Learning to teach: Teaching assistants (TAs) learning in the workplace
Date
2019-09-19
Authors
Korpan, Cynthia Joanne
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Abstract
Through an exploratory qualitative, interpretive frame that employed an ethnographic methodological approach, this research focuses on teaching assistants (TAs) teaching in a lab, tutorial, or discussion group. Nine TAs share their learning journey as they begin teaching in higher education. The theoretical lens that frames this research is workplace learning. Interviews, observations, video-recordings, field notes, and learning diaries were subjected to thematic analysis, looking for dominant themes associated to TAs’ characteristics, their learning process related to teaching, and the knowledge they developed about teaching and student learning. Key findings include the recognition that TAs bring robust conceptions and dispositions to their first teaching position that is approached from a student subject position as they are becoming teachers. As TAs are being teachers, they control their self-directed learning process as they make decisions on-the-fly within a diverse learning environment that ranges from expansive to strategic to restrictive affordances. Coupled with a discretionary reflective practice, TAs’ knowledge development about teaching and student learning is solely dependent upon their experience, making forthcoming development of knowledge about teaching and student learning relegated to chance. This focus on TAs’ learning in the workplace illuminates the need for a deep learning approach to learning about teaching and student learning that needs to begin with graduate students’ first appointment as a TA. In addition, this deep learning approach needs to be encased in an expansive learning environment that provides opportunities for continuous support through various forms of mentorship, instruction, and development of reflective practice.
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Keywords
learning to teach, teaching assistants, workplace learning