Research Article
Beyond Assistance: A Case Study of a Teaching Assistant in Taiwan’s English Language Teaching Assistant (ELTA) Program
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Under Taiwan’s Bilingual 2030 policy, the expansion of bilingual education has created new instructional roles in schools, yet the lived experiences of teaching assistants remain underexplored. This study adopts an interpretivist approach to understand how one teaching assistant made sense of her experience in Taiwan’s English Language Teaching Assistant (ELTA) program. Using a qualitative single-case design, the study draws on a semi-structured interview to explore how the participant interpreted her role in practice. The findings suggest that she came to understand her work as extending beyond assistance into substantial classroom involvement, including lesson preparation, instructional engagement, and ongoing adaptation. They also indicate that digital support, including generative artificial intelligence, became an important practical resource in helping her manage the demands of the role. Rather than making broader claims beyond the case, this study offers a closely contextualized account of how one participant understood and gave meaning to her work, while inviting closer consideration of how teaching assistantship may be experienced in particular bilingual education settings.
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Keywords
Teaching Assistant; Bilingual Education; Taiwan’s English Language Teaching Assistant (ELTA) Program; Sensemaking; Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI); Pedagogical Responsibility
Author(s) Information
Publisher’s Note
The claims, arguments, and counter-arguments made in this article are exclusively those of the contributing authors. Hence, they do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the authors’ affiliated institutions, or EUROKD as the publisher, the editors and the reviewers of the article.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the participant for sharing her experiences and perspectives, which made this study possible. My sincere appreciation also goes to the editorial team and anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and valuable comments throughout the review process. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge 忠欣股份有限公司 for awarding me the 2024 and 2025 TOEFL ITP Academic Research Scholarships, which partially supported the completion of my independent research projects.
Funding
This study received no funding.
CRediT Authorship Contribution Statement
Bich Ngoc Nguyen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing
Generative AI Use Disclosure Statement
I confirm that I used ChatGPT Plus version 5.4 and Grammarly free version to assist with grammar checking and to ensure the clarity and correctness of the English language used throughout this paper. These tools were applied solely to support language refinement and did not contribute to the generation of original research content or analysis.
Ethics Declarations
World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki–Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Participants
This study followed the ethical principles of the Belmont Report (1979), emphasizing respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. The participant was fully informed about the purpose of the research, participation was voluntary, and anonymity and confidentiality were ensured. Data collection was conducted with fairness, care for the participants’ well-being, and protection of their rights throughout the research process. The participant included in this study provided informed consent.
Competing Interests
The author declares no conflicts of interest.
Data Availability
The data of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.