An ITA Program at the Center of Graduate Student Professional Development: Approaches, Context, Positioning for Success

Pamela Pollock, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Introduction and Premises

Members of the ITA-IS work with international graduate students who need or want to improve their English, oral communication, or teaching skills for their work in North American universities. In fact, we are providing important education for PhD students that does not exist in their own departments. But how we do that, where our programs live, and how we approach and structure the work varies widely depending on institutional context, and in recent years, more programs have been cut, have been moved, or have had to reframe or defend their existence.

In the TESOL 2024 ITA-IS academic session, program directors shared their perspectives on these challenges and how they are playing out at their institutions. Here I summarize my piece of the academic session: how I have worked to integrate programming for international students with professional development programming for all PhD students, which has key elements from language pedagogy at its center. The session was designed to prompt program directors to think through different elements of their own programs, and ways they might strengthen their position on campus. I share my background, the premises I have developed that inform my work, theoretical frameworks that we use to structure our programming, and our recent efforts to make our work more visible and to communicate our value and expertise to our stakeholders.

My academic background is in foreign language education and applied linguistics. I started teaching English, teaching, and communication courses for international PhD students more than 20 years ago while I was completing a master’s program in Foreign Language Education. From the beginning, I could see how the skills I taught, and the space I provided for graduate students to improve their English and communication skills were helpful far beyond learning pronunciation or grammar. We were providing a space for students to learn, to find community with other students, and to succeed as scholars. As I continued to teach, I became interested in graduate school, how students learn to be successful in the US, and how they navigate the different messages they may receive in their disciplines and from the institution as a whole. My interests led me to pursue a PhD in Education and to write my dissertation on navigating graduate school as an international student. I learned about adult education and very intentional program planning, which has served me well in my long career of building programs.

I think it is important for ITA professionals to see their work in a larger context. In the academic session, I first shared a bit about the history of our programming at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, to show the key moments that made it possible for the work we do for international PhD students to become the foundation for a full portfolio of teaching and communication programming for all PhD students. I shared the main premises I hold in how we, as ITA professionals, approach our work:

• Learning English cannot be separated from the tasks and contexts for which you need it. That is, you can’t “just” teach pronunciation! When you are working on pronunciation or specific language skills, they are contextualized with the material the students are talking about, and designing curriculum around particular communicative goals, having students go back to key words and terms from their field, or even talking about what kind of language to use when is based on the specific contexts of graduate school. I want to encourage ITA program directors and instructors to recognize the larger context of their work.
• Developing communication skills is a central part of PhD students’ professional development. So much of what we do for international students is helpful for all students. We have the skills to translate what we do as English language teachers to all scholars who want to work on communicating effectively in different academic contexts.
• ITA programs are providing a valuable part of the curriculum in graduate education. Graduate education is built on an apprenticeship model; students are meant to learn from faculty in their disciplines. Courses in their field usually focus on the content they need to learn in the field. Our ability to see across fields and provide a space for students to learn and practice outside of their disciplines, teaching the expectations and norms that align with their disciplines, is invaluable.
• Language teaching provides an effective model for teaching about teaching. Our expertise in language pedagogy is a helpful framework for helping scholars across disciplines learn about teaching and communication. Our ability to work with scholars from diverse backgrounds towards a common goal is a great foundation for teacher development programming. Language pedagogy by nature is interactive, goal-oriented, and scaffolded. We aren’t just focused on transmitting content. It is important that we see the opportunities we have because of our expertise in language pedagogy.

Theoretical Frameworks

After sharing these premises, I highlighted some of the main theoretical frameworks that inform our program structure at the Bok Center. The key is that we have an integrated approach and these frameworks work together.

• ACTFL Proficiency guidelines. At the Bok Center, we are trained ACTFL testers, and we use the ACTFL proficiency scale to determine students’ level of English language proficiency. It is a holistic scale that focuses on what students are able to do, and where their limits are. Not only is it helpful for language, but it’s a good model overall for thinking about what proficiency means. The concepts of ceiling and floor, for example, can be relevant to all teachers and communicators. Where are you now? Where do you want to be? You can only reach the next level by practicing at the next level.
• Critical Reflection. Stephen Brookfield’s lenses for critical reflection are intended to help instructors think about ways they can learn and grow, by learning through four lenses: self, students, peers, and the literature on teaching and learning. Brookfield encourages instructors to question their assumptions, to have questions and goals for their teaching, and to use the different lenses for reflection based on their specific questions and goals. Our programming allows students to draw on each of these lenses, which are clearly relevant to language proficiency. All of our programs provide opportunities to reflect and learn from different sources, and include self-reflective components.
• Graduate student socialization. It is important to see our work with graduate students within the larger context of graduate school and graduate student socialization, and to recognize the expertise we have about our institutional environments. Key ideas from the literature on graduate student socialization include the concept of dual socialization, that graduate students must learn the field-specific behaviors that will help them succeed in graduate school AND as scholars in their disciplines (Mendoza, 2007). Most of what is expected is not explicitly stated, but learned implicitly by observing faculty, senior students, and peers (Lovitts, 2007). For international graduate students the process has an added layer; how to navigate the system in a different language, in a different country (Swales, 2008). Our work fits into this framework in that we are directly aiding graduate students with this socialization process. We are continually learning about our institutional environments, and can help make these implicit expectations more explicit, as we also work on helping students develop the communication skills they need for success in their fields.

Communicating Value

How can we help our stakeholders understand our goals and approach as well as the expertise we have that informs the work we do, so that they may see our programs as something beyond English language courses? I ended the session by highlighting a few ways we have been working to make visible the value of our programming, the approaches we take, and what students are learning with us. We have built a new Teaching Matters gallery, which highlights things graduate students have learned in our programming. We also started a Teacher-Scholar Spotlight series this year, to emphasize the connection between teaching and scholarship, and to showcase students speaking in their own words about their experiences and what has been helpful as they learn more about teaching and communication skills. Minjin Chae came to us because of concerns about her English skills and ended up completing our Bok Teaching Certificate and learning much more than English. Students like Minjin show the success of our integrated approach and how the premises and theoretical frameworks work together. As she says:

I didn’t attend college in the US, and the concept of a 'section' was unfamiliar to me, so initially, I was very nervous about having to teach one. However, the Bok Seminar prepared me well for what to expect both from students and in my role as a section leader. Practicing the core aspects of teaching - explaining the key concepts and delivering a presentation - has been incredibly helpful for me. Also, being exposed to knowledge about common experiences of section leaders, and realizing that challenges are not unique to me, has boosted my confidence.

We closed the session by having participants make their own program timelines, focusing on key moments that shaped the structure and approach of their programs, and then to think about specific questions, like: What premises and theoretical frameworks inform your work? How might the skills you teach be relevant to all PhD students? How can you communicate your value, and position your program for long-term success? I hope you find some inspiration in my story and I look forward to continuing the conversation.

References

ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012. Retrieved from https://www.actfl.org/educator-resources/actfl-proficiency-guidelines/english

Brookfield, S.D. 2017. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. John Wiley & Sons.

Lovitts, B. (2007). Making the implicit explicit: Creating performance expectations for the dissertation. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Lovitts, B. (2008). The transition to independent research: Who makes it, who doesn’t, and why. The Journal of Higher Education, 79(3), 296-325.

Mendoza, P. (2007). Academic capitalism and doctoral student socialization: A case study. The Journal of Higher Education, 78(1), 71-96.

Swales, J. (2008). Foreword. In Casanave, C. and Li, X. (Eds), Learning the Literacy Practices of Graduate School (pp. ix-xi). Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press.

Pamela Pollock is the Director of Professional Development at Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. She holds a PhD in Learning, Teaching and Social Policy from Cornell University, a MA in Foreign Language Education from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in Spanish from Bryn Mawr College. She leads a full portfolio of teacher training, professional development, and scholarly communication programming for graduate students, including the Professional Communication Program for International Teachers and Scholars. She has been a member of the ITA-IS since 2002.