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Supporting GTAs Who Teach: Foreword: Supporting Graduate Teaching Assistants: structures and practices

Beaton, Fran, Bradley, Sally, Cope, Sandy (2013) Supporting GTAs Who Teach: Foreword: Supporting Graduate Teaching Assistants: structures and practices. Practice and Evidence of Scholarship in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 8 (2). pp. 83-92. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:40862)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
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Abstract

Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) in many universities in the UK and beyond are likely to have multiple roles in a single institution: aspiring academic, student, teacher, researcher and employee. These roles have developed in the context of growing undergraduate numbers and the challenge for universities in terms of employing sufficient staff to teach them, leading in turn to a major expansion of GTAs in the UK, the US and Australasia. This expansion reflects both economic considerations – part-time staff are cheaper to employ and easier to dispense with –as well as the educational goal of giving would-be academics a chance to gain experience of teaching. However both these goals need to be set in their broader educational, economic and political contexts. These include the extent to which undergraduate expectations have changed as a result of higher tuition fees, for example, institutional messages about the importance of high performance in league tables, the UK National Student Survey and other perceived markers of quality. There is also the strong likelihood that most GTAs have their own strong recent undergraduate memories, want to do their best for their students and are painfully aware of what they do not know. Given all this, what characterises quality support available for this group?

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled keywords: Graduate teaching assistants; effective professional development; supporting quality enhancement
Subjects: L Education
L Education > LB Theory and practice of education
Divisions: Divisions > Directorate of Education > Centre for the Study of Higher Education
Depositing User: Fran Beaton
Date Deposited: 28 Apr 2014 10:45 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:15 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/40862 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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