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Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are faced with managing how to respond to student disclosures of grief in the classroom but often lack grief training from their universities when these instances occur. Good and Mad grief, and Critical Grief Pedagogy (CGP) are the frameworks for which this study is positioned. Through interviews with GTAs in the United States, we explore their experiences when engaging with student grief disclosures and revealed three main themes: "regulations and boundaries, transactional exchanges in institutions," and "the classroom being a human space." We also discuss how GTAs use CGP to manage these interactions. We further suggest that GTA training should include CGP to help prepare future instructors for student grief and welcome grief into the classroom.

The relationship between tutoring and teaching has been a recurrent topic of interest among writing center directors and writing program administrators. While scholarship agrees tutoring experience aids composition teachers with implementing process pedagogy and fostering a collaborative classroom, the relationship between tutoring and assessment of student writing is less clear. This qualitative study uses interviews with eight graduate teaching assistants with tutoring experience to examine how they transfer and juxtapose knowledge, practices, and values for response between the writing center and the classroom. Like previous scholarship, this research finds writing center tutoring contributes to teachers' enactment of constructivist, student-centered pedagogy and enhances their understanding of students' relationship to writing and feedback, standard language ideology, and systemic inequities in education. However, evaluation led these instructors to experience tension between their values and preferred respondent roles, with many reporting anxious grading processes and some experimenting with alternatives to traditional grading. The article concludes with suggestions to build bridges between tutoring and teaching contexts, particularly through explicit attention to antiracist pedagogy and alternative assessment practices.

In response to COVID-19, post-secondary institutions went through a widespread transition to online and remote learning to address the immediate effects of disruption in the teaching and learning environment. This study aims to map the changes and challenges in the areas of responses to students' psychological needs, responses to students' academic needs, and responses to minoritized students' needs from institutional leaders', teaching faculties', and teaching assistants' perspectives via a qualitative approach. The results suggest that institutional leaders and instructors perceived a decrease in academic motivation and increase in social isolation among students during COVID-19 especially from minoritized backgrounds. Implications and guidance on future university policies and programs to help preserve educational quality of instruction and mitigate educational inequities are discussed. [Note: The page range (1-24) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range is 18-41.]

Educators of International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) have been overlooked, erroneously. As teacher educators, their work is exponentially important to North American universities. A multiple case study examined three ITA Educators' ideologies, involving data from two interviews -one being a stimulated recall using classroom observations fieldnotes, syllabi, assignments, and feedback left on students' work. Through qualitative content analysis, two incompatible ideologies were found being implemented in sections of one class: one orienting learners to undergraduate classrooms, and the other towards passing mandatory language testing. Cynicism was found to characterize two instructors' pedagogies. Findings highlight the ethical complexities of language teaching and assessment. ITA training programs must address foundational issues and examine how ITA Educators are supported. This novel study provides a baseline for future work on ITA Educators, and contributes to literature on language teachers' ideologies. Future work should elucidate how ITA Educators' identities and external ideologies impact ITAs' learning trajectories.

Learning Assistants (LAs) are undergraduates who work in active-learning classrooms with students facilitating discussions and encouraging deeper thinking, while also receiving pedagogical training. We describe how we built an LA program at a regional comprehensive university starting as a grassroots STEM initiative to recruit teachers, and expanding into a campus-wide multi-disciplinary program focusing on student success in a variety of general education courses. Additionally, in the 2020-2021 academic year, we conducted a formative assessment to further understand the program's impact. Our findings revealed strong alignment among students, faculty, and LAs regarding the LA's role in student learning. Qualitative themes from student surveys and faculty expectations resonated with LAs' weekly field note reflections. One surprising discovery was the consensus that LAs provided substantial support beyond the classroom. This suggests that LAs play a multifaceted role in enhancing student success, extending their influence beyond facilitating in-class discussions.

As part of a large exercise physiology laboratory (lab) reform project, we used blended learning to support graduate teaching assistants and lab technicians in developing their pedagogical knowledge and create an entry point to reflective conversations about teaching and learning. Because self-paced asynchronous online modules can enable reflective and self-determined learning, this asynchronous professional development course is punctuated with reflective questions for the instructional team preparing to teach reformed exercise physiology labs. Asynchronous course content was shared via short videos, podcasts, and readings. We debriefed this self-paced, SoTL-informed course together, in-person. This social debriefing kicked off our weekly synchronous reflective conversations about teaching and learning in a community of practice. Developing a shared language for talking about teaching, enabling student learning, practicing effective teaching, and beginning to contemplate teaching philosophies were described by graduate teaching assistants as notable aspects of this blended learning journey. Lab technicians described discovering SoTL and discussing learning challenges as helpful to their teaching. [Articles in this journal were presented at the University of Calgary Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching.]

The integration of education and robotics has emerged as a crucial development in the technological landscape. This study focuses on the use of a robot teaching assistant to enhance the learning efficiency of 8th-grade students in hands-on STEM activities centered around the theme of "Smart City." It explores the impact of educational robots on students' learning outcomes and their development of hands-on skills through diverse learning methods. Conducted over 12 weeks with 103 participants, the study employed a quasi-experimental design. Students were split into two groups: The Experimental Group (EG), using the 6E model with robot teaching assistants, and the Control Group (CG), using only the 6E model. The analysis of covariance revealed that the EG exhibited superior performance in STEM knowledge, motivation, and hands-on skills compared to the CG. Further analysis indicated that learning motivation significantly influenced hands-on performance in the EG, particularly in high-scoring subgroups. The findings suggest that combining the 6E model with educational robots effectively enhances STEM learning and student engagement. Educational robots as teaching assistants not only aid in knowledge acquisition but also significantly boost students' motivation and hands-on skill development. This implies a promising direction for integrating advanced technology in educational practices to foster more effective learning environments.

Small group interactions and interactions with near-peer instructors such as learning assistants serve as fertile opportunities for student learning in undergraduate active learning classrooms. To understand what students take away from these interactions, we need to understand how and what they learn during the moment of their interaction. This study builds on practical epistemology analysis to develop a framework to study this in-the-moment learning during interactions by operationalizing it through the lens of discourse change and continuity toward three ends. Using video recordings of students and learning assistants interacting in a variety of contexts including remote, in-person, and hybrid classrooms in introductory chemistry and physics at two universities, we developed an analytical framework that can characterize learning in the moment of interaction, is sensitive to different kinds of learning, and can be used to compare interactions. The framework and its theoretical underpinnings are described in detail. In-depth examples demonstrate how the framework can be applied to classroom data to identify and differentiate different ways in which in-the-moment learning occurs.

This descriptive study focuses on using voice activity detection (VAD) algorithms to extract student speech data in order to better understand the collaboration of small group work and the impact of teaching assistant (TA) interventions in undergraduate engineering discussion sections. Audio data were recorded from individual students wearing head-mounted noise-cancelling microphones. Video data of each student group were manually coded for collaborative behaviours (eg, group task relatedness, group verbal interaction and group talk content) of students and TA-student interactions. The analysis includes information about the turn taking, overall speech duration patterns and amounts of overlapping speech observed both when TAs were intervening with groups and when they were not. We found that TAs very rarely provided explicit support regarding collaboration. Key speech metrics, such as amount of turn overlap and maximum turn duration, revealed important information about the nature of student small group discussions and TA interventions. TA interactions during small group collaboration are complex and require nuanced treatments when considering the design of supportive tools.

Whether doctoral students are funded primarily by fellowships, research assistantships, or teaching assistantships impacts their degree completion, time to degree, learning outcomes, and short- and long-term career outcomes. Variations in funding patterns have been studied at the broad field level but not comparing engineering sub-disciplines. We addressed two research questions: How do PhD student funding mechanisms vary across engineering sub-disciplines? And how does variation in funding mechanisms across engineering sub-disciplines map onto the larger STEM disciplinary landscape? We analyzed 103,373 engineering and computing responses to the U.S. Survey of Earned Doctorates collected between 2007 and 2016. We conducted analysis of variance with Bonferroni post hoc comparisons to examine variation in funding across sub-disciplines. Then, we conducted a k-means cluster analysis on percentage variables for fellowship, research, and teaching assistantship funding mechanism with STEM sub-discipline as the unit of analysis. A statistically significantly greater percentage of biomedical/biological engineering doctoral students were funded via a fellowship, compared to every other engineering sub-discipline. Consequently, biomedical/biological engineering had significantly lower proportions of students supported via research and teaching assistantships than nearly all other engineering sub-disciplines. We identified five clusters. The majority of engineering sub-disciplines grouped together into a cluster with high research assistantships and low teaching assistantships. Biomedical/biological engineering clustered in the high fellowships grouping with most other biological sciences but no other engineering sub-disciplines. Biomedical/biological engineering behaves much more like biological and life sciences in utilizing fellowships to fund graduate students, far more than other engineering sub-disciplines. Our study provides further evidence of the prevalence of fellowships in life sciences and how it stretches into biomedical/biological engineering. The majority of engineering sub-disciplines relied more on research assistantships to fund graduate study. The lack of uniformity provides an opportunity to diversify student experiences during their graduate programs but also necessitates an awareness to the advantages and disadvantages that different funding portfolios can bestow on students.

Based on a complex dynamic system approach, this study examined the dynamic of interactions between adults (a teacher and teaching assistant) and two children with ASD. We observed two preschool classrooms, each containing one child with contrasting ASD characteristics. Child engagement and adult participation during welcome time activities were observed once a month for 9 months; dramatic differences in interaction dynamics between the two classes were revealed. In the class including an autistic child with high support needs and low language ability, the active participation of adults associated with active child engagement gradually increased over the year. In the class including an autistic child with a high level of challenging behaviours (but with low support needs and typical language skills), increased variability resulted in a deep change in the landscape of attractors. Whereas the child was mostly engaged with adult participation during the first trimester, he was actively engaged without adult participation in the final trimester.

International teaching experiences, even if short-termed, are great opportunities for student teachers to challenge their assumptions and scrutinise their beliefs, to discover different ways of approaching teaching and learning, and to better understand their own education system through a global education lens. They offer student teachers the context to develop their teaching competencies and serve as the milieu to crystallise their teacher identity and build a more global mental schema of teaching. This exploratory study examines how the National Institute of Education, Singapore, strived to broaden student teachers' perspective by providing them with the opportunity to do their teaching assistantship overseas. Specifically, the inquiry question of the study was to find out what student teachers learned during their international teaching assistantship. To answer the inquiry question, reflective journals of 13 student teachers who participated in 5-week international teaching assistantship in Denmark (n = 5), Sweden (n = 4) and the United States of America (US) (n = 4) were analysed. Thematic analysis was used to identify, analyse, and report themes that emerged from the qualitative data. The themes were coded as "connection to a wider world (sub-themes: culture awareness, alternative viewpoints, global education lens)", "observations of the school (sub-themes: class size and composition, learning assessment, technology integration)", "professional growth (sub-themes: teacher as facilitator, understanding class profile, classroom management practices)", and "personal growth (sub-themes: overcoming personal limitations, greater flexibility and willingness to change)". Despite the student teachers in Denmark and Sweden facing language barrier challenges, the results indicate that all the student teachers benefited immensely from the experience. They developed broader perspectives of societies and education, made important observations of the schools, and grew professionally and personally. They noted that although there were differences in the different education systems, there were similarities in the role of teacher as facilitator, as well as curriculum goals and pedagogical approaches. They had greater appreciation of their roles as teachers and the importance of knowing their students. They overcame personal limitations and became more flexible and open to changes. The article concludes with suggestions on how to improve such experiences to enhance the growth and cross-cultural competency of student teachers.

In higher education settings, instructors play a critical role in integrating Human-Centered Design (HCD) in existing and new courses. This study explores how instructors teach about and through HCD in higher education settings and what challenges they encounter as they do so. Participants were four faculty members and four graduate teaching assistants from four different courses. The participants were interviewed after their course ended for the semester. A phronetic iterative analysis approach was used to analyze the transcribed interview data. Findings indicated that when teaching about and through HCD, instructors intentionally and purposefully plan to integrate HCD, implement targeted instructional strategies to scaffold students' learning of disciplinary content and HCD concepts, provide multiple forms of assessment and feedback, and facilitate collaboration between students, peers, and classroom visitors for deeper engagement in learning. Nevertheless, teaching about and through HCD is challenging and requires further specific teaching competencies that can empower instructors to integrate HCD in their courses.

Theoretical models of job stress suggest that teachers' experience with burnout occurs, in part, because of an imbalance between job demands and the resources available to meet those demands. Using a diverse sample of 230 Head Start educators, the present study explored how school-based demands (i.e., class size, behavioral challenges) and resources (i.e., school social supports) contributed to teachers' self-reported burnout. Findings revealed that greater social support, specifically leads teachers' relationship with their assistant teacher (TA), was associated with lower ratings of burnout. There was also a significant interaction between classroom behavior problems and TA relationship quality, such that relationship quality reduced burnout in classrooms with low and average levels of behavior problems, but not in classrooms with high levels of behavior problems. Implications of these findings for preschool teacher well-being are discussed.

This study investigates how graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) differ from regular graduates in terms of input characteristics (i.e., who they are), process characteristics (i.e., how they experience the PhD trajectory), and the self-estimated likelihood of successfully completing the PhD. Additionally, it assesses to what extent and how the input and process characteristics explain the self-estimated success rate between the two groups. The data come from four waves of the PhD Survey (2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021; N = 1,766) conducted at a large university in Brussels (Belgium). Results show that GTAs estimated their likelihood of successful completion of their PhD lower compared to regular graduates. This difference is mediated by a lower satisfaction with the supervisor support and a higher amount of time pressure among GTAs. Additionally, GTAs' surplus of time spent on teaching duties and the lack of a research plan was negatively related to the self-estimated likelihood of successful completion to a greater extent than regular graduates.

Individualized learning support is an essential part of formal educational learning processes. However, in typical large-scale educational settings, resource constraints result in limited interaction among students, teaching assistants, and lecturers. Due to this, learning success in those settings may suffer. Inspired by current technological advances, we transfer the concept of chatbots to formal educational settings to support not only a single task but a full lecture period. Grounded on an expert workshop and prior research, we design a natural language-based digital tutor acting as an intermediary among students, teaching assistants, and lecturers. The aim of the digital tutor is to support learners automated during the lecture period in natural language-based chat conversations. We implement a digital tutor in an iterative design process and evaluate it extensively in a large-scale field setting. The results demonstrate the applicability and beneficial support of introducing digital tutors as intermediaries in formal education. Our study proposes the concept of using digital tutors as intermediaries and documents the development and underlying principles.

In this paper, we put in dialogue the local dimension of a nation-state with the global challenges faced by universities worldwide. We focus on the case of Denmark, a nation that was exceptionally active in implementing international university reforms and where digitalisation is a high priority of the public sector governance. The article seeks to contribute to speculative research and critical studies by presenting a mixed-methods study that explores higher education teachers' views about desirable and realistic future scenarios in Denmark. The study draws on data from a survey applied at a large Danish university, analysed both quantitatively (N = 755) and qualitatively (N = 53). The findings show that teachers share clusters of concern about uncontrolled digitalisation and teaching automation, commodification of education, and modularisation of university courses, the latter being a contested but realistic perspective in the latest political reforms. They reaffirm the mission of the university as preparing students for solving real problems and contributing to the challenges of the present time. The paper concludes with a call for university management to recalibrate future imaginaries to the values expressed by the teachers, and the university they wish to create.

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) influence undergraduate STEM students' learning and experience because they teach most lab sections across STEM disciplines. Despite GTAs' central role in lab teaching, their training is often focused on policies and expectations, rather than teaching effectively. In this study, we took a community of practice (CoP) approach to learning and facilitated a semester-long, pedagogy-focused CoP to address the lack of pedagogical development and support for GTAs. Our purpose was to collect, describe, and develop our understanding of the experiences of GTAs participating in our CoP while teaching reformed undergraduate exercise physiology labs. CoP members completed an asynchronous, SoTL-informed micro-course focused on evidence-informed teaching practices and active student learning support, which was then debriefed at the first CoP meeting. Each subsequent weekly meeting featured 30 minutes of CoP members reflecting on, discussing, and helping each other improve their teaching practices. At the end of the semester, we conducted semistructured interviews with GTAs to learn about their experiences in the CoP and teaching. We found reflecting on and talking about their teaching was a novel experience for GTAs. They also described implementing teaching practices that were new to them, exercising autonomy, developing confidence, approaching teaching philosophies, and their experiences with psychological safety. Our findings suggest facilitating weekly reflection on teaching in a CoP can provide GTAs with opportunities to develop their teaching practices in meaningful, practical, and (sometimes!) enjoyable ways.

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have emerged as a viable platform to engage large numbers of students in real-world scientific practices. Historically, CUREs have been offered throughout science, technology, engineering, and mathematics curricula at both the introductory and advanced levels and have been facilitated by a variety of individuals, including faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). This latter population, in particular, has increasingly been tasked with facilitating CUREs, yet they often receive little meaningful professional development to improve pedagogical skills vital to this type of instruction. To address this disparity, we designed and evaluated a semester-long intervention to support GTAs (N = 7) responsible for leading CUREs at our institution during the Fall 2020 semester. Intervention activities included synchronous interactive discussions, reflective journaling, and asynchronous practical exercises. Analysis of retrospective postintervention survey responses and focus group interview data revealed that participants exhibited gains in their understanding of the dimensions of CUREs, strategies for mentoring undergraduates, and use of various pedagogical techniques as well as confidence in addressing and adopting those dimensions and strategies in their courses. Furthermore, participants reported finding value in the sense of community created through the intervention, which served as a means to share ideas and struggles throughout the term.

The purpose of the present study was to examine: (1) the effects of audio-visual information; and (2) the role of temporal measurements associated with the perceptual ratings of fluency, accentedness, comprehensibility, pronunciation, and oral proficiency in second language (L2) speech samples of International Teaching Assistants (ITAs). American undergraduate students randomly assigned to audiovisual and audio-only (without seeing the speaker) conditions rated the two-minute speech samples of five ITAs on a seven-point scale. For acoustic analysis, several temporal measurements were used that were hypothesized to have an association with the ratings. Findings revealed that listeners without visual information judged L2 speech as less fluent and more accented although no significant difference in comprehensibility was found. L2 speakers were also judged to have better pronunciation and higher oral proficiency when the recordings were presented in video mode. The findings further indicated that among the acoustic measures examined, articulation rate was found to be associated with perceptual ratings. Implications for ITA training and language testing and assessment are discussed.

This study examines the perceptions of first-year, mathematics graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) participating in a six-week summer course designed to deepen their knowledge of collegiate mathematics teaching practices before being assigned to instruct undergraduate students in the subsequent fall semester. Through hybrid deductive-inductive thematic analysis, GTAs' written reflections were analyzed and matched against changes in their self-efficacy assessed along two conceptual dimensions: self-improvement and stimulation of student learning. Results suggest that GTAs' conceptualization of teaching practice informs changes in self-efficacy along both conceptual dimensions, with efficacy in self-improvement changing more than that of their ability to stimulate student learning. Therefore, the strength of the efficacy changes may be moderated by features of the professional development course. We explore defining features of the professional development course employed in this study, describing implications for the education and development of novice collegiate mathematics instructors, and the potential to optimize change along both conceptual dimensions of self-efficacy.

In 2000, Sharpe proposed a framework for graduate teaching assistant (GTA) training based on three key principles: departmental training, faculty training, and accreditation. Sharpe's paper culminated in a call for Higher Education (HE) institutes to adopt this framework. Whilst the principles of Sharpe's work remain relevant, the shape and structure of HE and accrediting bodies has changed due to the increasingly competitive market environment. Herein we provide an updated framework for GTA training based around implementation at a large English Russell Group University. We identify seven key elements for effective GTA training based on literature. We then demonstrate how this framework and the key elements can be implemented in practice, using GTA role descriptors and input from staff in Departments and Faculty. We demonstrate how the framework is applicable on a broad subject basis and how training is now supporting the 950 GTAs annually who work across the nine Schools within the Faculty of Science and Engineering, at the University of Manchester. The developed modular training sessions are mapped out and are benchmarked against both the Vitae Researcher Development Framework and the UK Professional Standards Framework allowing postgraduate students to apply for HEA accreditation through Advance HE (after suitable practice). Finally, the report discusses the benefits of implementation as well as lessons for future action, providing a set of key principles for others who want to develop their existing GTA training provision or set up a new training programme.

This concurrent triangulation mixed method design study describes the influence of a science education seminar (SES) on the learning assistants' (LAs) perceptions of their roles in the classroom. The SES was developed to train undergraduate students as LAs at a Southern liberal arts college in the USA. The focus of the seminar was teaching the LAs how to guide students through the learning process. Using the LAs perception survey, a pre and post-survey was administered to a conveniently sampled nine LAs to observe changes in their perceptions of their role. An interview was given to eleven LAs at the end of the seminar to investigate their perception of the seminar and any changes that had occurred in their perceptions of their role as LAs. A test of the significance of the quantitative data was done using the Kruskal-Wallis Chi-square and the qualitative data were analyzed using Atlas software. The pre- and post-survey results indicated that the LAs' perceptions about their roles changed during the semester. During an interview conducted at the end of the seminar, LAs indicated that their views on how to approach students' problems had changed mainly due to the seminar. The interview also showed that the LAs felt that the seminar was valuable because it changed the way they viewed themselves in their role. Results from this study inform colleges of the importance of training LAs.

This paper extends the use of Generalizability Theory to the measurement of extemporaneous L2 speech through the lens of speech perception. Using six datasets of previous studies, it reports on "G studies"--a method of breaking down measurement variance--and "D studies"--a predictive study of the impact on reliability when modifying the number of raters, items, or other facets that assist the field in adopting measurement designs that include comprehensibility, accentedness, and intelligibility. When data from a single audio sample per learner were subjected to D-studies, we find that both semantic differential and rubric scales for comprehensibility were reliable at the 0.90 level with about 15 trained raters or 50 untrained crowdsourced raters. In order to offer generalizable and dependable evaluations, empirically informed recommendations are given, including considerations for the number of speech samples rated, or the granularity of the scales for various assessment and research purposes.

Despite their centrality to undergraduate teaching in U.S. universities, few studies focus on ITA's and their experiences within ITA training classes. Through a multiple case study of two In-Service ITA's (China, Taiwan) investments (Darvin & Norton, 2015) in one such class, it became clear how idiosyncratic are perception of these courses: one ITA's profound negativity involved accusations of institutional racism, yet another flourished through the class. Data included journaling, interviews/ stimulated recalls, course assignments, and classrooms (ESL and departmental) observations. Findings, presented as narrative then as conceptual configurations of investments, explained their experiences bifurcated due to their disparate teaching experiences and to policies decisions made within one's home departments. This study expands the scope of ITA and investment research by connecting macro and micro-level aspects. Pedagogical implications are to center pedagogy on learners' investments, utilizing reflexive activities to prevent misaligning the course with learners' identities, ideologies and desired capital.

In 2003, the Texas State Legislature enacted the Texas Success Initiative (TSI). Upon entering a postsecondary institution, non-exempt students are tested using the TSI Assessment. A student's scores are used to assist Texas public institutions of higher education in determining if students are prepared for introductory college coursework in the areas of English Language Arts and Reading (ELAR) and mathematics. At many Texas universities, including Texas State University (TXST), students are placed in either a stand-alone for-credit college mathematics class or in a college corequisite sequence based on their Texas Success Initiative Assessment (TSIA) to be deemed college-ready. Since 2017, an increasing influx of students has led to both new lecturers and additional graduate students being assigned to teach these classes. This "Promising Practice" article describes the implementation of a Japanese lesson study model by three doctoral teaching assistants at TXST with the dual goals of improving their own teaching practices and creating more engaging and relevant lessons for a non-STEM mathematics corequisite class.

The role of graduate students in undergraduate students' learning experiences is often overlooked despite the fact graduate students are usually the ones that work most closely with undergraduates in courses. As the world shifted to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, instructors had to quickly learn to teach via online platforms. This study focuses on the perspectives of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) as they adapted their pedagogy to meet the demands of remote instruction. Utilizing critical reflections through an enhanced feedback loop model, we found that the success of strategies to promote student engagement with content and other class members were dependent upon our response to students' psychosocial states such as Zoom fatigue and stress, and the effective integration of students' feedback to our teaching strategies. Based on the findings, we present implications for teaching assistant training.

This paper reports the results of a narrative inquiry study on exchange programs, intercultural awareness, and professional development in eight former participants of the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant--FLTA--program. This study used written narratives to collect data from eight participants of the FLTA scholarship program who belonged to the cohort 2017-2018. The results of this study showed that after being a FLTA, participants improved their English language skills; they became more aware of their teaching practices by implementing and adapting different teaching methodologies, they experienced cross-cultural interaction, and understood better cultural differences which really fostered their personal and professional development as English language teachers in their home countries.

The purpose of this design case was to document rigorously the process and decisions made during the development of a five-day, pre-semester virtual orientation for International Graduation Teaching Assistants (IGTAs) and their domestic counterparts, teaching in an English as a Second Language Composition (ESLC) Program of a large land-grant university. The design was grounded in a front-end analysis as well as a theoretical framework comprising Crenshaw's (1989) Intersectionality and Wenger's (1998) Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) theory. These theories were leveraged to focus the design on IGTAs' educator identity development and their linguistic and cultural marginalization. VCoP theory provided a practical architecture for the virtual learning environment with its three modes of belonging (i.e., "engagement," "imagination," and "alignment") as well as several enabling structures (i.e., "support," "sponsorship," and "recognition"). The design intended to purposefully engage IGTAs in social practices and dialogue that would support their sense of belonging and educator identity. While significance can be extracted from the pre-planned, explicit alignment of certain design elements with the modes of belonging, precedent can also be derived from elements that emerged during the design process.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began to affect in-person schooling, teachers around the world expressed a balance of optimism for new possibilities in instruction along with trepidation at the challenges which lay ahead. Shortly after March 2020 and into the 2021 school year, even 2022 for some, remote instruction became the norm for many educators. As the pandemic persisted, the optimism teachers first exhibited began to wane considerably as several challenges to student access arose. These issues (e.g., Internet connectivity, crowded living spaces becoming workspaces, children and adults simultaneously working at home, etc.) pose significant threats to equity in education, and they ironically become troublesome in courses whose objectives include analyzing and discussing inequity in education. This article presents a modified retelling of an end-of-course discussion between a graduate student and his adviser after they spent a semester co-teaching in a remote setting. The dialogue includes positive moments of instruction as well as recognized challenges to equity. The article concludes with suggestions for further research on synchronous remote instruction.

The initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic changed the nature of course delivery from largely in-person to exclusively remote, thus disrupting the well-established pedagogy of the Genomics Education Partnership (GEP; https://www.thegep.org). However, our web-based research adapted well to the remote learning environment. As usual, students who engaged in the GEP's Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) received digital projects based on genetic information within assembled "Drosophila" genomes. Adaptations for remote implementation included moving new member faculty training and peer Teaching Assistant office hours from in-person to online. Surprisingly, our faculty membership significantly increased and, hence, the number of supported students. Furthermore, despite the mostly virtual instruction of the 2020--2021 academic year, there was no significant decline in student learning nor attitudes. Based on successfully expanding the GEP CURE within a virtual learning environment, we provide four strategic lessons we infer toward democratizing science education. First, it appears that increasing access to scientific research and professional development opportunities by supporting virtual, cost-free attendance at national conferences attracts more faculty members to educational initiatives. Second, we observed that transitioning new member training to an online platform removed geographical barriers, reducing time and travel demands, and increased access for diverse faculty to join. Third, developing a Virtual Teaching Assistant program increased the availability of peer support, thereby improving the opportunities for student success. Finally, increasing access to web-based technology is critical for providing equitable opportunities for marginalized students to fully participate in research courses. Online CUREs have great potential for democratizing science education.

A comprehensive graduate teaching assistant (GTA) training program in mathematical sciences designed at one institution is being adapted and replicated at two peer institutions. Using a case study approach, this paper outlines the development of the program components, which include a first-year teaching seminar, peer mentoring and support from a peer TA Coach, a Critical Issues in STEM Education seminar, and K-12 outreach to inform understanding of the pipeline. Additionally, adaptations due to institutional context and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are described. Implications for components of the comprehensive program, based on GTA-provided feedback, are discussed.

Pedagogical training of mathematics graduate students is often disconnected from the actual experience of teaching. Even with the support offered by standard instructor training models, mathematics graduate students find it hard to connect with students, mature pedagogically and contribute meaningfully, especially under the overwhelming conditions of teaching for the first time. In this paper, we discuss features of instructor training that support mathematics graduate students' pedagogical development. Using self-reported experiences of mathematics graduate students who taught in a team teaching model, we single out three features of the model and advocate integrating these features into existing instructor training.

To aid departments in growing and supporting the potential of novice instructors, this paper shares a peer-mentoring program that has been implemented at three universities over the last five years for graduate student instructors (GSIs, master, and doctoral) within mathematics departments. This paper provides frameworks, curricular topics, necessary conditions, methods of implementation, successes, and anticipated challenges from five years of research to help establish and sustain a peer-mentoring program for GSIs. Positive outcomes from this peer-mentoring program included improving support for Novices (resulting in anticipating teaching concerns), lowering the rate at which students received a D, F, or withdrew (DFW), having fewer complaints and concerns, and sustaining stewardship.

We present a multiple case study wherein one institution established new communities of practice supporting graduate student instructors teaching coordinated courses in the presence of minimal existing resources and funding. This was accomplished by partnering with and adapting resources from another institution; one with a well-established community-driven curriculum structure. In particular, we detail a potential model for similarly seeding a new community of practice by describing amounts of time and attention for adapting curriculum materials. We also detail how a professional learning community approach can be leveraged to build curriculum structures that can sustain an equitable community among instructors.

Providing quality education for all pupils requires cooperation from members of the entire school community. One group of professionals is school assistants, who, together with teachers, play an important role in supporting pupils and inclusive education. Due to pupils' diverse needs, the responsibilities of school assistants in schools have broadened; yet, their role in the school community has rarely been studied. This study focuses on school assistants' experiences and addresses the following research question: How is belonging argumented in school assistants' narratives at their work? The data comprise free writings (N = 52) and interviews (N = 9) of school assistants' work. The narratives are analysed using categorical-content analysis. The results yield three experiences of belonging: stories of belonging, stories between belonging and non-belonging and stories of non-belonging. The study data reveal how a school as an institution can be based on conventional practices, where relationships are often formed through hierarchies, old-fashioned work roles and exclusive meeting policies. The study's conclusion encourages the recognition of structural inequalities in school communities.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Biology Teaching Assistants (TAs) were tasked with transitioning and adapting their instruction to an online environment by quickly implementing Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) practices. Effective online and in-person teaching requires student-centered approaches to support undergraduate student learning. Using interviews and the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI), a case study was conducted to explore the impact on TAs approaches to teaching during the transition to an online emergency remote environment, and to identify areas where TAs need further support through Teaching Professional Development (TPD). The findings revealed themes regarding challenges in the ERT context, such as decreased active learning opportunities, decreased office hours attendance, decreased student engagement, and more time spent on teaching tasks. Our work provides educational researchers and practitioners with key aspects that can improve TPD for online teaching and learning.

Background: The learning assistant (LA) model supports student success in undergraduate science courses; however, variation in outcomes has led to a call for more work investigating how the LA model is implemented. In this research, we used cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to characterize how three different instructors set up LA-facilitated classrooms and how LAs' understanding and development of their practices was shaped by the classroom activity. CHAT is a sociocultural framework that provides a structured approach to studying complex activity systems directed toward specific objects. It conceptualizes change within these systems as expansive learning, in which experiencing a contradiction leads to internalization and critical self-reflection, and then externalization and a search for solutions and change. Results: Through analyzing two semi-structured retrospective interviews from three professors and eleven LAs, we found that how the LA model was implemented differed based on STEM instructors' pedagogical practices and goals. Each instructor leveraged LA-facilitated interactions to further learning and tasked LAs with emotionally supporting students to grapple with content and confusions in a safe environment; however, all three had different rules and divisions of labor that were influenced by their perspectives on learning and their objects for the class. For LAs, we found that they had multiple, sometimes conflicting, motives that can be described as either practical, what they described as their day-to-day job, or sense-making, how they made sense of the reason for their work. How these motives were integrated/separated or aligned/misaligned with the collective course object influenced LAs' learning in practice through either a mechanism of consonance or contradiction. We found that each LA developed unique practices that reciprocally shaped and were shaped by the activity system in which they worked. Conclusions: This study helps bridge the bodies of research that focus on outcomes from the LA model and LA learning and development by describing how LA learning mechanisms are shaped by their context. We also show that variation in the LA model can be described both by classroom objects and by LAs' development in dialogue with those objects. This work can be used to start to develop a deeper understanding of how students, instructors, and LAs experience the LA model.

We redesigned our undergraduate laboratories to create a structured sequence that continuously improves the learning experience of students. We utilized a PBL and PjBL approach in which students are progressively introduced to ill-structured open-ended problems, the development of projects, and the creation of research products. We dynamically evaluate course content using a continuous improvement framework to ensure the laboratories promote the development of skills required by the work environment and effectively serve all program stakeholders.

Purpose: Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) often play a vital role in the delivery of university programs, yet GTAs may lack pedagogical experience. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of GTAs during their first semester of university teaching. Specifically, we provide a descriptive account of the GTAs' lived experiences and how departments can best prepare GTAs. Method: Four first-year GTAs at a university in the United States participated in the study. Data collection included participant journals, focus group interviews, and individual interviews. Results: Utilizing situated learning theory as a theoretical frame, data sources generated four themes. GTAs reported positive experiences as ample support was provided, expectations were outlined, experiential learning occurred, and confidence increased through the establishment of routines. Discussion/ Conclusion: Findings indicated that GTAs can acclimate to their new universities and responsibilities with guidance, resources, and support.

If extraneous information leads listeners to biased judgements, then their speech perceptions are likely to manifest distortion in that direction. This phenomenon is known as reverse linguistic stereotyping (RLS), which has been confirmed by 25 years of empirical study. Recent research on effects of listener background on ratings of speaker pronunciation and social judgments are likewise consistent with the concept of reverse linguistic stereotyping. In particular, one way of operationalising listener aberration is measuring a function of listener backgrounds and proclivity toward RLS along with a dimension of speaker social attractiveness, superiority, and dynamism. The current study examined to what extent listeners' background characteristics and RLS propensity factors affect their social judgements of second language (L2) accented speech. The background factors included learners' accent exposure, study abroad experience, the degree of foreign language study experience, and three RLS dimensions. Results suggest that listeners who hold negatively stereotyped expectations about LX accents tend to find accented speech less superior and less socially attractive. Findings offer implications to language education and various workforce-related communication in global contexts.

This study reports on a four-year project to embed academic literacy within one core course of a Bachelor of Education program. It involves an interdisciplinary collaboration between learning advisors, as literacy specialists, and lecturers, as subject specialists. It examines their roles and responsibilities and lecturers' perspectives when handing over the teaching of academic literacy to them. Data encompasses interviews with lecturers, meeting notes, and cohort statistics about assessment grades. Discourse analysis with theory from Systemic Functional Linguistics identifies the shifting contributions of the collaborators and how lecturers evaluate their experiences. Findings suggest that handover is smooth when it is done gradually and involves intensive prior collaboration. However, the contrasting views of the lecturers raise questions about what is optimal for students. Although limited, data indicates that reductions in resubmission rates and students achieving in the minimal passing range co-occur with the addition of mini videos about reading and writing critically.

International teaching assistants (ITAs) often encounter challenges, and with the popularization of English medium instruction (EMI) in international higher education contexts, these problems are no longer restricted to English-speaking countries. Against this backdrop and drawing on the concept of identity paradox, the author presents an autoethnography of the identity construction of an ITA in Macau. Influenced by factors at four levels (individual, interpersonal, organizational, and societal), this autoethnographic narrative suggests that ITA identity construction can be a journey of continual reconciliation of various paradoxical identity categories as captured by three pairs of identity paradoxes: "mute English user" vs. "advanced English learner," "mechanical teacher" vs. "divergent thinker," and "struggling fighter" vs. "ambitious planner." Based on the findings, a theory-informed discussion and implications for ITA training are included.

The body of work regarding gender bias in academia shows that female instructors are often rated lower by students than their male counterparts. Mechanisms are complex and intersectional and often associated with role congruity theory. Little research has examined parallel patterns in graduate teaching assistant (TA) evaluations. In research institutions, TAs make up a large portion of teaching teams. Identifying bias and working to remove it is critical to shifting the already-well-documented gender imbalance in higher education. To evaluate gender-associated perceptions of graduate TAs' teaching skills, we analyzed Likert-scale, mid-semester survey data using ordinal logistic regression models for PhD TAs in five (pre-COVID) semesters in the College of Engineering at Cornell University, a large R1 institution in the United States. We also regressed scores for each survey question against the overall TA quality rating for male- and female-identifying TAs to compare the strength of those relationships and explore potential differences in student expectations associated with gender roles. A subset of narrative comment data were coded into themes, analyzed, and triangulated with other observed patterns. Male TAs had a higher likelihood of receiving a better rating than female TAs for all survey questions in which students rated performance. Statistical evidence of different slopes of relationships between particular questions and overall TA quality rating suggested that female and male TAs were "valued" more for behaviors/attributes congruent with roles ascribed to that gender in broader society. Female TAs received a higher proportion of positive comments for communication skills and more comments regarding supportiveness than male TAs. Males received more comments about their overall value as TAs, however all comments regarding overall quality as TAs were positive regardless of gender. The amount and proportion of comments that were positive or negative for knowledge, enthusiasm, preparedness or fairness were the same for male and female TAs. Gender-based disparity is occurring in TA evaluations and aligns with patterns observed in research on teaching evaluations for faculty. Correlation between overall TA ratings and scores for specific survey questions and narrative responses indicate that role congruity influences traits that students perceive as important and positive in TAs of different genders.

Although the number of resource provision (RP) classrooms for the education of students with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) in English mainstream schools has increased, very little is known about their functioning and impact. Through collaborative research, based on critical communicative methodology, this study aims to: (1) evaluate with the participants the effective practices and challenges in educating students with SEND in RP and mainstream classrooms, and (2) discuss the position of RP within the inclusion and exclusion debate. Reflective conversations, communicative focus groups and communicative observations were conducted with teachers, teaching assistants, mothers and students in three schools. Two different models were identified in the conceptualisation and practice of RP; either as a service to promote the education and inclusion of students with SEND in mainstream classroom/school, or as a space for specialised provision with opportunities for inclusion. These models reflect two different approaches in the education of these students, the rights- and the needs-based approach respectively. We argue that RP as inclusive service should be prioritised. However, flexibility in its conceptualisation and functioning, either as inclusive service or safe space, can positively contribute towards a realistic approach to inclusion combining human rights and individual diversity perspectives.