Preparing the Next Generation of Teachers Inappropriately: When Introductory Course Directors Engage in Misbehaviors

ABSTRACT This study explores graduate teaching assistants’ experiences of perceived introductory course director misbehaviors. The investigation situates these experiences in the larger organizational dissent conversation – a heuristic that helps to frame how these perceived misbehaviors impact graduate teaching assistants’ understanding of their current and future work relationships with course directors. Participants (N = 55) were graduate teaching assistants in multi-section introductory communication courses across the United States who completed an online Qualtrics survey about their perceived introductory course director misbehaviors as well as how those misbehaviors were managed and shaped future interactions with their course directors. Thematic analysis identified indolent, offensive, and incompetence misbehaviors. The findings offer implications for improving organizational communication processes to positively impact the course director-graduate teaching assistant work relationship.