 193 ITAs took the TAST prior to taking the TBEST, and those scores are used for correlation analysis. 119 ITAs participated in a follow up survey about their ITA experience.Analysis of domain validity shows that the TBEST is better suited for assessing ITAs than the TAST due to specialized assessment content not present on the more generic TAST. The TBEST is marginally better at predicting teaching success, though the results were statistically insignificant and recommendations are made for a follow-up study. Post-hoc analysis of the discriminative utility of both tests show that the TBEST results show more useful shades of distinction between candidates while the TAST results place the majority of students in a `fair' category which requires secondary interviews to assess teaching ability.

International teaching assistants (ITAs) are considered advanced English users with relatively high standardized language proficiency test scores. However, they may experience difficulties during their interactions with undergraduate students. Some of these difficulties may arise from affective factors such as ambiguity, stress, and adjustment and can impact language use. From an individual differences perspective, a second language user with high communication anxiety may have difficulty comprehending or producing appropriate pragmalinguistic forms. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study examined the underlying factors in ITAs communication anxiety and willingness to communicate in the US classroom and how these factors explained their pragmatic competence, which refers to the ability to use language in socially appropriate ways. A total of 289 ITAs participated in the study. To measure their judgement of appropriateness, a pragmatic appropriateness test was designed. The speech act production was elicited through a discourse completion test. Two survey instruments were designed to measure ITAs’ classroom communication anxiety and willingness to communicate. The major underlying factors from the exploratory factor analysis performed on the survey responses were ‘ease of communication,’ classroom management anxiety,’ ‘fear of warning,’ and ‘willingness to interact with students’. A six-predictor multiple regression analysis revealed that linguistic competence was the most important factor contributing to pragmatic competence. Other factors such as ease of communication and willingness to communicate positively correlated with pragmatic competence. In addition to quantitative data, qualitative data were collected in the form of classroom observations, field notes, and interviews from a group of ITAs (N = 4) who had also participated in the quantitative part of the study. The analysis of the qualitative data revealed that the situational context of instruction determined the particular communication patterns in different disciplines, specifically the impact of threat posed to the negative and positive face of the discourse participants. Additionally, in conjunction with the quantitative findings, while the ITAs seemed to be generally willing to interact with students, teacher-fronted talk in the form of delivering lectures and self-talk especially in large classes was found to be anxiety-inducing for some of them. Length of residence and opportunities for communication seemed to influence the process of adjustment and acquisition of the classroom pragmatic norms. Finally, ITAs’ perceptions and beliefs about appropriateness seemed to affect their pragmatic performance in the classroom. More specifically, ITAs’ perspectives on education and communication such as moderating the power variable in class and building rapport and interpersonal relationships with students through casual talk seemed to guide their choices of pragmalinguistic forms and politeness strategies. The study offered a number of implications for ITA research and training.

Research on international teaching assistants (ITAs) often highlights that ITAs have at least two identities, an identity of a teacher and a student (e.g., Jenkins, 2000). Since American classrooms foster a variety of behaviors that are negotiated by instructors and students, ITAs may identify themselves with students during behavior negotiation when building rapport, especially by exchanging jokes (Unger-Gallagher, 1991). Making their student identity relevant may distort the teacher-student relationship, which ITAs might need to renegotiate. Little research has been done to show whether ITA student identity actually emerges and if does, then how. This study addresses the questions of what attributes of ITA's identities emerge during humorous exchanges with their students, how these attributes shape the teacher-student relationship, and what role humor plays in the identity negotiation process between the ITAs and their students in the university classroom. Four ITAs, all non-native English speakers, participated in this microethnographic study. This study informs research on social identity in that, most of the time, participants made the attributes of their teacher identity relevant, with teacher authority emerging as the most important attribute. While enacting their teacher identity through humorous exchanges, ITAs built rapport and created affiliation with their students. Although humor led to establishing good relationships, it did not lead to the emergence of ITA student identity. This study also contributes to research on humor in that it makes a distinction between the concepts of the target and the butt which allows for deeper understanding of how humor is used to negotiate identity. It also introduces the target switch, or a particular type of counter teasing, in which the initial target redirects humorous aggression to the teaser, thus making her/him the target and a potential butt of the tease. An optimistic finding for ITA research and research on the use of humor by non-native speakers is that even without extensive experience with American culture in general, ITAs can use humor rooted in the local context to negotiate different classroom behaviors and their identities with their students.

Six hundred sixty-six students were queried at the University of North Texas. The appropriate use of nonverbal behaviors of international and U.S. American TAs was surveyed. An eleven item questionnaire (Teacher Nonverbal Measure) was utilized. These questions were tested by an ANOVA. Data indicated that international TAs are less likely to use appropriate nonverbal behaviors than U.S. American TAs. Thus, it is possible to assume that international TAs are more likely to be perceived as using inappropriate nonverbal behaviors than U.S. American TAs. Also, communication competence was investigated. The Communication Skill Rating Scale was utilized and tested by ANOVA. Results indicate that international TAs are viewed as significantly less competent than U.S. American TAs.

This study investigated the construct of comprehensible English in the context of oral proficiency assessment for international teaching assistants. I carried out a three-part mixed method design to explore instructor rater judgments, results of a speech analysis, and how specific speech variables might have influenced judgments on the assessment criteria. Each step focused on a failed/passed assessment comparison made possible through archived data from which 10 individuals initially failed the oral proficiency test but within the same year retook the task and received a passing score. Part A evaluated the perspective of the instructor raters through the rating scale judgments provided on the assessment evaluation forms. In the second part of the study, I coded and scored grammatical, temporal, and phonological variables that occurred on two-minute excerpts of a field-specific summary task from the set of 10 failed and then subsequently passed assessments performed by the same individuals. I inspected the speech analysis results to evaluate differences in the values of specific speech variables on the set of failed performances in comparison to the set of passed performances. In Part C, I conducted 10 case studies to compare each individual's rating scale judgments and rater comments on grammar, fluency, and pronunciation from their failed and their passed assessment with the results from the speech analysis of grammatical, temporal, and phonological variables. The case study approach facilitated a broad inspection of the interrelation among the rater perspectives on the assessment criteria and the speech analysis results. The study findings showed evidence of an interrelation between temporal and phonological variables on rater judgments of comprehensibility, as well as the role of pronunciation as a criterion for oral proficiency assessments. I concluded with implications for future research on the interrelation among speech variables that influence listener perceptions of comprehensibility and the use of pronunciation as a speaking assessment criterion. / text