Case study of adjustment: A graduate teaching

assistant’s struggles

David E. Meel

Bowling Green State University

meel@bgnet.bgsu.edu

This paper seeks to provide further evidence of the problems graduate students face as they are teaching. In order to accomplish this, this study presents a singular case study of the graduate teaching instructor of Mr. M culled from an on-going investigation of the struggles graduate teaching assistants face when front-line instructors. Drawing upon a multitude of data sources such as daily journal entries, a hour-long interview, quizzes, tests, and copies of student work and reactions, the data revealed that Mr. M. experienced conflict in reference to: (1) constructing a non-threatening classroom versus loosing control; (2) Wanting students to ask questions versus answering “dumb” questions; (3) Wanting an open classroom versus students talking out of turn; (4) Teaching toward the bottom of the class versus boring the top; (5) Ensuring students do homework versus not enough time to grade; (6) The responsibilities of teaching versus the requirements of being a student; (7) The lecture style versus active learning; and (8) Implementing “difficult” quizzes to motivate students versus assessing to give a grade. Each of these conflicts reveals and repeats themselves at various times throughout his journal entries.

Beyond struggles that posed conflict for Mr. M. in terms of choices that he needed to make during instruction, a variety of problematic scenarios arose as part of teaching the course. In particular, five specific scenarios influenced Mr. M as he was teaching and included: (1) Being accused by a student of telling, during a test, the student an answer was correct when it was not correct; (2) Belief that two brothers were cheating off each other; (3) Student wearing a t-shirt advertising his homosexuality; (4) Being accused of not informing students that they needed to check their work when solving radical equations; and (5) Watching students give up on the course and fail multiple times. Each of these situations greatly disturbed Mr. M and caused him to question his beliefs as a teacher and the interaction of his own moral character. This paper provides further evidence of the problems graduate students face as they are teaching and pose recommendations for the correction of the problems.