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STEM graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are responsible for teaching many undergraduate students. Yet, graduate teaching assistants typically receive limited formal pedagogical preparation. The reasons for this lack of professional development are sometimes external to the GTAs themselves (e.g., time or monetary cost to participate, few training opportunities offered by departmental leaders) and sometimes internal to the GTAs (e.g., their intrinsic desires or motivations to participate in such trainings, particularly if trainings are voluntary). In this study, we focus on those internal (motivational) reasons for the engagement, or lack thereof, of GTAs in teaching professional development. In particular, we used Self-Determination Theory as an analytical framework to explore GTAs’ motivation to engage in teaching professional development (TPD) programs to support their instructional practices. We conducted a scoping review of the literature with the purpose of identifying key features or characteristics of GTAs’ perceptions of their psychological needs for teaching, including competence, autonomy, and relatedness. This review identified 82 articles, published from 1989 to 2024. We found that GTAs tended to express high perceptions of instructional competence and variable perceptions of autonomy to make decisions around their teaching. This review also found common supports and thwarts to the development of GTAs’ positive perceptions of their psychological needs. TPD programs appeared to generally have positive impacts on GTAs’ perceptions of teaching competence, autonomy, and relatedness, which leads to a potential outcome of further engagement in TPD programs. Common thwarts we found were when GTAs taught courses where supervisors emphasized consistency among course sections, had unclear expectations, limited feedback on their instruction, or weak relationships with teaching colleagues. This review has implications for future research to address the development of GTAs’ positive perceptions of teaching autonomy and relatedness, leading to more engagement with TPD programs, and better instructional outcomes with undergraduate students. 

Understanding departmental teaching culture has been recognized as a useful starting point for implementing instructional and institutional change. However, there is a lack of consistency in the literature with respect to how teaching culture is operationally defined and systematically measured. In order to begin addressing this gap, we highlight findings from a series of focus groups conducted within a math department in the Southeastern United States. Utilizing Reinholz and Apkarian’s (2018) Four Frames model, we characterize the department’s culture through the four interrelated frames of structures, symbols, people, and power. These frames provide a snapshot of the unique math departmental teaching culture, which can be leveraged not only to assess the effectiveness of future change initiatives, but also to individualize such change initiatives to meet the unique needs of the department. 

During their STEM degrees, undergraduates often experience instruction from a diversity of professionals, including graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, adjunct instructors, and tenure-track research faculty. Graduate student instructors are important to support retention efforts since graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are often responsible for teaching introductory STEM gateway courses. Despite the importance of GTAs' instruction to influence undergraduate education, they often have little teaching professional development (TPD) or ability to influence the curricula. Thus, careful thinking about how to support GTAs in teaching is needed to impact the quality of undergraduate instruction and support retention efforts. This dissertation specifically used two lenses to explore GTAs' motivation to use evidence-based instructional practices and engage in TPD: 1) pedagogical discontentment and 2) the psychological needs of self-determination theory (SDT). Each of the three studies within this dissertation addressed slightly different, but complementary, aspects of GTAs’ motivation. Study one (Chapter 2), GTAs’ Engagement in Teaching Professional Development, was a mixed-methods study aimed to understand GTAs’ motivation to engage in TPD through the lens of pedagogical discontentment. Study two (Chapter 3), Scoping Review of GTAs’ Psychological Needs for Teaching, conducted a scoping review of the GTA literature through the lens of SDT. Study three (Chapter 4), Departmental Teaching Culture Through the Lens of Self-Determination Theory, was a mixed-methods study aimed to understand the satisfaction or frustration of individual psychological needs (of GTAs and faculty members) and cultural needs of STEM departments. Across these studies and through these theoretical frameworks, I found the importance of supporting GTAs’ perceptions of their instructional autonomy in determining how and why they teach. In addition, I found that GTA and faculty instructors tend to perceive high competence in their instruction despite other concerns. Additionally, as Chapter 4 highlights, supporting departmental culture change related to professional development of GTAs will likely rely on the department’s value (or lack of value) for supporting the psychological needs of GTAs in teaching. Many of the findings provide unique insights into supporting and understanding instructor motivation to engage in TPD, change their instructional practices, and experience psychological well-being.