Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs): Roles, Perspectives, and Prioritizing GTA Workforce Development Pathways

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

It was a pleasure reading your work. It is an undeniable fact that hands-on experience for every profession is valuable. Especially in academic world, for an academician, teaching or researching or doing both simultaneously, the workload is too much. Therefore, starting a career with polished skill sets is a great opportunity and highlighting the importance of GTAs and the increasing demand is significant. I reviewed the text a few times to see the details regarding the participant GTAs in the research, however, I could not see a table stating their majors, current positions, roles, responsibilities and other data that would give the readers a better overview for further research, so it seems necessary to insert a table of participants. In addition, the actual learning process for the GTAs could be added to the paper if there is more relevant data regarding it since the value of hands-on experience is reflected in the learning of the subject of it. The reason for choosing R2 universities could also be highlighted more although the reason for the selection is given only in the introduction. Apart from these revisions, it is a valuable work. Good luck with it.

Best.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Education Sciences April 2025

 

General Comments

This paper is about an important topic but is far far too long given the scope of the inquiry. This is not a review paper, but presenting the results of a study of GTAs at one institution. The background includes long laundry lists of data, of training programs, without focusing on how the study at this one institution will advance the existing evidence base.

 

 

Abstract

Spell out DBER

 

 

Background

Page 1, Line 38-40. Not clear how the voluminous data support the statement – non-tenure-track faculty positions are not necessarily adjunct or graduate students. There’s no evidence that GTAs are engaged in teaching functions without any faculty (at least, not presented here) and no evidence presented that faculty of various appointment types rely more or less on GTAs.

 

Background lists lots of global trends but the paper is about GTAs at an institution in the united states in the Midwest – focus on the US.

 

The background lists a long laundry list of different institutions that provide trainings. Consider moving this to a table or figure – it was difficult to read and its relevance to the research question – perceptions and experiences of a set of GTAs – is not clear.  Furthermore, several other papers have been published on the content and effectiveness specifically for GTAs, and specifically in STEM fields – these need to be cited rather than a list of institutions.

The discipline of the GTAs in question isn’t clear here – the research question as laid out on page 3 line 133 makes no mention at all of the discipline, which is essential to contextualize the study. (The methods section indicates it was all colleges, but with 80% STEM, so this needs to be moved up earlier).

 

Methods

Page 4, Line 150 – Lists the tests that are used but it’s unclear to answer what questions. What is the research question that would require logistic regression? It appears far later on line 220. The specific research questions that would be explored need to be laid out in the background.

 

Same paragraph, line 160 on, I don’t follow this at all – the authors indicate that “it became unclear how to interpret overlapping selections” – this is something for which the authors should have received guidance on before writing the paper. There is no need for the paragraph to explain the generally pretty clear method of how to handle such data.

The response rate/denominator needs to be reported.

 

Results

This can be far briefer – this seems to be just a laundry list of the survey data that are presented in the Tables and Figures (which were not provided in this reviewer’s copy).

 

Given the length of this paper and the lack of specificity of the research question, the findings, and the contextualization of this inquiry within published research, I am unable to provide meaningful feedback on the Discussion.

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Multiple figures are referenced but I did not find any included in the manuscript or supplemental file. 

Data analysis methods are not easily understood with the depth of explanation currently given. This could be improved by more directly detailing what data will be analyzed with what tests. 

Results that are displayed in figures do not need to be duplicated in the manuscript. Again, I do not have access to the figures, but you reference them around where you are describing the data results that are in them.

Using approximate percentages in the results, for example when describing the time spent on teaching-related duties, is not clear. If it is 25% you could just state that instead of ~25%. 

Line 215: I assume you are referring to the context of feeling valued by their students, but this could be more clearly stated to remove any doubt. 

Line 225: Statistical significance is objective, either it is or isn't statistically significant based on the significance level you choose to assign. To say it may be statistically significant with a p value greater than .05 is contradictory. Perhaps you could say this is a trend. This also should include the direction of the relationship for clarity. Is it positive so that both increase together or negative so that one increase and the other decreases? The results values of these variables could be added here as well for further clarity. 

Line 263: More context here would be helpful to clarify how authors ensured accuracy of analysis by the LLMs. Did this review by the authors result in the subsequent description of the results of these responses, or are these results directly given by the LLMs? Explanation of this would be helpful.

It would also be helpful to have some sample quotes from respondents throughout to exemplify the results that were drawn from this qualitative analysis.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please find some comments below for your review.

 Lines – 28, 29 and 30 Graduate student teaching assistants (GTAs) provide fundamental instructional, often across multiple levels of undergraduate education (e.g., Park, 2004; Sargent et al., 2009; Weidert et al., 2012; Wan et al., 2020). No need for eg.

Line 59 - enables research (e.g.,Nasser-Abu Alhija and Fresko, 2019; König, 2020; Clark et al., 2021). APA 7   as above

Line 72 - (Bieber and Worley, 2006; Emmioğlu et al., 2017; Jordan and Howe, 2018; APA 7 referencing

Line 98 -  “secondary” to research direct quote?

Line 104 - a “paradigm shift” direct quote

Line 121 - “Doctoral Universities: high research activity”  direct quote

Line 124 - graduate curricula.  -  in red comments?

Lines 167 – 177  - Red coloring?

Line 192 - Figure 1: Summary of survey respondents' tenure at the institution. It should be located at the top of the figure and not below. APA 7

Line 201 - Figure 2: Summary of survey respondents' class sizes. As above

Lines 363 – 366 I think it would be good if there were more incentives for participating in teaching effectiveness initiatives/programs at Miami - ideally monetary (especially for us graduate students)”; “I think it would be nice to have more workshops and career development funds for people wanting to go to workshops or conferences. No need for quotation marks

Lines 368 – 369 - This question received 33 responses, of which 3 replied none, not sure, 2 replied N/A, and 1 replied yes, without providing an additional response.

Line 769 – indent

 

Not really necessary to have eg with respect to quoting other sources as outlined in line 28 etc. 

Line 72 - (Bieber & Worley, 2006; Emmioğlu et al., 2017; Jordan & Howe, 2018; APA 7 referencing

Line 98 -  “secondary” to research direct quote? There are a number of references to direct quotes possibly just - 'secondary' 

Line 192 - Figure 1: Summary of survey respondents' tenure at the institution. It should be located at the top of the figure and not below. APA 7

Line 201 - Figure 2: Summary of survey respondents' class sizes. As above Referencing figures, diagrams are placed at the top - See APA 7 

Lines 363 – 366 I think it would be good if there were more incentives for participating in teaching effectiveness initiatives/programs at Miami - ideally monetary (especially for us graduate students)”; “I think it would be nice to have more workshops and career development funds for people wanting to go to workshops or conferences. No need for quotation marks. If using italics no need for punctuation marks.

Lines 368 – 369 - This question received 33 responses, of which 3 replied none, not sure, 2 replied N/A, and 1 replied yes, without providing an additional response.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a review of the manuscript, “Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs): Roles, Perspectives, and Prioritizing GTA Workforce Development Pathways. I complete research in the area of graduate student success factors; therefore, this paper is of interest to me.  

Only the first level of headings is used throughout the paper. Each section needs to be organized with second and at times, third-level headers. This will add structure to the paper and help the reader navigate its contents. Consider revising.  

Introduction 

In the first paragraph, there is a semicolon that should be a comma. Lines 32-33 

• GTAs are serving in increasingly pivotal and essential roles, one which directly support... 

 Line 35, consider rewording by removing “As a result,” in the following: 

• “As a result, and within a....” 

In-text citations with two authors use & not and to join them. 

• Incorrect: (Park and Ramos, 2002) 

• Correct: (Park & Ramos, 2022) 

Line 63, consider rewording the sentence that begins with, “For example, from French and Russel... 

Line 91, extra comma after unwritten 

For the qualitative data, it is not clear what themes were derived. This section seems to be reviewing the responses, but the analysis is unclear. This section needs to be reorganized and reflect a stronger research perspective. Consider adding a table or graphic to visually display these higher-level themes, helping the reader more easily digest the information.  

The discussion needs to be revised and reorganized for clarity. It reads more like a secondary literature review than a discussion of the findings. The findings are mentioned, but large sections of this are reviewing information on graduate students’ experiences that would typically be included in the introduction or literature review. The graphics in this section pertain to prior statistics and research, not the current study. This section should discuss the findings of the current work, highlighting how they relate to prior research.  

Appendix A: Left-align the columns. This table is somewhat cumbersome to read due to the listed answer choices. You could list the types of choices, e.g., Likert-scale, open response, question-specific. If the data is presented in the paper in a table, the choices are not necessary here.  

This paper is regarding an important topic, but the research component is lacking. It reads more as a survey debrief than a research study. Consider adding a theoretical or conceptual framework, in addition to analyzing the qualitative responses with greater depth and nuance.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for working on this manuscript. The changes you have made have added much to the article.