In many of the doctoral degree granting institutions in the U.S.A. the graduate teaching assistantship is an important means for providing financial support to graduate students. In addition, these positions fulfill the very critical role of providing teaching and teaching-related functions for the university. Originally, the teaching assistantship was based on an apprenticeship model. In this model, teaching assistants directly assisted professors in a specific course, primarily by grading and preparing class materials. Seldom, if ever, did these graduate TAs have direct contact with undergraduate students.
The boom period, however, brought more students to universities and colleges than could be accommodated using the existing model. To compensate, institutions moved to increase the number of large classes and supplemented them with small discussion or laboratory sections led by teaching assistants. The initial success of this new model led to having TAs perform a variety of instructional tasks including conducting discussions and laboratory sessions, holding office hours, lecturing, and even assuming total responsibility for teaching a course. Most TAs are employed 20 hours per week and for most of these graduate students, being a TA is the financial support that enables them to attend graduate school.
Typical Graduate Teaching Assistant Instructional Tasks
– attending classes
– taking attendance
– holding office hours
– conducting review sessions
– grading homework
– grading essays/papers
– writing exam questions
– grading exams
– proctoring exams
– maintaining class records/grades
– making transparencies/handouts
– teaching a class
In recent years, criticism has surfaced related to the quality of undergraduate education in our colleges and universities. This criticism has been aimed at all levels of teaching in higher education and the public has focused on the lack of training in “how to teach” that is provided to faculty members at this educational level. The protests exposed the myth that all that was required to teach well was a thorough knowledge of the subject matter. Colleges and universities began responding to these criticisms and the changes in the student population by establishing faculty and instructional development programs.
Within the public criticism has been concern about the extensive use of TAs to instruct undergraduates in lower-division courses and labs. TAs are frequently criticized for their lack of communication and pedagogical skills even though in many fields it is assumed that if the person teaching has an undergraduate or graduate concentration in the subject being taught, he or she is qualified to teach. We are also beginning to understand that this reliance on inexperienced, and often untrained instructors has detrimental effects on the professoriate itself. Graduate students who have unsuccessful experiences as TAs often do not enter the professoriate, thus contributing to the national shortage of those choosing to become professors. Or, if these graduate students do decide to enter the professoriate, their lack of adequate training during the TA experience results in the need for very expensive remedial actions later such as reduced loads to improve teaching competence, hours of mentoring by members of their departments, or failure to achieve tenure and thus loss of potential members of the next generation of professors.
To help quell criticism and to encourage more emphasis on excellence in undergraduate education, institutions have begun to develop training programs for teaching assistants and new faculty. The remainder of this paper will look at the programs that have been developed and the research that indicates these programs are quite effective in many respects.
TA Training Program Content
Discussions of training graduate students to be college teachers began to appear in the literature. Much of this literature focused primarily on descriptions of programs in an effort to help others understand the process and institute similar training on their own campuses. A majority of the programs were discipline-specific and included pre-service orientations along with semester long courses. The courses ranged from 1 hour/week to 3 hours/week for 14 weeks. In most of the program’s attendance was required and TAs were often paid for pre-service orientation time and given credit for the semester-long courses. While a majority of these courses concentrated on the specifics of “how to” teach a specific course, the spectra of topics are quite extensive.
Topics Covered in Typical TA Training Programs
Professionalism – Administrative Policies – Careers and Job Hunting – Course Rationale – Dept Philosophy or Goals – Ethics and Professionalism – Research – Role of the Teacher – Textbooks – University/Department Resources
TA Specifics – Departmental Expectations – Discussions with Undergraduates – Duties – Individual Conferences with Department Heads – Interchange with Experienced TAs – Interpersonal Relations – Personality Test – Problems – Survival and Anxiety
Instructional Aids – Departmental Bulletins – Teaching Tips – Research Articles – College Manuals and Handbooks
Learning and Students – Advising Students – Cognition – Learning Styles – Student Behavior – Student Characteristics
General Education – Audiotutorial – Behavioral Objectives – Computer Assisted Instruction – Discipline-specific Instruction – Discussion – Evaluation – General Teaching Discussion – General Teaching Methods – Grading – Idea and Problem Sharing – Independent Study – Instructional Innovations – Issues in Education – Laboratory Teaching – Lecture – Media and Audiovisuals – Models of Instruction – Motivation – Participation Techniques – Philosophy of Education – Problem Solving – Questioning – References and Resources in Education – Review of Educational Research – Socratic Method – Student Reinforcement – Teaching Research Methods – Testing – Tutoring
Practice Opportunities – Assignments – Audiovisual Materials – Examinations – General – Grading Papers – Lesson Plans – Study Guides – Supplemental Materials – Syllabus – Textbook Selection
The TA training programs have expanded and many universities offer year-round support services for teaching assistants, including occasional seminars on teaching, teaching consultation services, newsletters, and awards for outstanding teaching assistants. More and more programs are also including advanced development in the form of 3-hour credit courses that delve into college teaching in many ways, including curriculum development, reflective teaching, theories of learning and motivation, the non-teaching aspects of being a faculty member (e.g., committee work, sponsoring student groups, research, etc.), and internship programs in cooperation with comprehensive, two-year and four-year institutions in the region or vicinity of the research university. Teaching certification programs are also being implemented to provide teaching assistants with documentation of their development as college teachers. Most of these certification programs require TAs to take part in 200-400 hours of courses and workshops or seminars.
Certification Continuum
Requirements:
– Attendance at orientation
– Individual Program Plan
– Mentored Teaching Experience
– Activity Contract
– Round table discussions
Possible activities:
– Teaching full course
– Selected projects
– Internship
– Attendance at 20 workshops on teaching
– Attendance at departmental discipline-specific TA training activities (20 hrs)
– Consultation on learning and teaching styles
– Classroom video consultations
– Observation by home-department faculty
– Compilation of a Teaching Portfolio
Areas Covered
– Course planning
– Classroom management
– Lecturing
– Test construction & grading
– Diversity issues
– Microteaching
– Developing teaching skills
– Student Needs
– Teaching as a profession
– General Pedagogy
– Measurement & evaluation
– Academic ethics & behaviors
– Personal & professional development
– Gender and multi-cultural issues
– Teaching & learning styles
– Course development & planning
Evaluation
– Evaluation by participants
– Evaluation by faculty mentor
– Evaluation by home department faculty
– Final assessment
Many of these expanded programs are part of the “Preparing Future Faculty” initiative – PFF takes a broader conception of graduate preparation, saying we should prepare graduate students for a variety of responsibilities, not just research or teaching. The PFF programs espouse that graduate students should be considered “colleagues-in-training.” We need to recognize that TA training is the first stage of faculty development. It is a development continuum that should be sustained throughout a faculty member’s professional life.
Research on TA Development/Training
Much of the research in TA development/training has taken place in the last 25 years. As is the case with most new areas of study, the research develops from looking at broad areas (e.g., a comparison of topics covered in training programs) to more rigorous research about the effects of the training on teaching and learning. Unfortunately, we are just moving into this latter emphasis at the present time. Thus, research studies that give us insight into whether or not student learning is influenced by TA development/training are just now being undertaken. Some of the research that has been done in the past 25 years is briefly discussed below.
TA stages of development. Each of us develops in our understanding and competence as we spend time in our work. We identified three phases in the development of the TA role: Senior Learners, Colleagues in Training, and Junior Colleagues. Within those three phases are four Indicators of TA Development: their concerns, their discourse level, their approach to authority and their approach to students. As TAs progress through these developmental phases, the way they respond to the four indicators changes. Although the stages provide a way of thinking about how TAs become scholars, the process is complex and not yet fully understood. Thinking about stages helps us think about TA assignments and how best to move them through their graduate programs.
Student ratings of teaching by TAs and observation feedback. The importance of feedback for the improvement of TA teaching has been shown in numerous studies. This feedback is especially helpful if it is incorporated with consultation and follow-up assistance if needed. In all of these studies student evaluations of the TAs’ teaching indicated statistically significant improvement after the training.
Teacher confidence. Researchers indicate that TAs are better able to involve students, communicate content, create enthusiasm and prepare exams following training programs. In addition, new teachers increase their confidence and self-efficacy if this training is done prior to their first teaching assignment. These findings have implications for the timing of TA Development programs. Orientations that provide key information and skills training prior to teaching should be designed to give the TAs more confidence in their teaching abilities.
Changes in TAs’ pedagogical understanding. While the development of teaching skills is a very important part of any TA training program, changing their ways of visualizing the teaching process is also of great importance. Understanding the substance of the content without understanding how to communicate it is an issue that plagues many graduate teaching assistants. Research that identifies ways to challenge TAs to relate pedagogy to the subject matter is being reported in recent literature.
ITA training. International Teaching Assistants provide wonderful cultural diversity in universities, but this cultural diversity can cause misunderstanding and difficulty in a teaching situation. Numerous studies have been done to try to explain how to relate to other cultures and how to best train ITAs so they can more quickly adapt to the U.S. university system. Many states have mandated training programs for ITAs to ensure that classes are “taught in clear English” and the quality of these programs is subsequently judged by the English and teaching proficiencies of the ITAs who participate. The research and training efforts are now being recognized by funding agencies at the national level.
The Preparing Future Faculty programs at many universities provide opportunities for graduate students to see what being a faculty member might be like at an institution that is different from the university at which they are currently studying. For example, the teaching requirements and committee service expectations are usually much different at a smaller four-year liberal arts institution or community college. Though the PFF programs, graduate students are matched with a faculty mentor from the smaller institution. This faculty mentor may take the graduate student along to departmental meetings, allow the graduate student to teach some classes, discuss grading criteria and teaching techniques, and essentially give the graduate student a “feel” for what it might be like to be a faculty member at this smaller place. Often graduate students have no idea that there are other kinds of institutions of higher education that might be more amenable to them and the way they would like to interact with their students.
Next, the focus will be on helping graduate students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge they will need to become effective members of the professoriate, should they decide to pursue that career. Some of the sub-themes discussed are given below:
– Instructional development for TAs, international TAs, and future faculty
– Exploration of the faculty role: teaching, research, service
– Preparing future faculty for learning technology
– Role of graduate education in professional development of graduate students
– Linkage between issues in graduate and undergraduate education
– National future faculty needs: positions, institutions, qualifications
– Change needed or emerging in graduate education
Conclusion
As we look toward the future of TA and ITA training programs, we are faced with numerous challenges. We are also being pressured by the students, their parents and the legislative bodies of our states and country to be more accountable for what we do to develop TAs as teachers. This is especially true of our work with ITAs (e.g., many states have mandated training for ITAs to ensure classes are taught in clear, understandable English). With the challenges of globalization, more and more international students are coming to the U.S. to study. We need to prepare these students to teach our undergraduates effectively while they are here, but ultimately, many of them will not go into teaching. How do we motivate them to teach effectively and conscientiously? In addition, the professoriate is in a state of flux – we are seeing potential loss of tenure, incorporation of technology and distance education, increasing diversity in our student populations, and so forth. This makes it extremely difficult to know exactly what we are preparing our TAs to do.
There are many models of effective TA training programs and those planning to begin a new training program or revamp an existing program should familiarize themselves with the models and results of programs at other universities. It is through scholarly, well-designed and practical policies and activities that graduate programs can meet the challenge of preparing the new generation of teacher-scholars.
Megan Wilson is a teacher, life strategist, successful entrepreneur, inspirational keynote speaker and founder of https://Ebookscheaper.com. Megan champions a radical rethink of our school systems; she calls on educators to teach both intuition and logic to cultivate creativity and create bold thinkers.