Pedagogical Autoethnography: Autoethnographic Research with Graduate Teaching Assistants in an ESL Environment.

In the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez campus (UPRM), the Basic English and Intermediate English Sequences are primarily taught by the by Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) who are instructors of record enrolled in the UPRM’s Master of Arts in English Education (MAEE) Program. While some GTAs come in to the program with prior teaching knowledge and experience, these GTAs are expected to teach these general education courses with a strong English as a Second Language (ESL) component with relatively minimal training in the field of education. Through the collection and study of pedagogical autoethnographies that are part of my thesis project, I am studying how GTAs perceive their own teaching of ESL students in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean by looking at how these graduate students are incorporating non- canonical literatures and texts into their curricula as a means to stimulate discussion. This presentation discusses a project I developed for GTAs to create curricular units emulating the model used in Diana Fuss and William A. Gleeson’s book The Pocket Instructor: Literature: 101 Exercises for the College Discussion. These units present a single lesson where the GTAs demonstrate the alternate pedagogy project they do in the English language classroom and a pedagogical autoethnography that they write, self-reflecting on their unit and how it stimulated discussion among their students. By looking at three of the pedagogical autoethnographies submitted by GTAs from the MAEE program in the UPRM, I am observing how GTAs self-reflect on their own teaching in these complex classrooms. Furthermore, this research looks to bring information and expand knowledge on how pedagogical autoethnographies hold the potential to help GTAs improve their teaching through self-reflection, especially in contact zones and border areas.