Opening Bandura's Box of Experiences: Exploring GTAs' Sense of Plausibility about ESL Teaching

Abstract

Most available resources on Graduate Teaching Assistants’ (GTAs) classroom pedagogy often emphasise prescriptive accounts of their roles and responsibilities rather than underlying mechanisms which shape their teaching practices. Recent studies in GTA research have begun drawing on teacher education frameworks to better understand GTAs' teaching practices. Extending this line of inquiry, this paper aims to trace GTA’s intuitive yet perceptual understanding of ESL teaching through N.S. Prabhu’s construct of Teacher’s Sense of Plausibility (TSOP). It begins by discussing the recent literature, theoretical frameworks, and models that have been invested in exploring the nature and forces contributing to GTAs' pedagogical identity formation. Furthermore, the paper revisits the construct of the teacher's sense of plausibility, elaborates on its evolution, and presents a four- staged model of the same. The paper then reports a qualitative case study conducted with seven GTAs from the Indian context, which aimed at: a) getting insights into their TSOPs regarding teaching English as a second language, and b) finding out whether they think reflecting on their TSOPs is an effective reflective practice or not. The use of two writing prompts (a life history task and a TSOP discussion sheet for semi-structured interviews) to elicit data, upon content and thematic analysis (via inductive and deductive coding), revealed: a) GTAs TSOPs varied from traditional to creative forms of teaching, demonstrating potential links in their early career and educational experiences; b) While most GTAs valued TSOP as a reflective practice, they emphasised the need for contextually sensitive teacher training and institutional support to sustain its impact. The paper calls for a shift from prescriptive ‘how to teach’ approaches to reflective inquiries into ‘what and how we teach’, offering suggestions for future research.