The Ph.D. Panic: Examining the Relationships Among Teaching Anxiety, Teaching Self-Efficacy, And Coping in Biology Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs)

Abstract

Anxiety among graduate students in the United States has increased over the last several decades, affecting not only their overall mental health but also reducing retention in graduate programs. High teaching anxiety can negatively impact teacher well-being and student learning, yet teaching anxiety in graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) is not well studied. Biology GTAs teach most introductory Biology labs and discussions nationally, thus broadly influencing the quality of undergraduate education. We investigated Biology GTA teaching anxiety at a large research-intensive university by (1) measuring teaching anxiety of Biology GTAs, and (2) exploring the relationships between teaching anxiety, self-efficacy, and coping. Using correlation plots and multiple linear regressions, we found that greater teaching self-efficacy was related to lower teaching anxiety in Biology GTAs (R²adj=0.65, p<0.001), and coping was positively correlated to self-efficacy. These results suggest that teaching self-efficacy is important to reducing teaching anxiety, and coping frequency may help to build self-efficacy. Thus, effective coping may be linked to reduced anxiety via increases in self-efficacy, although these specific relationships need to be further explored. Although anxiety did not differ significantly among graduate students in our population, reduced anxiety was linked to direct increases in self-efficacy and indirect increases in coping. With a rising mental health crisis in academia, particularly among graduate students, these results can inform teaching professional development for GTAs, by incorporating dialogue about teaching anxiety, self-efficacy, and coping. Encouraging greater awareness and discussion about mental health issues in academia, we can further reduce its stigma and mitigate its impacts.