The Educational Cultures of International Teaching Assistants and U.S. Universities

Abstract

U.S. higher education has employed an increasing number of international teaching assistants (ITAs) to teach undergraduate courses. This increase has been matched by concerns about ITAs' English abilities and their acculturation to U.S. universities and classrooms. Some stakeholders, notably English as a Second Language specialists, posit that ITAs need instruction and assessment on language and teaching skills, and "culture." This paper addresses what constitutes culture in university teaching settings worldwide and how this may be operationalized as an ITA need. As a counterpoint, the paper also presents results of an empirical study investigating ITAs' educational attitudes towards teacher and student roles, modes of information presentation, and significant mores of higher education, as mediated by gender, previous home-and U.S.-based teaching experience, and previous U.S. study experience. The results suggest a need for refocusing conceptions of ITAs away from simplistic stereotypes centered on their nationality, and towards their status as new teachers who have been shaped by their experiences as individuals and learners in unique and varied educational cultures, who are poised to become acculturated to yet another educational culture. This information may be used to motivate future empirical research into educational cultures as they apply to new teachers in international contexts, and to shape curricula for ITA education programs sponsored by both ESL specialists and discipline- and department-specific specialists at U.S. universities.

Introduction

For a variety of reasons, U.S. higher education has employed an increasing number of international teaching assistants (ITAs) to teach undergraduate courses in science, engineering, and humanities departments (Ford, Gappa, Wenddorff, & Wright, 1991; Smith, Byrd, Nelson, Barrett, & Constantinides, 1992). At the university where this study took place, the number of ITAs increased from 126 in 1990 to 224 in 2002 (Department of Institutional Research, 2003). For the past three decades, the increasing involvement of ITAs in undergraduate teaching has been matched by concerns about ITAs' English ability and their acculturation to U.S. universities and classrooms. Responses to these concerns have included states legislating English proficiency requirements (Hoekje & Linnell, 1994; Thomas & Monoson, 1991), professional organizations holding conferences and forming ITA education interest groups (Smith et al., 1992) and universities forming evaluation and training programs for ITAs (Bailey, 1984; see also Ford et al., 1991; Hinofotis, Bailey, & Stern, 1981; Shaw, 1994; Smith, 1994; and Smith et al., 1992).

ITA evaluation and training programs at universities vary widely in terms of institutional responsibility, intensity, timing, and content. Some programs are administered by academic departments in conjunction with training for native English speaking TAs (e.g., Wulff, Nyquist, & Abbott, 1991), while others employ English as Second Language (ESL) specialists (Smith, 1994). ITAs at most universities probably participate in overlapping programs, as they do at Texas Tech University, where ESL specialists, administrators, communication specialists, and faculty within departments all share responsibility for the ultimate success of ITAs. ESL specialists in particular have risen to the challenge of ITA evaluation and education through the discussion and application of powerful theoretical models of curriculum development (e.g., English for Specific Purposes, see Smith, 1994), and language use (e.g., communicative competence, see Hoekje & Williams, 1994). One ESL specialist comments that ITA education has reached a point at which basic curricular challenges have been met, and that specialists now need to explore other relevant areas which have the potential to transform existing curricula, including exploration of ITA attitudes and beliefs (Smith, 1994, p. 54). This study focuses on ITA attitudes related to educational cultures. [-1-]

ESL specialists suggest that there are three basic areas in which ITAs need evaluation and instruction: language skills, teaching skills, and culture (Civikly & Muchisky, 1991; Constantinides, 1987; Ford, Gappa, Wendorff, & Wright, 1991; Hoekje & Williams, 1994; Myers, 1994; Sequeira & Costantino, 1989; Schneider & Stevens, 1987; Smith, 1994). This article focuses on culture, specifically, the educational cultures of a specific group of ITAs and faculty informants at a Texas university. A questionnaire was designed to capture ITAs' attitudes about teaching and classroom communication practices, teachers' and students' roles, and significant mores of an institutional, educational culture at the university. Results from 62 ITAs will be reported, and the implications will be discussed both from the point of view of local needs assessment and that of acculturation of new teachers to educational cultures. This information may be used to motivate future empirical research into educational cultures as they apply to new teachers in international contexts, and to shape curricula for ITA programs sponsored by ESL specialists and discipline- and department-specific specialists (Wulff, Nyquist, & Abbott, 1991).

Rationales for developing the questionnaire. The questionnaire in this study was developed:

1. As a means of gathering information for needs assessment;
2. As a way to clarify nationally discussed conceptions of "culture" among ESL specialists in ITA education;
3. As a means of addressing a lack of empirical research on educational cultures in ITA education; and
4. As a means of refocusing conceptions of ITAs away from simplistic stereotypes centered on their nationality, and towards their status as new teachers who have been shaped by their experiences as individuals and learners in unique and varied educational cultures, and who are becoming acculturated to yet another educational culture.

This fourth point implies a concomitant focus on U.S. university educational cultures: What can ITA educators do to learn about the educational attitudes of significant players (faculty members) in the educational culture of the institutions in which they work?

Local needs assessment. Asking students to respond to a questionnaire is one means of gathering information for needs assessment (Brown, 1995; Graves, 2000; Richards, 2001; Woodward, 2001). ITA education programs are constrained by available time and resources (Gorsuch, Stevens, & Brouillette, 2003), and ITA educators need to refine nationally published understandings of perceived needs in terms of a local context. This is particularly necessary in that "culture" is broadly applied in ITA education.

Conceptions of culture in the literature. Four definitions of culture were operationalized in the study questionnaire: sociolinguistic, textual, nonverbal communication competence, and ITA awareness of significant mores in a university educational culture. In the ITA education literature generated by ESL specialists, culture is defined in relation to sociolinguistic and textual competence. Sociolinguistic competence refers to a speaker's ability to use language appropriate to specific social settings (see Widdowson, 1996). Madden and Myers consider the role of culture in ITAs' assumptions about teacher and student roles, and how these assumptions may interact with ITAs' ability to communicate appropriately in terms of accepted teacher "authority relationships with students" in the U.S. (1994, p. 1; see also Althen, 1991; Davis, 1991; Langham, 1989; Pialorsi, 1984; and Sarkasian, 1990). Textual competence is the ability of a speaker to organize his or her language according to commonly accepted rhetorical patterns, such as narrations or lectures, and conventions of cohesion (e.g., repetition, linking devices, emphasis)(Bachman, 1990, pp. 88-89; see also Halleck & Moder, 1995). In terms of textual competence, culture is discussed in light of how content should be presented in U.S. classrooms, with the intimation that in American universities, it is expected that teachers will employ interactive styles to teach content, as opposed to monolithic lectures (Costantino, 1987; see also Davis, 1991; Galvin, 1991; Madden & Myers, 1994; Sarkasian, 1990). It is believed that ITAs will have problems teaching interactively (have poor textual competence) because this practice runs counter to ITAs' experiences and sensibilities (Costantino, 1987), and because ITAs have "different expectations about . . . the goals and processes of higher education" than are held in the U.S. (Davis, 1991, p. 446). [-2-]

Others focus on nonverbal communication competence and define culture in terms of helping ITAs form realistic expectations of non-verbal U.S. student behavior (Costantino, 1987; Pialorsi, 1984; Schneider & Stevens, 1987), and helping ITAs to learn what U.S. students expect of them as teachers in terms of nonverbal behavior (Althen, 1991; Pialorsi, 1984; Schneider & Stevens, 1987; Zukowski-Faust, 1984). Culture is also defined in terms of processes of acculturation, in which all TAs (not just ITAs), develop awarenesses of "the values and attitudes, the interests, skills and knowledge" of an "in group" (Darling, 1987, p. 91). University and departmental policies reflect the mores of the educational culture to which ITAs are becoming acculturated, touching on issues such as student attendance, grading, make-up exams, sexual harassment (Costantino, 1987), cheating (Sarkasian, 1990) and student incivility (Texas Tech University Department of Student Affairs, 2002-2003).

Finally, culture is defined as cross-cultural competence. ITAs should develop cross-cultural skills by learning to explore and explain their own culture (Ford, Gappa, Wendorff, & Wright, 1991) and by self-diagnosing "culturally-based obstacles to communication with their students" (Althen, 1991, p. 352). Cross-cultural competence will not be operationalized in the questionnaire for two reasons. First, the literature on "good teaching" in universities subsumes the first four conceptions of culture held by ESL specialists (textual competence, etc.), but not that of cross-cultural competence--the literature on good teaching focuses on all TAs, not on ITAs specifically. This implies a second reason: It is not fair to demand that ITAs alone be required to attain a specific level of competence in the highly specialized skill of cross-cultural communication. Native English speaking TAs, despite sharing the first language of many of their students, are, as new teachers at a new school, new to the educational cultures of their departments, disciplines, and possibly the region or even nation (e.g., Darling, 1987). Yet native English speaking TAs are likely not instructed nor evaluated on their ability as cross-cultural communicators.

Gathering empirical evidence. While much commentary on ITAs' needs is internally valid and relevant, there remains a lack of empirical data focusing on ITAs' educational attitudes, and experiences and life circumstances which mediate them. Evidence for ITAs' needs is gathered through observations of ITA interactions (e.g., Axelson & Madden, 1994; Langham, 1989; McChesney, 1994), and from ITA educators' working lives (e.g., Costantino, 1987). Aside from limitations imposed by small sample sizes, such data are also limited by the conception of culture held by the data gatherer. A questionnaire potentially allows for multiple conceptions of culture to be used as a frame for data collection.

Focusing on ITAs' attitudes. Observations of ITAs often focus on behavior, which reveals little about their attitudes. Attitudes, opportunity, and peer norms all contribute to behavior (Ajzen, 1988), suggesting that behavior is influenced by context. Short-term observations of ITA behavior may suggest that ITAs do not believe students should ask teachers questions, for example, and this may then be attributed to the home culture of the ITA. In fact, ITAs may have positive attitudes towards students asking questions, but being new to teaching and their departments and not wholly confident with their English, they have not had the opportunity to work out how student questions should be encouraged and handled. Viewing ITAs as new teachers at the outset of a potentially long teaching career helps to ascribe equal responsibility for ITA learning to ESL specialists, department-based content specialists, department-based senior TAs and ITAs, and to the ITAs themselves. It would be a mistake for any one group to assume sole responsibility for successful ITA acculturation and learning, clearly a developmental, longitudinal process (e.g. Darling, 1987; Sprague & Nyquist, 1991).

Understanding attitudes is an important aspect of understanding behavior (Gorsuch, 1999; Holliday, 1994; Kennedy, 1987; Wang, Martin, & Martin, 2002). ITAs' attitudes and preconceptions are shaped by their own educational experiences in classrooms, institutions, and societies all over the world (Holliday, 1994, p. 16, p. 48; Wang, Martin, & Martin, 2002) and in "professional-academic communities" which "partially transcend national cultural boundaries" (Holliday, 1994, p. 56; see also Flowerdew & Miller, 1995 for commented on "disciplinary cultures"). As new teachers, ITAs' instructional decisions (i.e., their behavior) will be influenced by their experiences as learners, just as other teachers' decisions are, worldwide (Cohen & Spillane, 1992; Freeman & Richards, 1993; Gorsuch, 2000; Lortie, 1975). Questionnaires are effective for gathering information on attitudes. ITA educators also need to know what variables interact with ITAs' attitudes such as gender, teaching experience (length and U.S.- versus non-U.S.-based), academic discipline, and nationality (see Davis, 1991). Gathering information on these variables will likely reveal a greater, and probably more realistic complexity within ITAs' educational attitudes, than would considering their attitudes solely from the point of view of nationality or language group (see Kember, 2000, for comments on stereotypes of "passive" Asian students; see also Althen, 1991). [-3-]

Research Questions

For local needs assessment the following research questions were set:

1. What are ITAs' responses on an attitudinal questionnaire?
2. How do ITAs' responses comment on nationally discussed perceived needs of ITAs: sociolinguistic, textual, and nonverbal communication competence, and ITA awareness of significant mores in a university educational culture?
3. How do ITAs' responses compare with faculty members' responses on similar attitudinal items? In other words, do ITAs and faculty members approve and disapprove of the same behaviors and practices?

For needs assessment, and to motivate research into attitudes of new teachers from international contexts (ITAs), the following research question was set:

4. What differences are there in the attitudes of ITAs according to their gender, past teaching experiences (in the U.S. and in their home countries), and past experience studying in the U.S.?

Methods

Participants

Two different groups participated in the development of the questionnaire. One group comprised eight full-time faculty members from biology, chemistry, computer science, languages, physics, political science, psychology, and restaurant and hotel management. One was female, and seven were male, with a range of 5 to 47 years of teaching experience. Six were American, one was from New Zealand, and one was from India. The second group comprised 62 ITAs from Bangladesh, China, Ecuador, Germany, India, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Peru, Poland, Russia, Senegal, Spain, Sri Lanka, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela, and Vietnam. Twenty-one participants were from China, and nine were from India. The rest of the countries were represented by between one and three ITAs. Twenty-eight were female, and 34 were male, and their mean age was 27.55 years. Twelve had taught in the U.S. prior to their arrival at the university, and 50 had not. Twenty-four had taught in their home countries, and 34 had not (three ITA candidates made no report). Thirty-three had been students in the U.S. prior to their arrival, and 29 had not. Their academic majors were agriculture, architecture, biochemistry, biology, chemistry, composition, computer science, economics, English, German, applied linguistics, literature, math, mechanical engineering, physics, political science, psychology, restaurant and hotel management, Spanish, statistics, and technical communication. Eleven were from chemistry, 7 were from physics, and 6 were from biology. The rest of the academic disciplines were represented by between one and four ITAs. The 62 candidates were being evaluated for speaking and listening skills by the ITA training program at the university in the summer of 2002.

Materials

Two questionnaires were developed, one for the faculty participants, and one for ITA candidates. The faculty questionnaire had only an ancillary function of narrowing a broad set of topics to be included in the ITA questionnaire, while the ITA questionnaire had the more central function of gathering data on ITA attitudes. Several sources were used to generate items for the ancillary faculty questionnaire: [-4-]

1. U.S.- and international-based literature discussing "good" and "bad" teaching practices at universities from the fields of teacher development, higher education leadership, and speech communication;
2. A newly developed teacher evaluation form used by all departments at the university (Texas Tech University, 2002);
3. An international literature which discusses typical teaching practices in other countries, including China, Ecuador, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Peru, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Syria, Turkey, and Vietnam; and
4. U.S.-based ITA education literature generated by ESL specialists on ITAs and culture. (See Table 1)

Sociolinguistic competence

• student-teacher interaction (informal interaction norms, humor, treating male and female students equally, teacher approachability, etc.)
  (Althen, 1991; Costantino, 1987; Davis, 1991; Devadas, 1994; Fernandez-Balboa & Stiehl, 1995; Frymier & Weser, 2001; Hativa, 2000; Lehmann, 1995; Lu, 1997; Rice, Stewart, & Hujber, 2000; Roach & Byrne, 2001; Sarkasian, 1990; Texas Tech University, 2002; Yook & Albert, 1998)

Textual competence

• pedagogy and verbal communication (teacher use of jargon, unclear diction, transitional cues, verbal emphasis of important points, interactive questioning, etc.)
  (Chesebro & McCroskey, 1998; Costantino, 1987; Fernandez-Balboa & Stiehl, 1995; Hativa, 2000; Madden & Myers, 1994; McCroskey, Richmond, Sallinen, Fayer, & Barracough, 1995; Sarkasian, 1990; Wang, Martin, & Martin, 2002)

Nonverbal communication competence

• teacher nonverbal classroom communication (gestures, eye contact, etc.)
  (McCroskey et al, 1995)

Significant mores in university educational culture

• administrative and ethical issues (confidentiality of student grades, cheating, etc.)
  (Costantino, 1987; Sarkasian, 1990; Texas Tech University Department of Student Affairs, 2002)
• pedagogy (active involvement of students, role plays, lectures, class preparation strategies for students, cooperative learning, audio visual materials, etc.)
  (Adamson, 1998; American Association of Collegiate Registrars & National Association of Foreign Student Affairs, 1992; Arora & Sogani, 1994; Bonal, 2001; Chesebro & McCroskey, 1998; Dao, Thiep, & Sloper, 1995; Diaz Diaz, 1995; Doyon, 2001; Fernandez-Balboa & Stiehl, 1995; Gennaoui, 1995; Gil, 1995; Hativa, 2000; Kanaya, 1995; Lehmann, 1995; Nikandrov, 1995; Porter, 1986; Ranaweera, 1995; Samaniego, 1995; Rice, Shin, 1995; Simsek & Yildirim, 2001; Szylowicz, 1973; Rice, Stewart & Hujber, 2000; Sarkasian, 1990; Texas Tech University, 2002; Yoshida, (2002)
• teacher awareness of student learning (adapting instruction to students' level, emphasis of content coverage over flexibility towards learners, etc.)
  (Fernandez-Balboa & Stiehl, 1995; Sarkasian, 1990; Williams & Roach, 1992)
• giving assignments (clear assignment expectations, negotiating assignments in the case of family emergencies, etc.)
  (Chesebro & McCroskey, 1998; Sarkasian, 1990; Texas Tech University, 2002; Yook & Albert, 1998) [-5-]
• materials (teacher preparing relevant course materials)
  (Texas Tech University, 2002)
• standards, tests (clear course objectives, appropriate workloads, etc.)
  (Chesebro & McCroskey, 1998; Sarkasian, 1990; Texas Tech University, 2002; Yook & Albert, 1998)
• syllabuses (teacher providing information on reading assignments, tests, etc.)
  (Sarkasian, 1990)
• student roles (student procrastination, U.S. student backgrounds and expectations, etc.)
  (Costantino, 1987; Roach & Byrne, 2001; Sarkasian, 1990; Schneider & Stevens, 1987)
• teachers as role models (subject knowledge, professional attire, etc.)
  (Fernandez-Balboa & Stiehl, 1995; Gnanam, 1994; Lu, 1997; Rice, Stewart, & Hujber, 2000; Roach, 1997; Sarkasian, 1990; Schnell, 1999; Texas Tech University, 2002)

The faculty questionnaire contained 97 Likert scale items. The faculty participants were asked to respond to the 97 statements, each of which described a specific teacher belief, trait, or behavior (positive or negative), for example: Giving students prepared notes for class and using harsh or condescending language with students. The faculty respondents assigned a rating to each statement indicating the desirability of the trait using a five point scale with 5 = highly desirable, 4 = desirable, 3 = neutral, 2 = undesirable, and 1 = highly undesirable.[1] Descriptive statistics for each of the 97 Likert scale items were calculated, and the mean scores for the items were examined for values above 4 (between highly desirable and desirable) and below 2.5 (between slightly less then neutral and highly undesirable). Thirty-seven items with means above or below these values were thought to represent salient aspects of the educational culture the respondents were members of and were included in the second questionnaire, intended for ITAs. The 37 items for the ITA questionnaire were written as statements such as: A good teacher should demonstrate good knowledge of the subject being taught. ITAs rated each statement by their level of agreement: 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = do not know, 2 = disagree, 1 = strongly disagree. An additional 12 nominal data items were written in order to test differences between groups, including age, gender, nationality, length of experience, and class size (Cohen & Spillane, 1992; Fuller, Snyder, Chapman, & Hua, 1994; Montero-Sieburth, 1992; Stevenson & Baker, 1991). [See the Appendix for the questionnaire.]

Procedure and Analyses

The second version of the questionnaire was administered in paper and pencil form to 62 ITAs. For answer RQ #1, descriptive statistics for the 37 Likert scale items were calculated, including mean, standard deviation, mode, and min/max. For answer RQ #2, ITAs' responses on relevant attitudinal questions were tabulated by the four conceptions of culture extant in the ITA education literature (see Table 1): sociolinguistic, textual, and nonverbal communication competence, and significant mores of the educational culture of their new university. To answer RQ #3, faculty participants' responses on attitudinal items on the faculty questionnaire were classified as "desirable" (with a mean above 4.0) or "undesirable" (with a mean below 2.5). These categories were then matched to the relevant items from the ITA questionnaire. For RQ #4, in order to reduce the number of comparisons and to motivate future research, the data for all cases for each item was correlated with each of the four grouping variables (gender, U.S. teaching experience, home country teaching experience, and U.S. student experience) using the point biserial correlation formula found in Brown (1996, p. 176). The significance level was set at .2732 (non-directional decision, p < .05, see Brown, 1996, p. 164). Any positive or negative correlations above this level would suggest that the responses of one subgroup (e.g., females) were more strongly correlated with the responses of the whole group than the responses of the other subgroup (e.g., males). t-test comparisons were planned for items and grouping variables which had normally distributed cells and homogenous variance. The experiment-wise p value for parametric comparisons was set at .05 divided by the number of comparisons (Tabachnik & Fidell, 1996, p. 51). Non-parametric Mann Whitney U tests were planned for items and grouping variables which had non-normal cells and non-homogeneous variance. The experiment-wise p value for the non-parametric comparisons was set at .05 divided by the number of comparisons. Comparisons by nationality or academic major were not done because of small and greatly unequal group sizes. [-6-]

Results

For answer RQs #1, 2, and 3 descriptive statistics for ITAs' responses to the 37 Likert scale items are given in Table 2 below. The means are given in descending order:

Sociolinguistic competence

Textual competence

Nonverbal communicative competence

Significant mores of university educational culture

For RQs #1 and #2, ITAs' responses varied from 1.261 to 4.806. For items touching on sociolinguistic competence, ITAs strongly agreed that teachers should be easy for students to talk to (M = 4.548). ITAs were less approving of uses of language or behaviors that suggest formal teacher/student relations, such as teachers scolding students (M = 2.695) and having students stand up before answering a question (M = 2.129). In terms of textual competence, ITAs strongly approved of giving clear definitions for concepts (M = 4.661), using examples relevant to students' experiences (M = 4.516), speaking at a moderate speed (M = 4.335), and using students' points of view to generate classroom discussion (M = 4.403). ITAs were ambivalent on one feature of interactive discussion: asking students to answer other students' questions (M = 3.661). ITAs did not approve of disorganized lecturing (M = 2.177). In terms of nonverbal communication competence, ITAs agreed that teachers should look at students while talking (M = 4.387).

In terms of significant university mores touching on pedagogy, ITAs approved of using visuals to explain concepts (M = 4.597), but approved less of using role plays (M = 3.754). However, they were also ambivalent or disapproving of formal lecturing teaching styles associated with international students' educational experiences, such as having students memorize information (M = 2.339) and listening passively to lectures (M = 2.726). ITAs approved of a variety of behaviors concerning administrative and ethical issues, such as treating all students the same (M = 4.623), and treating students' grades as confidential (M = 4.333). Accordingly, ITAs were ambivalent about the idea of telling students how they ranked in relation to other students (M = 2.919). ITAs disapproved of teaching done without regard to student ability levels (M = 2.613). ITAs approved of communicating information on assignments to students (M = 4.557) and writing out this information (M = 4.213). ITAs also approved of matching textbooks and other materials to course concepts (M = 4.468), communicating learning expectations to students (M = 4.557) and using syllabuses to do so (M = 4.5). ITAs were ambivalent, however, about using small assignments rather than major tests to gather information on students' learning (M = 3.705) which may reflect ITAs' experiences in educational systems which rely on high-stakes tests to earn higher education opportunities (cf. Doyon, 2001; Gennaoui, 1995). ITAs approved strongly of the notion that teachers should be good role models by being enthusiastic (M = 4.806) and demonstrating knowledge of the subject (M = 4.629).

For answer RQ #3, ITAs' attitudes were compared with faculty participants' attitudes on items common between the ITA and faculty versions of the questionnaire. ITA attitudes matched faculty participant attitudes in many respects. Under sociolinguistic competence, ITAs and faculty participants agreed that teachers should be easy for students to talk to. They both agreed that teachers should not scold students or make them stand up before answering a question, and that teachers do not have a superior position over students. In terms of textual competence, ITAs and faculty participants agreed that teachers need to give clear definitions, generate discussions and student questions, and use a moderate rate of speech and a logical progression of ideas while talking to students. Both groups also agreed that disorganized lecturing was not desirable in university teaching. Under nonverbal communicative competence, ITAs and faculty participants agreed that teachers should look at students during lectures.

ITAs and faculty participants seemed to share a number of significant mores of university educational culture. They agreed that teachers should show enthusiasm and demonstrate knowledge of the subject, and that assignments and materials should be relevant to the topics being covered in the course. Both ITAs and faculty participants believed in using flexibility in dealing with students, demonstrated by changing instruction to match student learning, and negotiating assignments and tests in the event of family emergencies. ITAs and faculty participants agreed that grading policies and learning expectations had to be communicated to students, and both agreed that a syllabus was an appropriate means for doing this. Both ITAs and faculty participants rejected passive learning and rote memorization learning techniques.

There were, however, a number of disagreements between ITAs and faculty participants, suggesting a gap between ITA and faculty expectations. In the area of sociolinguistic competence, ITAs were ambivalent about whether teachers should use verbal warnings to change students' behavior (M = 3.194) and about whether teachers should expect late students to ask permission to enter a classroom (M = 2.968). Faculty participants noted that both of these practices were undesirable in university teachers (M below 2.5). There were also a number of university mores that may not be shared by the ITAs and faculty participants. ITAs were ambivalent about whether students should be expected to do their own work (M = 3.774), yet faculty participants thought this was desirable (above 4.0). On testing issues, ITAs were ambivalent about giving students many small assignments in lieu of a few big tests (M = 3.705) and disapproved of the notion that tests should only cover concepts covered in a course (M = 2.887). Faculty participants felt that many small assignments were preferred over the practice of giving a few big tests, and that tests should cover only the concepts covered in the course. ITAs were also ambivalent about whether they should tell students how they ranked on a test compared to other students (M = 2.919), yet faculty participants disapproved of this practice. Finally, ITAs and faculty participants disagreed on pedagogical and textual competence issues. ITAs were ambivalent about having students do role plays (M = 3.754) and having students answer other students' questions in class (M = 3.661), while faculty participants approved of these practices. ITAs were also ambivalent about having students learn through lecture and note taking (M = 3.344), but faculty participants felt this was an undesirable practice for university teachers. [-8-]

For RQ #4, there were a number of significant point biserial correlations between items and the four grouping variables of gender, U.S. and home country teaching experience, and U.S. student experience (crit > .2732, nondirectional decision p < .05; See Table 3).

Six t-tests and five Mann Whitney U tests were done. None of the t-tests with p set at .0083 (.05 divided by six comparisons), or the Mann Whitney U tests with p set at .01 (.05 divided by five comparisons) indicated statistically significant differences between means.

Discussion

Second, the questionnaire data illuminate areas of potentially needed instructional plans taking into account either ambivalent or negative ITA attitudes. For instance, ITAs seemed ambivalent about using verbal warnings with students. Discussion type tasks should be designed to raise awareness and probe the reasons for the ambivalence. Some ITAs may approve of verbal warnings because they know that students doing chemistry experiments improperly may pose a threat to themselves or others. Some ITAs may disapprove of verbal warnings because they cause discomfort on an interpersonal or linguistic level (see Myers & Plakans, 1991). These issues can be discussed, and ITAs can be shown situations in which a verbal warning might seem necessary, and observe the tone and wording of appropriate verbal behavior of successful university teachers. Finally, the data suggested other attitude sensitive areas such as the frequency, size, and content coverage of tests. Other examples are ITAs' apparent ambivalence about students doing their own work, and using role plays in class. ITA educators may need to design instruction on these issues that will inform, enlighten, increase awareness, cause debate, and persuade.

The data may also suggest that teaching experience is a meaningful agent of acculturation. ITAs with teaching experience in the U.S. were more likely to agree that tests should cover only the content presented in the course, suggesting the presence of a U.S.-based attitude towards testing that ITAs have become sensitive to as new teachers. The data also suggest that ITA acculturation may occur through teaching experience in countries outside the U.S. There may be a general educational culture associated with higher education worldwide, with norms governing teacher and student roles, and the presentation of information to groups of people. ITAs with teaching experience in their home countries were more likely to agree that teachers should be easy to talk to, and that they should look at students during lectures. They were also more likely to agree that lectures should be based on a logical progression of ideas. ITAs with home country teaching experience were less likely to agree that students should stand up before answering a question. This might suggest a more relaxed attitude towards teacher authority in educational cultures in other nations, not just in the U.S. It might also suggest that when new teachers become more experienced, they learn how to focus on presenting content while also managing the class through more subtle and skillful means than overt displays of power. Part of this effective classroom management may be through the demonstration of subject matter knowledge--ITAs with home country teaching experience were more likely to agree that teachers should demonstrate good knowledge. Interestingly, ITAs with U.S. study experience were also more likely to agree that teachers should demonstrate good subject matter knowledge. A non-significant chi square suggested no relationship between the two variables--ITAs with U.S. study experience were no more likely to have had home country teaching experience than ITAs without U.S. study experience. Perhaps the two groups have the same attitudes but came to them through different experiences. [-10-]

The questionnaire shed as much light on the educational culture of a U.S. university as it did on the educational cultures from which the ITAs came. The questionnaire captured some salient aspects of a university educational culture by identifying teaching beliefs and behaviors that were desirable and undesirable. Clearly, ITA educators need to know their own educational culture. For instance, faculty participants counted role plays, discussions, and students answering other students' questions as desirable learning activities. As an ESL specialist ITA educator, I confirmed my belief that ITAs should be exposed to a number of teaching styles during training workshops held early in ITAs' teaching careers at the university. While I do not believe it is appropriate for ESL specialists to evaluate ITAs' teaching skills (e.g., Gorsuch, 2002), I do believe ESL specialists can provide positive and formative experiences by demonstrating the use of language to orchestrate and manage such activities.

Future research into acculturation of ITAs should be longitudinal, and focus on how these new teachers change their attitudes. It would be useful to learn what events, processes, or social contacts help bring changes about. For instance:

• Do ITAs change their attitudes or behavior because of some singular, positive experience with an interactive teaching session?
• Is it enough that ITAs simply observe effective interactive sessions, or does it also require repeated instances of personal success with it?
• Do perceived connections between good student evaluations (summative and formative) and a particular approach to teaching create changes in attitudes or behavior?
• Do ITAs change their attitudes or behavior because an ESL specialist has given compelling demonstrations of the tools, linguistic and/or methodological, to carry out successful interactive sessions? In other words, what is the role of ESL instruction designed to enhance ITAs' textual competence in changing ITAs' attitudes?
• What effect will being learners in interactive sessions have on ITAs' attitudes? If ITAs attend a conference with a mentor, and learn that the skills needed for interactive teaching are also essential to giving impressive and effective professional presentations, will ITAs' attitudes or behavior change?
• Do ITAs change their attitudes about interactive teaching as their language skills improve and their entry into the literacies of their disciplines advance?
• Finally, does it matter whom ITAs interact with in their academic lives (e.g., Myers & Plakans, 1991)? In other words, will an ITA who interacts only with classmates and colleagues who share their first language form different attitudes and engage in different behaviors than ITAs who interact with a linguistically and culturally diverse group of classmates, colleagues, and supervisors?

All of these considerations highlight the role of formal ITA education, and how ITA educators can consider the meaningful features of the local educational culture. For example, departments may wish to offer team teaching opportunities between senior faculty and ITAs, creating dual mode observation/opportunities for success with interactive teaching, test, or assignment construction. Armed with data on this issue, ESL specialists who administer intensive workshops which provide housing may wish to ensure that ITAs in the same academic area but with differing linguistic or cultural backgrounds are housed together in order to encourage long-term professional contacts mediated by the use of English (see also Civikly & Muchisky, 1991). [-11-]

Conclusion

In response to nationally discussed perceptions of ITAs' cultural needs, this article explored the attitudes of ITAs towards teaching and classroom communication, teacher roles, and significant mores of an educational culture at a university in the U.S. Using a questionnaire methodology, a small body a data emerged which suggests that conceptions of ITAs should move away from a view centered on their nationality, and towards their status as new teachers who have been shaped by their experiences as individuals and learners in unique and varied educational cultures. Many on-campus agents should share responsibility for ITAs' acculturation--contacts with ESL specialists are only one part of this process.

[1] For reasons of space, the faculty questionnaire will not be included in this report, and can be requested from the author.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the faculty participants for their insights. Thanks also to David Roach for getting me started and introducing me to the speech communication literature, and to Sara Medina Hernandez and Ahmet Okal for their thoughts on education in their home countries.

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About the Author

Greta Gorsuch is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of International Teaching Assistant Training at Texas Tech University. Her interests focus on teacher learning and development in ESL and EFL contexts, and language testing practices. She is a member of the TESL-EJ Editorial Board.

© Copyright rests with authors. Please cite TESL-EJ appropriately. Editor's Note: Dashed numbers in square brackets indicate the end of each page for purposes of citation.

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