# Challenges Faced by Teaching Assistants
in Computer Science Education Across Europe

Emma Riese  KTH Royal Institute of TechnologySweden<EMAIL_ADDRESS>0000-0002-4525-3568 ,  Madeleine Lorås  Norwegian University of Science and
TechnologyNorway<EMAIL_ADDRESS>0000-0003-4152-775X ,  Martin Ukrop
Masaryk UniversityCzech Republic<EMAIL_ADDRESS>0000-0001-8110-8926 and
Tomáš Effenberger  Masaryk UniversityCzech Republic
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>0000-0001-5601-926X

(2021)

###### Abstract.

Teaching assistants (TAs) are heavily used in computer science courses as a
way to handle high enrollment and still being able to offer students
individual tutoring and detailed assessments. TAs are themselves students who
take on this additional role in parallel with their own studies at the same
institution. Previous research has shown that being a TA can be challenging
but has mainly been conducted on TAs from a single institution or within a
single course. This paper offers a multi-institutional, multi-national
perspective of challenges that TAs in computer science face. This has been
done by conducting a thematic analysis of 180 reflective essays written by TAs
from three institutions across Europe. The thematic analysis resulted in five
main challenges: becoming a professional TA, student focused challenges,
assessment, defining and using best practice, and threats to best practice. In
addition, these challenges were all identified within the essays from all
three institutions, indicating that the identified challenges are not
particularly context-dependent. Based on these findings, we also outline
implications for educators involved in TA training and coordinators of
computer science courses with TAs.

Teaching assistants, TAs, challenges

††journalyear: 2021††copyright: rightsretained††conference: 26th Annual
Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1;
June 26-July 1, 2021; Virtual Event, Germany††booktitle: 26th Annual
Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1
(ITiCSE ’2021), June 26-July 1, 2021, Virtual Event, Germany††doi:
10.1145/3430665.3456304††isbn: 978-1-4503-8214-4/21/06††ccs: Social and
professional topics Computing education††ccs: Social and professional topics
Computer science education

##  1\. Introduction

To teach and to learn computer science (CS) has been viewed as challenging and
difficult by many previous studies (Guzdial, 2015). Enrollment in CS courses
at the university level has continued to increase (Sax et al., 2017).
Specifically, at the introductory level, courses with hundreds or even
thousands of students are not rare. To manage these courses, teaching
assistants (TAs, students who are employed to assist the faculty), are
commonly used in CS (Mirza et al., 2019). However, the TA perspective is not
fully explored, and previous research has mostly reported on experiences from
a single institution, course, intervention, or TA training initiative (Mirza
et al., 2019). To the authors’ knowledge, no previous multi-national, multi-
institutional study on TAs in CS have been conducted. This study aims to fill
that gap by presenting and comparing data from three institutions in three
different European countries. This paper aims to explore which main challenges
TAs in CS face in their work and investigate whether or not the challenges
differ between the three institutions. We define a challenge as something that
is directly or indirectly described as an issue or difficulty. This paper is
focused on two research questions (RQs):

  1. (RQ1)

Which challenges do TAs in computer science face?

  2. (RQ2)

Are the identified challenges similar or different across institutions and
countries?

By increasing our knowledge and understanding of what our TAs experience as
challenging in CS courses, instructors can make more informed decisions
regarding their course structures and TA training. By providing a multi-
national perspective on the perceived challenges, we aim to provide a more
generalizable and nuanced picture relevant to the CS education community.

##  2\. Related Research and Theory

TAs have been employed to assist faculty in many CS courses at multiple
institutions (Mirza et al., 2019). Using TAs makes it possible to offer
students individual guidance and feedback, also in large classes (Reges et
al., 1988; Mirza et al., 2019; Ren et al., 2019). The TAs’ work tasks differ
between universities and courses, but often include conducting tutorials,
assisting students during programming labs, developing course material, and
assessing homework or exams (Mirza et al., 2019). Grading students’ work,
referred to as summative assessment (Taras, 2005; Dixson and Worrell, 2016),
is not a work task for all TAs. Some universities have strict rules stating
that TAs are explicitly not allowed to grade students, which is only carried
out by senior staff members or faculty members (Vihavainen et al., 2013;
Lorås, 2020). On the other hand, TAs can be responsible for tutoring and
providing feedback to the students throughout the course, referred to as
formative assessment (Taras, 2005; Dixson and Worrell, 2016). The assessment
carried out during a course should also be clearly linked to the intended
learning outcomes and learning activities, referred to as constructive
alignment (Biggs, 1996). At some institutions, the TAs take an active role in
constructing learning activities and assessment tasks (Riese and Kann, 2020;
Alvarado et al., 2017; Ukrop et al., 2020; Biggers et al., 2009), which
entails that the TAs are also contributing to the course structure and content
to some extent. Previous research has also shown that TAs who conduct
assessments in a group setting achieve higher reliability (Harrington et al.,
2018), compared to in a solo-setting.

TAs have been found to be a contributing factor for student success (DeChenne
et al., 2015). Students can also view their TA as their main teacher within a
course (Riese and Stenbom, 2020), that is, the person they have most
interactions with and turn to for help. The fact that TAs are themselves also
students has been argued to make the TAs more approachable than professors or
senior lectures (Decker et al., 2006; Ren et al., 2019). Furthermore, the fact
that the TAs were, often recently, enrolled in a similar course helps them
relate to the students and foresee possible misconceptions (Ren et al., 2019).
However, previous research has also shown that some TAs view their students as
their friends, which can make the TA role challenging and can cause conflicts
of interest to arise when grading (Riese and Kann, 2020). Both students (Riese
and Stenbom, 2020) and TAs (Riese, 2018; Muzaka, 2009; DeChenne et al., 2015)
have experienced that they are not always properly trained for the TA role and
lack pedagogical skills and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). PCK, as
introduced by Shulman (Shulman, 1986, 1987) is described as a combination or
overlap between content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge, that is,
knowledge on how to teach the specific content. This framework was later
extended by Mishra and Koehler (Mishra and Koehler, 2006) to also include a
technology knowledge component. The technology knowledge dimension intersects
with both the pedagogical knowledge and the content knowledge dimension, in
what is referred to as technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK)
(Mishra and Koehler, 2006). Both the PCK and the TPACK framework have
previously been applied to CS contexts, mainly in the K-12 teacher education
settings (Vivian and Falkner, 2019; Buchholz et al., 2013; Brandes and Armoni,
2019).

Efforts to support the TAs by offering TA training have been reported and
presented in a number of publications, such as (Forbes et al., 2017; Brent et
al., 2007; Estrada and Tafliovich, 2017; Ukrop et al., 2019; Lorås, 2020;
Ukrop et al., 2020). Furthermore, training has been reported to be an
important factor in the TAs’ professional development (Marbouti et al., 2013;
Moon et al., 2013). One institution reported positive results with a team-
teaching approach, where novice and experienced TAs were paired to work
together when conducting tutorials (Patitsas, 2013). The offering of
introductory TA training has been suggested to bridge the gap between desired
and actual competency among newly employed TAs (Estrada and Tafliovich, 2017).
The social environment and the intensity of lab sessions have also been found
to affect job satisfaction among TAs (Patitsas, 2012). Some institutions have
reported on high interest among students to become TAs (Roberts et al., 1995;
Vihavainen et al., 2013), however, this is not the case at all institutions.
How the TAs are recruited to the courses could also differ between
universities (Mirza et al., 2019), and a rubric to make the decision
transparent and fair has been proposed in a previous study (Leyzberg et al.,
2017).

##  3\. Method

Table 1. Comparison of the three participating institutions, their CS departments and TA situation |  |  NTNU, Norway |  KTH, Sweden |  MUNI, Czechia
---|---|---|---|---
Institution |  Overall |  research-focused university, 8 faculties, 7 000 employees, 42 000 students |  research-focused university, 1 faculty, 5 000 employees, 15 000 students |  research-focused university, 9 faculties, 6 000 employees, 35 000 students
CS department |  3 000 students, approx. 500 TAs |  4 400 students, approx. 150 TAs |  2 000 students, approx. 150 TAs
CS courses |  7.5 ECTS, 50–3 600 students/course |  3–9 ECTS, 20–250 students/course |  2–8 ECTS, 10–700 students/course
TAs’ level |  bachelor, master, doctoral students |  bachelor, master, doctoral students |  bachelor, master, doctoral students
TA position |  Responsibilities |  hold open lab hours, assess assignments (often oral), facilitate project work, (rarely) lecture |  hold open lab hours, assess assignments (often oral), grade exams, conduct tutorials |  conduct tutorials, hold open lab hours, grade assignments, grade exams, (rarely) lecture
Assessment |  cannot formally grade, but can assign pass/fail to assignments |  grade assignments (pass/fail or A–F), the examiner is formally responsible |  grade assignments (pass/fail or points), sometimes grade exams
Payment |  both teaching and preparation |  both teaching and preparation |  both teaching and preparation
Recruitment |  faculty-wide system based on grades and experience |  course coordinators recruit independently based on their requirements |  course lecturers recruit independently based on their requirements
TA training |  Format |  20 hours; several teaching blocks throughout the semester |  6 hours; 3 online modules and 2 workshops before the semester |  30 hours; weekly seminars during the whole semester
Participation |  only new TAs, mandatory |  only new TAs, mandatory |  any TAs, optional
Compensation |  paid for the time in training |  paid for the time in training |  3 ECTS credits for training

In order to investigate which challenges TAs in CS face (RQ1), we collected
reflection essays from TAs from three different institutions in three
different European countries (RQ2). This paper does not aim to evaluate the
three institutions’ use of TAs, but understanding their characteristics is
important in order to understand the results. The different institutions and
their TA programs are therefore described in Table 1. At each institution, we
asked TAs to reflect on their own practice by answering these questions:

> “Describe an interesting situation or interaction you have experienced as an
> assistant. It can be something you found challenging, an ethical dilemma, or
> just something that has been on your mind. Reflect on how you handled the
> situation. What did you do well? What would you have done differently? Is
> there something you would like feedback on or questions you have?”

At NTNU and KTH, the essays were collected as part of introductory TA training
courses. At NTNU, the data was collected during 2018 and 2019, towards the
ends of respective semesters, and at KTH, during the beginning of fall
semester 2020. The essays were not graded on the content, but the TAs had to
hand them in to complete their TA training course. At KTH, the TAs were also
allowed to describe a fictive situation that they thought could occur since
some of the TAs enrolled in the training course were very recently employed
and had not yet gained much TA experience (but all of whom had been on the
student side of TA-student interactions for years). At MUNI, the essays were
collected during summer 2020 through the distribution of a digital survey
asking the above-presented questions. The survey was distributed to all TAs
enrolled in a voluntary TA training course in the previous four years and all
the TAs of the second-largest undergraduate programming course. It was
completely voluntary for all TAs to let their (anonymized) essays be part of
this study, and informed consent was collected from all TAs. The data
collection consist of 180 essays (119 from NTNU, 32 from KTH and 29 from
MUNI). The essays were each half a page to a page long. A majority of the
essays were written in the official languages of the given country, and a few
were written in English. The essays from NTNU and KTH were analyzed in their
original languages, while the essays from MUNI were first translated to
English.

The essays were analyzed using a thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006)
aiming to identify common themes (the challenges) the TAs had written about.
We followed the six steps outlined in (Braun and Clarke, 2006), but with some
adaption to the specific data set at hand. The analysis was carried out for
the data from one institution at the time and then merged at the final stage
of the analysis. For the set of essays from each institution, two researchers
first coded all essays independently and summarized both the initial codes,
and identified themes of their respective analysis. The two researchers then
met to discuss and compare the findings of their independent analysis. This
resulted in an agreement of the final themes and codes identified for each
subset of data. The analysis was also conducted with some time between to
minimize the interference of the previously found themes. Once the analysis of
all three subsets was completed, we started to view the data as a complete set
and merged the identified codes and themes. While doing so, we created a copy
of the codes and themes that omitted which institution they originated from.
This was done to not be influenced by the origin of the codes (since RQ2 aims
to investigate potential differences). This data was, however, kept separate
so we cold backtrack and validate the origin after this step was completed,
and the writing up of the results began. The final merging and formulation of
the codes and themes was also carried out by both researchers independently,
followed by a discussion resulting in the final themes. When this was
completed, we revisited the essays and previous codes to validate our findings
and backtrack the origin of themes. We also decided to cut out the parts of
the data that were only about constraints or challenges caused by the COVID-19
pandemic since the data from NTNU was collected before the pandemic broke out.

##  4\. Results

Figure 1. Main challenges identified in the thematic analysis

From the thematic analysis, we identified results along two central dimensions
corresponding to the posed research questions: main challenges and
institutional similarities and differences. The main challenges that were
identified from the analysis are presented in Figure 1 along with all sub-
themes corresponding to each main challenge.

###  4.1. Main Challenges

Each main challenge represents a theme describing an area TAs found
challenging. Each theme consists of a set of sub-themes, aggregated from the
codes and represent recurring topics in the TAs reflections across the three
included institutions.111A complete overview of themes, codes, and exemplary
quotes can be found at https://doi.org/10.18710/O8FCIK. Although the main
challenges are separate issues, TAs would often mention several main
challenges in one example, illustrating that there are also complex
interconnections present between the identified themes.

####  4.1.1. Becoming a professional TA

Being a professional was a topic many TAs reflected on as important but
challenging. They described a mismatch of expectations between course teachers
and students, especially in combination with unclear instructions. For
example, course teachers would intend TAs to mainly facilitate group work,
while the students expected debugging help and technical support. The TA
community was seen as an important support network, but discovering unethical
behavior of other TAs were sometimes mentioned as well. Multiple TAs noted
areas they once found challenging but have since overcome, such as public
speaking and personal interactions.

####  4.1.2. Student focused challenges

TAs reported on challenging experiences handling the vast diversity of
students. From students with special needs, students dealing with personal
problems to those unhappy about their assessment, or students working in
groups. The level of content knowledge could also differ, from students who
were very advanced to weaker students who were behind in the course. It was
also described as challenging to meet unmotivated, passive, and unprepared
students, as well as students who did not want help or were only focused on
end results. The TAs also reflected on the uncomfortable interaction in
situations with overly emotional, stressed, or upset students.

Multiple TAs reported that their own relationships with particular students
sometimes made the interactions even more complicated. These included pre-
existing friendly and romantic relationships, as well as the development of
the TA-student relationship over the semester. Although many TAs highlighted
the pedagogic benefits of having or developing strong relationships with their
students, they also found it challenging to set boundaries and be
professional, as is illustrated by the quote below.

> “It is not always so easy to grade their [close friends’] papers and I feel
> a conflict of interest while doing so. […] It does not always feel fair that
> I spend so much time guiding my friends and not the rest of the students. It
> seems that the threshold for asking a friend through a FB-message is much
> lower than sending an email to an unknown teaching assistant.” [TA 48, NTNU]

####  4.1.3. Assessment

TAs found it challenging to develop and/or interpret passing/grading criteria,
specifically mentioning determining what is “good enough”, treating all the
students fairly, and assessing effort and group work. Not surprisingly,
failing a student was considered challenging: TAs reported feeling pressure
from the students and uncomfortable announcing that the student failed,
particularly in face-to-face interactions within hearing distance of other
students. A further challenging aspect was cheating. Both determining if the
submitted work was, in fact, plagiarized and acting on suspicions of unethical
behavior were described as common challenges. In the formative paradigm, TAs
reported that providing useful feedback was challenging, especially to
students who were solely focused on the end result. Furthermore, TAs often
described the challenge of giving both formative and summative feedback to the
same students, sometimes even in the same session (guiding a struggling
student and then immediately assessing if the submission was adequate).

####  4.1.4. Defining and using best practice

Overall, many TAs found it challenging to identify good practice for efficient
teaching and learning CS and in applying it in practice. The topics mentioned
included, for instance, visualizing code flow, writing pseudo-code, being
creative, problem decomposition, and planning before coding. As a prominent
sub-theme, the TAs found it challenging to teach at the students’ level of
understanding. First, the TAs needed to map the students’ knowledge and
understanding of the topic and then try to support them from there.
Specifically, it was challenging for the TAs to formulate good questions and
work with the student. Helping students reflect on their work and supporting
good study habits was also brought up as wanted best practices but experienced
as challenging to put into practice. TAs also mentioned to struggle with how
to properly prepare for tutorials and lab sessions, feeling confident in
teaching, making students feel confident and motivating them, and handling
arising conflicts.

####  4.1.5. Threats to best practice

Although TAs reported on a plethora of effective pedagogical and didactic
strategies to help students learn, they often went hand in hand with a
challenge. For example, giving feedback to students’ code, debugging code, and
using pair programming. Several TAs reflected on the fact that CS was a new
and difficult topic for many students, especially in the introductory courses.
The following quote illustrated another aspect tied to the CS content: There
are often multiple ways to solve an assignment, making it difficult to assess.

> “As a TA I have met students who solve lab assignments in a very different
> way than the course teacher’s solution. […] It is a lot harder for a TA to
> assess these kinds of solutions. First the TA must interpret what the goal
> of the assignment was and what the central aspects in functionality and
> interaction were.” [TA 19, KTH]

In project-based courses, the programming language and technology used is
sometimes up to the students to decide, resulting in TAs having to support
topics outside their expertise. Furthermore, TAs also reported technical
issues that stand in the way of learning the content (e.g., IDEs, operating
system, version control).

Furthermore, TAs described being insecure about their lack of content
knowledge, especially with new material, and, in general, just being worried
about giving out the wrong information to their students. Providing the right
amount of help was a commonly mentioned challenge as well. Concretely,
resisting the urge to take over the student’s keyboard, not pushing your own
solutions, and balancing help, guidance, and teaching.

The threat to adopting best practice that most TAs reported on was, however,
in-class time constraints. The time challenge involved dividing time evenly,
prioritizing students who needed help, assessing students who like to present
their solutions, and giving time to advanced students. The time predicament
was visible throughout many identified themes, as illustrated by the quote
below.

> “In stressful situations, it can be easy to forget to take it slow to make
> sure the student understands fully what you are trying to help with. […] In
> addition, I have a tendency to take over the students’ keyboard when I feel
> the time pressure. One should always take the time to make sure the student
> has understood the problem you have been helping them with and adding some
> constructive feedback.” [TA 6, NTNU]

###  4.2. Institutional Similarities and Differences

In order to address the second research question, we need to examine the
similarities and differences across institutions and countries. As described
in Table 1, the way TAs work differs somewhat at MUNI compared to the other
two institutions. At NTNU and KTH, TAs mostly help and support the students in
open labs and determine if assignments are passed or failed. At MUNI, however,
TAs have a more formal role, mostly conducting tutorials, assigning homework,
and grading. Additionally, the TAs at KTH and MUNI plan and conduct tutorials,
while TAs at NTNU have less responsibility in the planning and are just there
to answer questions and conduct pass/fail assessment.

However, neither of these differences was prevalent in the main challenges
presented in the previous section. While we found that the different
structures lead to different specific situations, we also found that the core
challenges remained the same across the studied institutions. TAs at NTNU and
KTH would describe time management issues with students one-to-one or in the
queue, while TAs at MUNI would discuss how to divide the time during a
tutorial. An example becomes apparent with this reflection from a TA at MUNI:

> “I tried from the beginning to explain the most important things, so that
> most of them [students] at least had a chance to ‘catch the train’, but it
> was at the expense of the time spent working on exercises.” [TA 23, MUNI]

Comparing the statement above to the second quote from NTNU in Section 4.1.5
about time management, it is evident that even though the specific situations
were different, the core challenge was time constraints. At NTNU, the
challenge was how to manage the time when helping students individually and to
use best practices under stress. At MUNI, the challenge was how to divide the
time in a tutorial between revising information from the lecture and working
on exercises. These are both examples of the time constraints theme, but with
different specific situations in different educational structures at the two
universities.

Similarly, TAs at NTNU and KTH who did not formally decide on the grading
experienced similar challenges regarding assessment as the TAs at MUNI who
have that responsibility. Passing/failing assessments were described as
similarly challenging, regarding assessing friends, setting the standard, and
giving feedback, as actually setting a grade. Therefore, it can be concluded
that all main challenges described were found to be similar across the
examined institutions and countries, regardless of the education structure.

##  5\. Discussion

We have identified five main challenges that the TAs at NTNU, KTH and MUNI
face: becoming a professional TA, student focused challenges,assessment,
defining and using best practice, and threats to best practice. In many
regards, these results confirm previous findings about the TAs’ experiences.
To begin with, our results strengthen the claim that TAs need help and support
to develop within their role, which has also previously been shown (Patitsas,
2013; Marbouti et al., 2013). The TA community and social environment were
shown to play a key role in that, which is also aligns with previous findings
(Patitsas, 2012). Communicating with the students and tutoring them is also a
big part of the TAs’ work tasks (Marbouti et al., 2013; Riese, 2018) and our
analysis found that this also comes with a whole set of challenges. Conducting
assessments have previously been reported as difficult for TAs (Riese, 2018;
Marbouti et al., 2013; Harrington et al., 2018). Furthermore, it has been
found that TAs are both the tutor and grader to the same students (Riese and
Kann, 2020), two roles that are non-trivial to combine.

The fact that TAs experience that they are approachable to their students (Ren
et al., 2019), also comes with the downside of being too close to their
students. A previous study reported that the TAs could view themselves as
friends to their students (Riese and Kann, 2020), and our results extend on
that. Our results show that personal relationships between TAs and their
students exist and could be challenging for the TAs to handle. Time
constraints have also been found to be hindering and challenging in previous
studies (Marbouti et al., 2013; Riese, 2018), which was confirmed by this
study. The major challenges that have not received the same focus in previous
studies are defining and using best practice. Although there have been studies
reporting on training initiatives for TAs in CS (Forbes et al., 2017; Brent et
al., 2007; Estrada and Tafliovich, 2017; Ukrop et al., 2019; Lorås, 2020;
Ukrop et al., 2020), little emphasis has been put on the CS specific best
practices that we found the TAs also face. It is not surprising since CS is
considered hard to both teach and learn (Guzdial, 2015). Our findings, point
towards challenges that span through the whole TPACK (technological,
pedagogical and content knowledge) framework (Mishra and Koehler, 2006),
including content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, technology knowledge, and
where they intersect. It is noteworthy, that TAs who have all been studying CS
themselves experienced technical issues, and found the use of new software
challenging. This has not been reported before and shows that it can not be
taken for granted that you are an expert on all new technology simply because
you are a CS TA.

The previous studies to which we have compared our results have, however, been
conducted in small scales, isolated to one institution or one course. With our
findings regarding RQ2, we could see that the identified challenges are
present at multiple institutions in multiple countries. It is also interesting
to note that these challenges were found to be similar across the
institutions, despite different organizational structures. We would like to
emphasize that TAs who take an active role in assigning homework or designing
course material need to be aware of the intended learning outcomes, in order
to be able to achieve constructive alignment (Biggs, 1996) in the courses. The
same applies for TAs who are tasked with using and interpreting
passing/grading criteria. In order for the TAs to be successful and follow the
course requirements, they need to understand the aim of each assignment they
grade and each tutorial they conduct.

###  5.1. Implications

Based on these findings, we would like to highlight some implications for
educators involved in TA training and coordinators of CS courses with TAs. The
presented recommendations can also work as pointers for future research
studies since whether or not they do have a positive effect on the TA
experience remains to be investigated. Since this study shows that the
identified challenges are similar between the three studied institutions, we
would also argue that smaller scaled studies to address these can be valuable
for the CS education community.

####  5.1.1. Be aware that best practice needs to be defined and spread.

We can not assume that TAs have all the necessary content, pedagogical and
technological knowledge needed as soon as they start. However, we can help TAs
define best practices in CS education and share examples of how that can be
implemented. Facilitating a social and supportive community is also believed
to aid the sharing of best practices among TAs. As shown, the TA community can
sometimes lead to the reproduction of unethical or unproductive practices, and
we would therefore argue that experience is not enough. Formal TA training
that includes illustrative examples is also needed.

####  5.1.2. Acknowledge threats to best practice and address them.

Being aware of the main threats to best practice could be seen as a first step
in overcoming these. Course coordinators have the power to make informed
decisions to minimize these threats. For instance, one of the identified
threats was working under time constraints. If you expect your TAs to be able
to give the students detailed feedback and carefully guide them through a
difficult programming problem, the TAs need to have sufficient time to do so.
Another example is that material and instructions for assessment need to be
clear, and even if they are, the TAs might still need additional help
interpreting and using them.

####  5.1.3. Dare to discuss ethical dilemmas and provide guidelines.

Dealing with ethical dilemmas, such as suspicions of plagiarism or deadline
extensions for desperate students, is something that needs to be addressed and
discussed with the TAs. The TAs need to know how to handle such situations and
take actions based on knowledge, not feelings. Even though this might seem
trivial to an experienced course coordinator, it is not trivial to all TAs.

####  5.1.4. Recognize the student-TA relationship as unique.

The social aspect of being a TA and the interaction with students are crucial
parts of the TAs’ work. Concurrently, the student-TA relation was experienced
as a major challenge for many TAs in this study. The TAs need to be equipped
with tools and techniques to be able to overcome these challenges
sufficiently. Some of the described challenges were related to general
pedagogic knowledge, such as motivating students and handling a diverse
student group. Other challenges come from the fact that TAs have other types
of relationships with their students (for instance, are friends with or even
romantically involved with their students). These are believed to be specific
to TAs and need to be addressed as such. To the faculty that train TAs, we
would recommend addressing these and providing the TAs with a good foundation
on how to handle specific situations.

###  5.2. Threats to Validity and Limitations

In this research, we have used a qualitative method, with a large sample size
(180 participants). Nevertheless, it is important to note that the sample size
between the three institutions differed, which could have had an impact when
comparing the three data sets to each other. If a theme was not present in the
data set for an institution, that does not necessarily imply that the TAs have
not experienced that challenge since we did not ask the TAs to name all
challenges they ever encountered. However, we did not find any major
differences between the institutions. This finding both strengthens the claim
that the identified themes were truly the main challenges across the
institutions and that even the smaller sample sizes (29–32) were sufficient to
capture these through asking open-ended questions. It should also be noted
that the open-ended questions did not explicitly ask the TAs to name their
main challenges but rather to describe a situation or interaction and reflect
upon it. It is, of course, a possibility that the TAs would have written
something else if asked explicitly, but this method was chosen to give us the
teaching contexts and enable the TAs to describe a challenging situation
without having to pinpoint a specific challenge. The data is also limited by
what the TAs were comfortable sharing. All collected data are also self-
reported by the TAs – asking the students and course coordinators or lecturers
for their view on these challenges would be an interesting additional input
and possibility to validate the results further.

A limitation of the setup of this study is that we only studied three
institutions within Europe, and the generalizability to other institutions is
not investigated. In this research, we did also not take into account how much
experience the TAs have had prior to writing their reflections, which could
impact what they wrote in their essays. The data were not collected with prior
experience as a controlled variable. At KTH, a majority of the TAs were new
TAs, writing these essays at the beginning of the semester, at NTNU the TAs
wrote these essays at the end of their first semester, and at MUNI it was more
scattered. The unified results do suggest that the identified challenges are
found across institutions and among TAs with different long experience, but we
can not make any claims on to which degree experience played a role from this
study. The presented results should also not be seen as a complete list of
challenges that TAs in CS face. That was also not the aim of this research,
and the results should rather be seen as a list of main challenges identified
across the three studied institutions. In this study, all steps in the
thematic analysis were carried out by two researchers independently, followed
by a discussion resulting in an agreement. This rigorous process strengthens
the trustworthiness of the results.

##  6\. Conclusions

In this study, we have identified five main challenges that TAs in CS face by
analyzing 180 reflective essays from TAs from three different institutions in
three different countries. We also found that the identified challenges
(becoming a professional TA, student focused challenges, assessment, defining
and using best practice, and threats to best practice) were present in the
essays from all three intuitions. In fact, no major differences were found
between the institutions, despite the different organizational setups. We
conclude by emphasizing that TA training and support are needed in order to
assist the TAs in overcoming these challenges.

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