Abstract:

United States is one of the major host countries to international students. International graduate students often play important roles as teaching and research assistants. In addition to teaching courses, they provide office hours to assist students in labs and to assist students outside of class. Despite of their ubiquity, international graduate students on American campuses have been understudied. Little is studied about International graduate students from African countries who are involved in teaching in U.S. universities Hence the purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of International graduate teaching assistants from African countries (IGTAAs) in U.S. universities.

This study examined the classroom teaching and study experiences of international graduate teaching assistants from African countries in the school of education in a private University in northeastern United States during spring 2014 semester.

The following research questions guided the study;
(1) what are the teaching experiences of International graduate teaching assistants from African countries (IGTAAs) in U.S universities?;
(2)What are the study experiences of IGTAAs in U.S universities?

Data was collected through interviews and observations. Data was analyzed by grounded theory. The findings from the study were that; All the IGTAAs interviewed had experienced the challenge of communication barrier during their lessons in the U.S. University classroom; and the IGTAAs expressed the challenge of accent and lack of contextual knowledge to explain the concepts to students when conducting their classroom teaching. However the IGTAAs had a good relationship with the students and professors outside the classroom. The study recommended that, there is need to design some courses for IGTAAs about the American culture to allow them to have contextual issues to use during their TA classes. It is also necessary to mix the American TAs and the IGTAAs in classrooms to allow the smooth transition by the IGTAAs.

Keywords:

Graduate Students, African countries, Study and classroom experiences, U.S. universities.