March 2012
ARTICLES
INTERNATIONAL TEACHING ASSISTANT: AN ANNOTATED CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cheryl Ernst, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA

For the past year, I have been mulling over the 1997 second edition of the International Teaching Assistant: An Annotated Critical Bibliography (from here on referred to as the ACB).

The ACB was first written in 1990 by the University of Michigan. It contained 111 items and was organized into three primary categories: articles, books, reports and presentations; dissertations; and manuals, textbooks, and videos. Each item included a bibliographic citation, an abstract or summary, and a short commentary about the resource. The goal was to “produce a comprehensive and up-to-date collection of the available publications that deal specifically with international teaching assistants’ issues,” (p. v) and materials were selected to that end. In 1997, The English Language Institute at the University of Michigan updated the publication and increased the number of items to 201. It has been nearly 15 years since then and it is time for an update.

A couple of institutions have a hard copy of the text, but converting it to a workable document (Word format) is really what is needed. By having a dynamic document, we can continually update the ACB and have a rich resource full of past and present materials. Rich Powers, an MA student at the University of San Francisco, graciously converted it into a PDF document. This was done with OCR software; because OCR software sometimes misreads the text, he confirmed the format and proofed the document. This leads to where we are now, with two primary areas for discussion: how to make it available, and what materials to include in it.

At the Mid-America TESOL 2011(MIDTESOL) conference in St. Louis, a small group of ITA professionals met to share on various topics. I opened a discussion on the ACB. We discussed a number of questions pertaining to accessibility and content.

The first question was: How do we make this available to the interest section? Accessibility is vital. Technology is the biggest hurdle right now. We discussed a database, Google documents, and Dropbox. We need to establish a format that will allow any person to access and peruse (so there goes any specific database program). TESOL has the TESOL Resource Center, which would be available to those of us with TESOL memberships. With a paper edition, the ACB has to be printed, bound, and sent, and then is promptly out of date. If it is online, then we will not need to have a paper copy. If a PDF version is available, then there is access, but adding materials is problematic. I am hoping to find a way to have a searchable database, which would allow easy access and a dynamic resource that can be updated regularly.

We also discussed what should be included. There is a considerable amount of overlap between ITAs and other aspects of ESOL, such as pronunciation. What do we include, and what do we omit? Just because the words international teaching assistant do not appear in the text does not mean a resource is not useful or relevant to our population.

The group felt that submissions should be open to anyone but that we need one core person, or group of people, who can collect the submissions and ensure that they are well written and contain all the necessary information (author, abstract, citation, commentary) before adding them to the ACB.

The discussion raised more questions than it answered, as is often the case with a productive brainstorming session. After reading this article, hopefully people have some brilliant ideas. With the brain juices flowing, I intend to pose the following questions to the ITA e-list and anticipate some very practical responses:

  • Does anyone know of a platform that we could use to make these resources searchable and expandable?
  • Does anyone have a way to convert our PDF version to Word? (I have made numerous attempts.)
  • What resources should be included? (For example, hundreds of articles are published on pronunciation each year; though they are related and useful to the ITA field, how do we determine which are added to the ACB?)

As far as resource collection, I have reviewed my own reference list from my dissertation and identified some articles that could be included. I have also been collecting the citations as they come through the e-list. Sarah Briggs, who passed the ACB along to me, also included a wonderful stack of articles to be included. If anyone knows of useful ITA resources to submit, I would be happy to start collecting the citations, abstracts, and a short commentary that the provider may have.

Special thanks to Jacquelin Militello for coordinating the session at MIDTESOL 2011, and to those who participated in the discussion: Maureen Burke, Nancy Kauper, Erin Leddon, Patricia Krejcik, and Denise Mussman.

REFERENCE

Briggs, S., Clark, V., Madden, C., Beal, R., Hyon, S., Aldridge, P., & Swales, J. (1997). The international teaching assistant: An annotated critical bibliography. Ann Arbor: The English Language Institute, University of Michigan.


Cheryl is the director of the Center for English as a Second Language at Southern Illinois University Carbondale where she works extensively with ITAs.