A case study of environmental factors influencing teaching assistant job satisfaction

Patitsas, Elizabeth

doi:10.1145/2361276.2361280

Cited by 18 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Subsequently, recent studies have examined the behaviors of TAs, reporting for example on who initiates TA-student interactions [12] and the variations in the types, frequencies, and lengths of TA-student interactions that occur [13][14][15]. Despite this focus on the actions of TAs and instructors, the literature has not yet made connections between these behaviors and the student learning process and outcomes.…”

Section: B Literature Review and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactions between teaching assistants and students boost engagement in physics labs

Stang

Roll

2014

Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res.

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Through in-class observations of teaching assistants (TAs) and students in the lab sections of a large introductory physics course, we study which TA behaviors can be used to predict student engagement and, in turn, how this engagement relates to learning. For the TAs, we record data to determine how they adhere to and deliver the lesson plan and how they interact with students during the lab. For the students, we use observations to record the level of student engagement and pretests and post-tests of lab skills to measure learning. We find that the frequency of TA-student interactions, especially those initiated by the TAs, is a positive and significant predictor of student engagement. Interestingly, the length of interactions is not significantly correlated with student engagement. In addition, we find that student engagement was a better predictor of post-test performance than pretest scores. These results shed light on the manner in which students learn how to conduct inquiry and suggest that, by proactively engaging students, TAs may have a positive effect on student engagement, and therefore learning, in the lab.

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Section: B Literature Review and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactions between teaching assistants and students boost engagement in physics labs

Stang

Roll

2014

Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res.

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“…We then added these questions: We performed 8 hours of observational study of TAs in their labs, observing how pairs worked together (described in [20]). After these observations, we went back to the interview scripts, and re-coded participants' answers about how they work with their partners and their experiences with their partners.…”

Section: Additional Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

A case study of the development of CS teaching assistants and their experiences with team teaching

Patitsas

2013

Proceedings of the 13th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

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Teaching assistants play a vital role in lab-based teaching at large institutions, with a large impact on students' success in CS1. How do TAs develop as teachers? We extended existing models of teacher development for our context of teaching CS labs in pairs. We found practice, teaching multiple courses, mentoring, effective staff meetings, team teaching, and feedback all contributed to TAs' development. Team teaching was a positive experience for our TAs, and allowed them to learn from each other. While teaching labs, TAs learnt mostly from partners who had more course-specific experience, rather than general teaching experience.

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“…From a reliability point of view, it is an issue if the TAs construct their own criteria, especially since the interview results show our TAs work independently, as was also found in [29,30]. It has previously been shown that the reliability of the assessments was higher when the TAs carried out the assessment together [15] and that social aspects, such as collaborating with other TAs, affect job satisfaction [24]. Our TAs did state that they asked for help if they were unsure about an assessment (S5), but to also facilitate discussion before the assessments, could address any ambiguous phrasing in the instructions or criteria given, as also suggested regarding the use of grading rubrics in [27].…”

Section: Rq2 -What Materials and Instructions Are Needed?mentioning

confidence: 79%

“…TAs' development has also been studied, and formal mentorships have been suggested as training [25]. Social aspects have also been found to impact the job satisfaction of TAs in a computer lab setting [24]. To recruit students with sufficient knowledge and competency to be TAs is, of course, desirable and a suggestion on a rubric to do so has been presented in [18].…”

Section: Related Research and Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This approach has been used for TAs who also had teaching experience and as part of a more extensive TA training course [35]. To allow the TAs to work collaboratively has not only shown beneficial to job satisfaction [24] but also from a reliability aspect, where assessments conducted by TAs in a group setting were compared to assessments that were done individually [15].…”

Section: Related Research and Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Training Teaching Assistants in Assessment of Lab Assignments in Computer Science at a Swedish University

Riese

Kann

2022

NJSTEME

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Teaching assistants (TAs), students who assist the faculty, are widely used in computer science (CS) courses. Previous studies have, however, shown that TAs could be poorly prepared and need training. Particularly, an interview study has shown that one of the areas where the TAs experience uncertainty is when assessing students’ oral presentations of their lab assignments. Based on that result and by interviewing course coordinators, we have developed and offered training workshops about assessment in CS. We invited our TAs in the introductory CS courses to participate on a voluntary basis. By distributing pre-workshop surveys at the beginning of each semester, and post-workshop surveys at the end of the semesters, to both workshop attendees (50) and non-attendees (44), we studied how the TAs conducted the assessments and what impact the training workshop had on their self-reported practice. Both surveys had 11 identical statements that the TAs were asked to rate on a 7-point Likert scale. We also conducted interviews with four workshop attendees and three non-attendees. The results showed a significant difference between the two groups in the post-workshop survey: workshop attendees disagreed more with the statement “I try to assess students' understanding rather than the program”, which is more in line with the instructions given. In addition, when comparing pre- and post-workshop answers, the workshop attendees stated that they were less inclined to ask for help, experienced that the lab instructions were not detailed enough, and were more inclined to ask questions that convinced them that the students had written the program themselves. In the control group, no significant differences between pre- and post-tests were found.

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A case study of environmental factors influencing teaching assistant job satisfaction

Cited by 18 publications

References 17 publications

Interactions between teaching assistants and students boost engagement in physics labs

Interactions between teaching assistants and students boost engagement in physics labs

A case study of the development of CS teaching assistants and their experiences with team teaching

Training Teaching Assistants in Assessment of Lab Assignments in Computer Science at a Swedish University

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