Graduate students are often funded as teaching assistants (TAs) in undergraduate courses. While TAs’ responsibilities vary widely, many are asked to deliver content and act as primary instructors for courses. While TAs often know the content required for the courses they teach, they may lack pedagogical knowledge (PK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). TA training programs may help TAs’ develop a sense of self-efficacy for the use of PK and PCK, which can improve teaching. Many universities provide TA training through pre-semester teaching assistant orientation (TAO) programs that prepare TAs for their roles as classroom instructors. This investigation sought to evaluate the effectiveness of a TAO coordinated at a large, research-intensive university in developing TAs’ feelings of self-efficacy related to PK.
Method:
Participants included 307 TAs who were teaching for the first time at the university and participated in a day long pre-semester TAO program. One hundred and forty-seven (47.72%) of the TAs reported that they were domestic students and the remaining 160 (52.11%) were international students. All participants completed a pre- and post-TAO evaluation which asked them to rate their perceived capacity to accomplish 20 PK objectives that were addressed in the TAO sessions (e.g., identify strategies for minimizing disruptive classroom behavior). An additional question on the post analysis asked TAs to rate the overall impact of the TAO on their self-efficacy to teach.
Analysis/Results:
Data were analyzed using t-tests to evaluate changes in perceived self-efficacy relative to specific session objectives, 2x2 Mixed ANOVA to evaluate group differences, and path analysis using hierarchal linear regression to examine the impact of the TAO on participants’ overall self-efficacy to teach. Results indicated that the TAO significantly increased the TAs’ feelings of self-efficacy relative to PK objectives (df=306, p<0.001 for all tests). A 2x2 Mixed ANOVA indicated that domestics students reaped greater benefits than their international counterparts, F(1, 305)=6.41, p<0.05. Path analysis demonstrated that the relationship of pre-TAO self-efficacy to implement specified PK objectives to overall self-efficacy to teach was fully mediated by post-TAO PK self-efficacy evaluations.
Conclusions:
Results of this study support the notion that pre-semester TAO programming can be effective in increasing TAs’ self-efficacy for their teaching roles. While the study’s significance is qualified by the self-report nature of the research design, the evidence provides compelling support for the preparation of TAs. Future researchers should strive to gather more objective data to confirm the findings identified by this study.