2019 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Investigating the employment of international students as teaching assistants for the purposes of university internationalization
| Project/Area Number |
17K13502
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| Research Institution | Kyushu University |
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Principal Investigator |
ハズウェル クリストファー 九州大学, 言語文化研究院, 准教授 (90536088)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
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| Keywords | teaching assistants / international |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Students were recruited for interviews either by contact from me or through contact with the TA coordinator at APU. Testimony from these interviews was analyzed using a qualitative research software, MaxQDA. These stage one interviews included 17 TAs from Kyushu University, 13 from Ritsumeikan APU, 17 teachers from APU, and 3 TA coordinators from different programs in the two universities.
From these findings, I was able to isolate 4 categories of comments: professional positives, personal positives, obstacles, and recommendations.
These 4 categories were then shown to the TAs and their teachers again and further comments were presented and analyzed. These stage two interviews include 17 TAs from Kyushu Univeristy, 13 TAs from Ritsumeikan APU, and 14 teachers from APU.
The overall findings of the project were that TAs gain more from the program than just employment: they learn practical and academic skills, form personal and professional relationships with the students and professors, improving their on-campus life. They would, in fact, like to do more, and to learn how to teach and be a better academic students - this final point was important to disclose to Kyushu University as the university has begun a Teaching Fellows position for graduate students, a teaching assistant who takes on some class responsibilities to learn how to be more productive future faculty members.
This project included the production of 3 journal articles and 6 conference presentations.
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