The Professional Development of GTAs

By Sue Doe

(excerpted from Sue Doe’s 2001 dissertation THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF TEACHER FORMATION AMONG 1ST-YEAR GRADUATE TEACHING ASSISTANTS IN A COMPOSITION PROGRAM)

According to Boehrer and Sarkisian (1985), 85% of teaching assistants in biochemistry and nearly 100% of teaching assistants in English plan to teach upon graduation. These graduate students also associate their professional self-esteem with their teaching, seeing their graduate studies as a continuation of their preparation but their teaching as bona fide professional performance; simultaneously they also quickly learn the academy’s ambivalence toward teaching as evidenced by its seemingly arbitrary hiring practices and weak ongoing commitment to developing its newest faculty. TAs, Boehrer and Sarkisian report, frequently encounter a range of problems, including complexities in classroom dynamics, varied needs and development of students, instructor discretion difficulties in terms of grading, discipline, etc., problems related to the exercise of authority, and disappointing self-discoveries regarding overall teaching ability (p. 15). Mostly, Boehrer and Sarkisian report, TAs need support and feedback of a certain kind to develop into better teachers. That feedback should attend to the TA’s perceived problems first and only then move to problems perceived by the observer.

Anderson and Swazey (1998) report that 71% of graduate students go to graduate school because they have at least some desire to teach in higher education while 94% indicate an interest in doing research in their field. Fully 82%, over 10% more than those who hope to teach, desire to benefit others through their learning in graduate school, presumably if not through teaching then through research discoveries or enrichment through the arts. Discouragingly, 60% of TAs feel they are not carefully supervised by faculty, and 35% feel that their TA duties delay their progress through their graduate studies.

Anderson and Swazey’s findings are supported by the work of Bomotti (1994), who found that 73% of her sample’s queried TAs anticipate that teaching will be their primary focus after graduation. Of the seven factors Bomotti studied as influences upon TA plans to continue college teaching--including training, supervision, peer relationships, TA-student relationships, pragmatics, departmental issues, and TA perceptions of self as teacher--the strongest predictor was good supervision. Good supervision came from “respected scholars who place a strong value on quality teaching and concern for students” (p. 378). These mentor-supervisors were described as “collegial,” “constructive,” and “supportive” in their feedback. Bomotti says “The evidence… indicates that a teaching-oriented, collaborative relationship between teaching assistants and their supervisors may be the most critical factor in improving the quality of undergraduate instruction and nurturing future professors” (p. 388).

The importance of mentoring is echoed throughout the literature. Darling-Hammond, Gender, and Wise (1990) in their Rand Report commissioned by the Minnesota Board of Teaching, proposed a staged process for promoting and assessing teacher competence that includes academic training followed by a year-long internship, the chief feature of which is high quality supervision/mentoring.

As a final note, over the course of three years, Sinclair Goodlad (1997) surveyed 282 new TAs regarding anxieties and problems and found that their patterns consistently revolved around (1) coping with inattentive and disruptive students, (2) not knowing answers to student questions, (3) not being able to explain things clearly/interestingly (3) getting students to think for themselves, and (4) lack of clarity regarding TA roles (p. 86). These problems mirror the classroom management, content area knowledge base, methods awareness, critical thinking orientation, and professional identity issues indicated in studies of novice public school teachers.

University Faculty and the Teaching Mission: Literature

James Slevin (1992), who authored the Association of American Colleges report, The Next Generation: Preparing Graduate Students for the Professional Responsibilities of College Teachers, also known as the AAC project, advises that future teachers develop their teaching habits and sense of priorities during the graduate student years. The AAC project linked graduate students from their universities (Duke, University of Chicago, and Brown) with faculty from small liberal arts colleges (Guilford, Knox, and Connecticut Colleges)—the latter, the kind of institutions in which new faculty are likely to find themselves after graduation. The graduate students participated in a seminar that included a series of extended campus visits to the small, liberal arts campuses. There the TAs found that the “culture of silence” around teaching (p. 13), so evident on their graduate campuses, was completely absent on the liberal arts campus. Here the commitment to undergraduate teaching was explicit and unmistakable.

The overall effect of the project was to enable “graduate students to rethink the ‘possibilities’ currently available to them” (p. 18). Slevin argues that “faculty development begins in graduate school” (p. 20) and the “Graduate training must include preparation for the full range of professorial responsibilities, especially teaching” (p. 20). In keeping with K-12 literature, Slevin reports that so much “depends on a good mentor” (p. 25) and that the semester at the liberals arts college became a kind of field experience, highly valued in much the same way as student teaching is valued by the beginning public school teacher. Where possible, Slevin recommends TAs receive multiple field experiences at varying institutions of higher education.

Like Slevin, LaPidus (1998) believes that even if a TA gets some exposure to teaching, the experience is too often confined to lower level courses and not generally “thought of in terms of faculty preparation” (p. 99). Gaff and Pruitt-Logan (1998) put it bluntly:

Many graduate students…acquire no experience in the complex tasks of teaching: determining proper goals for student learning; designing courses, selecting learning materials, making assignments, and assessing the achievement of those goals; understanding and working effectively with diverse students, giving academic and career advice; and constructing and assessing curricula in the department (p. 77).

References

Anderson, M.S., & Swazey, J.P. (1998). Reflections on the graduate student experience:

An overview. New Directions for Higher Education 101, 3-12.

Boehrer, J., & Sarkisian, E. (1985). The teaching assistant’s point of view. In J.D.W.

Andrews (Ed.), Strengthening the teaching assistant faculty: New directions for

teaching and learning, 22, (pp. 7-20) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bomotti, S.S. (1994). Teaching assistant attitudes toward college teaching. Review of

Higher Education, 17(4), 371-93.

Darling-Hammond, L., Gendler, T., & Wise, A.E. (1990). The teaching internship:

Practical preparation for a licensed profession. Santa Monica, CA: Rand.

Goodlad, S. (1997). Responding to the perceived training needs of graduate teaching

assistants. Studies in Higher Education, 22(1), 83-92.

Slevin, J. F. (1992). The next generation: Preparing graduate students for the

professional responsibilities of college teachers. Washington, DC: Association of

American Colleges.