Service
Publication
From Student To Student:
2006
Teaching
Internships
Service
Publication
This paper
focused on only
From Student
To Student:
Strategies forone
Successfully
area —Gaining
Teaching
Graduate Teaching Experience
2006
Teaching
Internships
3-Way Career Mismatch
“Doctoral students persist in pursuing careers as faculty members,
and graduate programs persist in preparing them for careers at
research universities”
— Golde & Doring, 2001
Research-extensive jobs will be available to only 1/3 of graduates
in the hard sciences and only 5-10% of graduates in soft
sciences.
— Cage, 1995; Gaff, 2002.
75% of graduate respondents in one survey feel teaching
experience is of high importance. Less than 1/2 on another
survey feel they are getting that experience.
— Smith and Pedersen-Gallegos 2001; National Association of Graduate
and Professional Students, 2001.
Research Questions
(1) What strategies do students use for
succeeding as graduate teachers?
(2) How do graduate teachers construct
and represent their teaching
experiences?
Design & Methods
Researchers:
•
4 researchers — Doctoral students in
Instructional Technology at different
universities
•
All have been teachers (K-12, preservice,
or graduate levels)
•
Each attempted to sample participants and
conduct interviews in each of the four
areas
Design & Methods
Participants
•
Sampled by the researcher, through
consultation with faculty members.
•
Female, international student
(preservice course)
•
Male, nontraditional (preservice,
adjunct, graduate co-teach)
•
Male, master’s student (preservice,
alternative)
Design & Methods
Researchers as participants
• RW — preservice, co-taught graduate
• DP — K-12, preservice, co-taught
graduate
• SW — preservice, co-taught graduate
• SP — preservice
Design & Methods
Co-constructive interviews
•
Semi-structured
•
Co-constructive with the researcher
•
Researchers also reflectively answered
interview questions separately
Analysis methods
•
Inductive/thematic (to draw out strategies)
•
Narrative of 2 cases (to understand their
conceptualization of experience)
Thematic Findings
• Codes created and developed through constant
comparison
• 115 total codes
• 29 “significant” codes where indicated by two
teachers or by one teacher at least 3x
• These significant codes focused on why gaining
teaching experience is important, how to find
teaching opportunities, and how to succeed as a
graduate teacher
Why Teach?
1. To learn
2. To gain experience
3. To further other career goals
4. It’s rewarding
Finding Teaching Opportunities
A. Undergraduate Courses
B. Graduate courses
C. K-12
D. Workshops
E. Anything!
Coping Strategies!
Succeeding: Learning Content
A. Teach yourself
B. Workshops/Tutorials
C. Bring in experts
D. Teach your strengths
Succeeding: Learning to Teach
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Be Creative
Involve the learners
Seek feedback from students
Record yourself
Sharon Steal
Narrative Analysis
Narrative Analysis: Cases
• Cases selected because of depth and narrative,
and because of contrasting themes
• Robert: nontraditional student, taught
preservice, as well as co-taught a graduate
course, and adjunct at satellite campus
• Ron: Master’s student, K-12 certificate, taught
preservice and created other teaching
opportunities for himself (K-12 as well as
collegiate).
Ron: Labov-method of
RC 0:08:59
‘’
analysis
Unofficially, the way I u sually end up getting teaching
Abst ract
positions is I complain about how it's not being done right
and they say, all right, you think you can do better? . . .
RC 0:09:06
He asked me to come in and teach 286, an d I had heard Orientation
nightmares about 286, so I said, I'll come in and teach it,
Complication
but I will do it my way.
I had no idea the explosion of fireworks that were going to
happen that semester. It was amazing! And then [new
course supervisor] came, and I told him about some of
these things, and h e was l ike well, obviously we're not
going to just give them a textbook and have them read out
the answers and h ave them do it, and it was really cool Evaluation
because he was o n board with that, so I jumped in w ith
Result
him on that, . . . so that's kind of how I got into that one.
Coda
How Did Ron Construct His
Experience?
Autonomy - creating his own experiences
•
“I will do it my own way.”
•
“There you go.”
•
“I’ll do the assignments myself ”
Robert: Disjointed Narrative
“They are virtually the same course [with different section
numbers]. We teach them in a team approach with a full
time coordinator and many TAs. We divide up the
schedule and we support each other. We have offices in
the same area, which is a good idea. . . . There is an
instructional team, and we share ideas, and it’s a
supportive environment for teaching. I’ve really enjoyed
that part of my experience.”. . . I have to say that I haven’t
hesitated when I see another TA do something that
is
superior to what I am doing I will incorporate it, adopt it
and adapt it to meet my needs.”
Did you see the narrative? We didn’t at first either…
Robert: A Clue
“I am an artist. I am more intuitive
sometimes easy going and a little on the
impulsive side.”
We found Robert’s narrative style to be:
• disjointed
• impulsive
• scattered throughout the discussion
• reflective
Look again … is there a story?
“They are virtually the same course [with different section
numbers]. We teach them in a team approach with a
full time coordinator and many TAs. We divide up the
schedule and we support each other. We have
offices in the same area, which is a good idea. . . . There is
an instructional team, and we share ideas, and it’s a
supportive environment for teaching. I’ve really
enjoyed that part of my experience.”. . . I have to say that I
haven’t hesitated when I see another TA do something that
is superior to what I am doing I will incorporate it, adopt it
and adapt it to meet my needs.”
How Did Robert Construct
His Experience?
Teamwork, collaboration, and support
• “A team approach.”
• “I don’t have experience.”
• “I am a comfortable teacher.”
Conclusions: What did we
learn about our questions?
Inductive analysis
•
Strategies for finding teaching opportunities,
and succeeding as inexperienced teachers
Narrative analysis
•
Two students describing their teaching
experiences very differently
•
But … they also had a lot of agreement
Conclusions:
What
did
we
Conclusions: What did we
learn about our questions?
learn about research?
Inductive analysis
Inductive analysis
• Strategies for finding teaching opportunities,
• Useful for quick answers, but does it really
and succeeding as inexperienced teachers
show the depth of the data? How much does
contextanalysis
and individuality matter?
Narrative
analysis
• Narrative
Two students
describing their teaching
experiences very differently
• What is narrative? Can narrative be discerned
from
to interview
• But
…straightforward
they also had aanswers
lot of agreement
questions?
Conclusions:
What
did
we
Acknowledgments
learn about our questions?
Thank you to
Inductive analysis
• My collaborators on this project
• Strategies for finding teaching opportunities,
• and
Dr.succeeding
Kathy Roulston
(UGA) for reviewing
as inexperienced
teachers
drafts in class and pushing me to do narrative
Narrative analysis
analysis
• Two students describing their teaching
• Advisors (Drs. Charles Graham & Michael
experiences very differently
Hannafin) for research mentoring and
opportunities
forhad
growth.
• But
… they also
a lot of agreement