Teaching Assistants' (TAs) Personal Epistemologies and Their Instructional Practices in U.S. Universities: A Mixed Methods Investigation of International TAs and U.S. TAs

Abstract

Current teacher education research calls for investigation of the "missing paradigm," the connection between teachers' conceptions of knowledge and learning and their instructional practices. This call has been heeded in the scholarship on personal epistemology that reveals the role of knowledge in learning and instruction within and across various socio-cultural contexts. This study extends the work on the relationship between teachers' personal epistemologies and instructional practices to a previously unexamined population: international and U.S. Teaching Assistants (TAs). Employing a two-phase explanatory mixed methods approach, this study examines the relationship between personal epistemologies and instructional practices of two teaching assistant (TA) groups, international and U.S.-born, in U.S. university contexts. In the first phase of the study, an epistemological beliefs survey was conducted with two groups of TAs, 106 international and 50 U.S.-born, at four large research universities in the Mid-Atlantic States. Their answers were analyzed with a focus on the relationship between group variables and seven dimensions of personal epistemologies. Building on the initial quantitative study results, in the second phase, a qualitative case study was carried out to investigate the relationship between epistemic positions and teaching practices for four TAs representing international and domestic TA groups within two academic disciplines at a public research university in Philadelphia, PA. Forty four undergraduate student data from focus-group interviews and surveys also were collected to examine the relationship between TAs' instructional practices and student opinions about their teaching. The quantitative results showed a significant group difference in the knowledge beliefs domain and the relational views domain (p < .001). In general, ITAs held a higher degree in their beliefs about certainty of knowledge than did US TAs. In addition, US TAs assumed a closer relationship with their students than did the ITAs, while unlike common assumptions, US TAs assumed a higher degree of status differentiation from students than did ITAs. The findings of the qualitative phase of the study revealed that the relationship between TAs' epistemic positions and instructional practices was not fully consistent. In the case of the US TAs, much of the inconsistency of the relationship is explained by the lack of pedagogical knowledge and pedagogic skills, which would enable them to exercise control over the types of instructional approaches that they wanted to implement at a discourse level in class. ITAs' instructional practices were more closely aligned with learning strategies that they had developed through educational experiences in their home countries and with their generalized assumptions about attitudes of U.S. students toward learning. The results also show that ITAs are as qualified and competent instructors in teaching of undergraduate students as US TAs are, and that ITAs' teacher-centered approaches are well received by the students who expect explanation, guidance, direction, and reinforcement on the part of their instructors. In addition, the analysis of TAs' epistemic positions revealed domain specificity as well as group differences to be major compounding factors affecting TAs' professed epistemologies. Pedagogic as well as theoretical implications of the study are discussed.