Having taught in Luxembourg, Chile, Thailand, South Korea, and the United States, I began my doctoral studies in teacher education knowing the many challenges that students and teachers can face in an international setting. I’ve used these experiences to help educate my own students when preparing them to teach.

While presenting “Solutions for Common Problems ITAs Encounter in Their Classrooms” at Rutgers University, I was able to offer insight into problems that ITAs encounter and offer solutions that were informed by my experiences as a teacher educator, classroom teacher, educational researcher, and world traveler. One key point I made is that cultural tensions will exist when an individual is working, teaching, and interacting with others in an environment that is different from his or her own. These tensions highlight key areas of differences that can potentially create challenges and frustrations for ITAs. We need to help them recognize these areas of difference and confront the issues head on, assisting ITAs in overcoming the challenges they might face when teaching or assisting in classrooms.

I strongly believe in the power of storytelling. During my presentation, I began by sharing my own stories, providing examples of cultural challenges that I faced when teaching overseas. I connected these challenges to ones that ITAs might face, offering suggestions for how to overcome them. My suggestions came from personal experience and were supported by research and theory. The theoretical frameworks that I introduced include the following:

1. Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000), a framework used for creating deep and meaningful learning experiences;
2. Gradual Release of Responsibility (Duke & Pearson, 2002), a framework for designing instruction that gradually moves the process of learning from the instructor to the student; and
3. Multimodalities (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001), a theory and way of thinking that informs the effective use of technology in education.
   
   

South American Teaching Example

I’ve always been considered an excellent student, hard worker, and committed teacher. My first full-time job was teaching in a private, bilingual elementary school in Santiago, Chile. The majority of my colleagues were from Chile. During our breaks, I exemplified the dedicated, hardworking “American.” I would take my work and grading into the teachers’ lounge to get as much completed as I could before going home. I was serious about my work, and frequently entered school in the morning running my long “to do” list over in my mind. Sometimes I was so preoccupied with what I had to do that I didn’t always notice what was happening around me.

I found out rather quickly that my Chilean colleagues did not always appreciate the work habits that I brought from the United States. I learned from a colleague that the Chilean teachers thought my actions were rude because I didn’t use my breaks to socialize with other teachers. I didn’t always greet them the moment I walked into school. When my colleague told me these things, I was quite shocked, but I appreciated her honesty. Here I was thinking that I was being the exemplar, hardworking teacher, and my colleagues were interpreting it in a very different way.

After learning this, I made a point to socialize more during breaks. I also paid more attention to my surroundings when I was stressing over my work in the morning. I made a point to make eye contact and greet every teacher that I passed in the hallway. These were changes that I was happy to make. They were quite easy to do. What stood out to me, however, was that I had been completely unaware of how others were interpreting my actions until a colleague explicitly told me.

When I shared this story with my audience at Rutgers University, I stressed that we need to help our ITAs recognize when cultural differences might cause tensions. ITAs might be totally unaware that problems exist, just like I had been totally unaware in Chile. In some instances, simply helping ITAs recognize the differences that exist can be a huge first step to overcoming classroom problems. There are several ways that we can help ITAs understand this, and below are some examples that I shared.

• Have ITAs observe classrooms and/or videos of classroom instruction to discuss and analyze what they see. Pay attention to what they see, what they do not see, and the assumptions that they are making. As an experienced educator, discuss with them the differences between what stands out to them and what stands out to you. Once you both see how the same classroom scenario might be perceived in different ways, you can then move into those deeper conversations about cultural expectations related to teaching and learning in our university classrooms.
• Have ITAs observe teaching as it exists in various contexts throughout the United States. You can find a lot of examples on the Internet, through teacher educator websites, and even through movies. (One website I frequently use with K–12 educators is Teaching Channel.) Have ITAs pay attention to student-student interactions, student-teacher interactions, communication styles, body language, and more. Engage them in discussions about what is expected in our classrooms and also what happens when classroom behaviors vary from the “norm.” You can then use this information and these discussions to engage ITAs in role-playing teaching scenarios. Have them demonstrate how they would react to unexpected events, such as how to confront a disruptive student. Give ITAs the teaching practice and strategies that they need before they confront “real” students on their own.
• When having ITAs view and discuss teaching instruction, interact with them in ways that will help them envision what good teaching looks like and sounds like in U.S. classrooms. Explicitly compare education systems while discussing their similarities and differences. Confront the differences head on by discussing the assumptions that are being made about students, teaching, and learning. Talk about the implications, both positive and negative, that this can have on classroom instruction.
  
  

South Korean Teaching Example

A second example that I gave my audience came from my experiences teaching in a TESOL program at a South Korean university. I’m a strong believer in the powerful learning that can occur when students are engaged in activities and conversations with others. Much of my teaching follows the principles of social constructivism. My South Korean students, however, were accustomed to more didactic teaching approaches. From the first week of class, I had my students discussing topics with partners and working in groups. It did not take long before some students expressed their frustration with my teaching. One student was even a bit outraged, stating how he had enrolled in the program to be taught by me, his teacher. He explained how he did not feel that he was learning anything when discussing course content with his classmates.

Helping my students understand a completely different philosophy toward teaching and learning was not easy! Throughout the semester, I taught content but also began to teach my students (who were future English teachers) different theories of learning. I became more explicit with them about how I was teaching them and why I chose to do certain things. I still had some skeptics, but I was more successful teaching them this way rather than being oblivious that their views of teaching, learning, and knowledge greatly differed from my own. Having conversations about theories of learning, our different educational experiences, and our beliefs helped my students begin to look at their own learning and their own teaching in new ways.

Based on experiences like these, I offered the following suggestions:

• Coach ITAs, mentor them, and help them understand different views on teacher-student relationships.
• Try to have ITAs experience approaches to teaching and learning that you want them to model in their own classrooms.
• Introduce ITAs to social constructivism and other theories of learning. Have them reflect upon powerful learning they have experienced in their own lives (both in and out of school) and help them draw connections to these theories.
• Be explicit and explain why (from a learning perspective) we do what we do as experienced educators.
• Teach ITAs about the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) and how social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence can all come together to form powerful learning experiences.
• Provide mentorship to ITAs by using the Cognitive Apprenticeship Model (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1987) as a guide. Make it a habit to make your thought processes as “expert teacher” explicit and visible.
• When discussing the use of technology to support teaching and learning, introduce ITAs to the theory of multimodalities (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). Help them understand how technology, when used appropriately, can enhance teaching and learning in ways that go beyond more traditional instruction.
  
  

When concluding my presentation, I told my audience that we do not want to manage our ITAs. We want to empower them through education, mentoring, and ongoing guidance. We want to provide them with the knowledge and skills that will build their teaching confidence and abilities while also helping them recognize areas of tension in the classroom. We need to provide ITAs with opportunities to learn, see, apply, and critique what effective instruction looks like. We can help them understand how to develop meaningful learning experiences by following the Community of Inquiry model. We can also help them understand how to create instruction that shifts the process of learning from the teacher to the student by introducing them to the Gradual Release of Responsibility (Duke & Pearson, 2002). Finally, it would be helpful if we could encourage them to use the concept of multimodalities to be critical of their own uses of technology. This will help them understand how teachers can use technology to scaffold learning in ways that they could not do on their own.

References

Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1987). Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the craft of reading, writing and mathematics (Technical Report No. 403). BBN Laboratories, Cambridge, MA. Centre for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois.

Duke, N. K., & Pearson, P. D. (2002). Effective practices for developing reading comprehension. In A. E. Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction (3rd ed., pp. 205–242). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education 2(2-3), 87–105.

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.

Dr. Boling received her PhD in curriculum, teaching, and educational policy from Michigan State University. She has worked as an elementary school teacher in Chile, Luxembourg, and the United States. In addition, she assisted in developing the first TESOL certification program in South Korea while working at Sookmyung Women’s University. Dr. Boling is interested in teacher education and supporting classroom teachers in providing literacy instruction to diverse populations of students. Her current research investigates the impact of technology on teaching and learning and how the integration of technology can challenge the fundamental beliefs that educators hold about literacy education.