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THE employment of large numbers of graduate students as teaching assistants (TAs)—a unique feature of American universities—derives primarily from the double need to hire relatively inexpensive instructors for a mass-education system and to provide financial support for graduate students who might not otherwise be able to attend school. 1 ? Even though TAs have become indispensable, their position in academe is fraught with ambivalence. Despite their title, they do not necessarily assist professors: in the large-enrollment courses typical of undergraduate breadth requirements, TAs may be the main contact that students have with the department (Ervin and Muyskens 335) and the only possibility they have for a semblance of individual attention. In the foreign languages in particular, TAs are virtually in control of their individual sections, which they teach under supervision arrangements that vary from elaborate to nonexistent. According to Zimpher and Yessayan, TAs were responsible for 39% of the instruction at Ohio State University (160); Eble states that in 1985 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, TAs taught 95% of the discussion sessions in lower-division courses, 75% of the laboratory sessions, and 40% of the lectures. 2 Thus the importance of properly preparing TAs for their duties is underscored by their considerable—and by all accounts growing—share of responsibility for undergraduate education. It would be a mistake, however, to think that such preparation is universally available.
As in other pursuits, so in teaching, those who have a knack for the activity may end up performing well with little formal coaching, but the average instructor's proficiency tends to improve faster if reliable instruction, guidance, and feedback are provided. The extreme conservative opinion that TA preparation amounts to little more than a waste of time clearly reveals the disdain with which universities that consider themselves primarily research-oriented (or would like to be so considered) have traditionally regarded anything pedagogical. Nevertheless, there are some modest indications of growing institutional interest in TA development. The published proceedings of the Conference on Institutional Responsibilities and Responses in the Employment and Education of Teaching Assistants (Ohio State Univ., Nov. 1986) include a broad sample of current efforts to provide such professional preparation (Chism and Warner), and when the corresponding volume appears for the Second National Conference on the Training and Employment of Teaching Assistants (Univ. of Washington, Nov. 1989), the picture may be expanded. 3 Initial data, however, are far from encouraging: according to Monaghan, only 50% of the departments that use TAs provide training, and only 25% offer campus-wide programs. Clearly, it is too early to foretell what effect such praiseworthy efforts will have.
A reliable indicator of an institution's seriousness about TA training and supervision is whether those directly involved in such activities receive proper recognition in the accepted coin of the realm: professorial rank, access to promotion and tenure, pay increases, eligibility for research and travel grants, and recognition of methodology and pedagogy—including the production of much needed teaching materials like textbooks and educational software—as bona fide research and publication areas. Typically, TA supervisors are underpaid, overworked non-tenure-track instructors or lecturers, professors with two-word titles that bespeak a second-class status, or even tenured professors, who soon find out that their prospects for advancement in rank and salary lie in other academic activities. All the eloquent lip service given to the cause of TA development and supervision will do little to change this situation unless there is a drastic modification of the attitudes a pioneer in the field described a little over a decade ago:
[T]he training of teaching assistants … is often considered a nonintellectual activity by tenured members, a time-consuming drudgery by supervisors who generally see no way for academic advancement through it, and a chore to be put up with by graduate students, many of whom aspire to become scholars rather than language teachers.
(Hagiwara 7)
Typically, TA development aims at preparing instructors for their immediate departmental tasks. This is doubtless a crucial goal, but, if the development program is to be fully integrated into the graduate experience, it must not only train instructors for the present but also educate them for their future work as full-fledged faculty members. There are many ways in which training can be expanded into a powerful educational tool. For a variety of reasons, the programs now offered vary considerably in duration, intensity, and content, ranging from a brief pep talk to preservice orientation sessions and elaborate programs involving methods courses, meetings with supervisors, class observation, and so on. Although each department ultimately wants a program tailored to its own TAs’ needs, the experience of veterans in this area suggests that certain elements are generally applicable to most situations.
The least preparation that can be offered new TAs is a preservice orientation session on the practical issues they will have to face from the first day of classes. The information and other aids provided might include the following:
Clearly, the preceding list is too formidable to receive more than cursory attention in a preservice workshop lasting only a few days, but a well-designed methods course meeting two or three times a week for at least one term will go a long way toward providing all this assistance in depth. The course will be most effective if new TAs are required to take it for credit during their first term on campus, for optional or no-credit status would brand it as a second-class activity. Establishing a methods course may require reconsidering departmental degree-program priorities, but a department that is not prepared to treat TA development as seriously as it does its graduate programs should reassess its commitment to teaching. Besides developing issues touched on in the preservice workshop, the methods course takes up fresh ones. Specifically, in addition to covering such practical matters as teaching techniques, testing and grading, textbook evaluation, and design of pedagogical materials, it should include at least an introduction to theoretical issues of second-language teaching and learning, notions of contrastive and error analysis, positive and negative transfer, proficiency- or achievement-oriented instruction, and a balanced overview of methods that have influenced foreign language education in this country—grammar and translation, audiolingual, modified audiolingual, proficiency, and others.
Regular observation and discussion of other instructors’ performances enhance the new TAs’ perception of instructor-student interaction. By watching experienced teachers in action, whether in the classroom or on videotape, trainees develop an awareness of how different teaching styles affect student participation and learning. Some departments make viewing live classes a mandatory component of the methods course; a few require regular attendance in a master class. Whatever the arrangement, participants should receive a protocol that lists what they are supposed to observe about lesson preparation, classroom activities, and the instructor's and the students’ performances.
Ideally, TAs should receive several weeks of professional instruction before they are assigned classes of their own. One way to provide this is to schedule a summer session immediately before the TAs’ employment; another is to give them reduced teaching duties during the first term: instead of having full responsibility for a section, new TAs would team up with experienced instructors and take on, among other assignments, short presentations designed to maximize practice in specific techniques or activities. Either the course instructor or the TAs’ immediate supervisor would attend the trainees’ presentations and comment on them afterward, perhaps in seminar-style meetings included in the methods course. Allowing new TAs to concentrate on developing their teaching abilities is a powerful means of building their self-confidence.
Although some instructors flinch at the idea of being observed, feedback from a supervisor or an experienced peer is an invaluable aid to understanding how one is perceived by others. Classroom visitors should include other faculty members, who can thus signal their interest in the TAs’ development. A standardized evaluation protocol would minimize surprises and ensure that all observers address the same issues and use the same criteria in their evaluations.
Watching oneself on video can be an unforgettable experience in many ways, as nothing matches it as a tool for revealing what one really looks like in class. Opinions vary about whether TAs should view the video alone or with a peer or a supervisor; a judicious combination of both approaches in a nonthreatening atmosphere is probably the best arrangement. As in class visits, an evaluation protocol directs viewers’ attention to important aspects and maximizes the benefit of the experience.
Through mutual-support activities TAs can discreetly offer one another constructive criticism and advice. Pairing a new TA with an experienced one to provide needed feedback is particularly useful in helping new TAs adjust to departmental practices and master specific tasks, such as the preparation of quizzes or the presentation of oral exercises. TAs can also benefit each other by team-teaching the same section or by alternating as instructors of different sections. Each gains from the other's experience, and judicious exploration of each individual's strong points can increase the effectiveness of the team. Team teaching is especially effective in offsetting an instructor's specific weaknesses (faulty pronunciation is an obvious example) and in exposing students to more teaching styles and regional accents than are feasible in single-instructor courses. 4
Some departments have had positive results with a program in which an experienced TA (known as the course leader) helps to coordinate the instructors of the different sections. This arrangement works well for collective tasks such as preparation and correction of departmental exams. The course leader farms out the parts of the exam, collects individual contributions, and edits an exam proposal for submission to the faculty supervisor. Exam correction is a group activity: all section instructors get together with their course leader, who distributes the exams and, if necessary, interprets the correction guidelines. Each part is corrected by one instructor, or at most by two, with everyone using exactly the same criteria, so that even the more creative divisions, such as composition, receive consistent treatment—an important consideration in multisection courses. Insights TAs acquire as course leaders may enhance their future eligibility for positions requiring duties like those of a course supervisor.
The preceding section deals with tasks that, because of time constraints and the need to prepare TAs for immediate duties, are usually taught in a how-to format—how to present a syntactic structure or to facilitate conversational exchanges or to prepare a test or to take care of administrative responsibilities. Such a cut-and-dried presentation is the essence of training, and it plays an important role in preparing teachers for elementary foreign language instruction, which usually follows an explicit syllabus and systematized procedures like those suggested in the standardized “packages” put out by publishing houses.
Training, however, is not the same as education, which must be the ultimate goal of an effective, long-lasting TA-development program. That distinction is often overlooked, and yet it involves a conceptual contrast, captured in Webster's definitions of the corresponding verbs (under the entry teach ):
educate … stresses … the bringing out or development of qualities or capacities latent in the individual or regarded as essential to his position in life [whereas] train , even when it is used as a close synonym of educate , almost invariably suggests a distinct end or aim which guides teachers and instructors; it implies … such subjection of the pupil as will form him or fit him for the state in view … train is especially employed in reference to the instruction of persons or sometimes animals who must be physically in excellent condition, mentally proficient, or quickly responsive to orders for a given occupation or kind of work.
Whereas training facilitates the effective use of certain techniques and materials, it may rely too much on rote learning, minimizing analysis of their theoretical presuppositions and implications and thus reducing teaching to the application of formulas without consideration of their relation to the learning process. Although a focus on training answers the immediate needs of institutions dedicated to mass education, it fails to meet the requirements of long-range professional development, which is the proper goal of the education of graduate-student instructors. In a truly educational process the new TA should learn to inquire into the justification of those techniques, activities, and practices; into the ways they relate to the development of language proficiency; and into the cultural and philosophical rationale behind the aims of foreign language education and the means of achieving those ends.
It suffices to consider how foreign language teaching has varied in methodology during the last two decades to realize why TAs must be prepared to address change in educational theory. Instead of concentrating on techniques, TA education encourages reflection on all aspects of the teacher-learner interaction, so that reflection can be brought to fruition through experimentation and innovation.
A situation in which all instructors imitate the model teacher may be some administrators’ dream, but I think of it as an educator's nightmare. An effective teacher-education program must create conditions that enable instructors to develop their best individual abilities. One approach is to create opportunities for TAs to use those abilities in projects they themselves originate.
A case in point is the special-purpose course, such as Spanish for the Health-Care Professions or French for Business—to mention only two types of increasingly sought-after courses that can tap a TA's prior experience. A project of this sort requires clearly defining instructional goals and course content; designing a syllabus; putting together a bibliography; and deciding on classroom activities, testing procedures, and the criteria for evaluating the course as a whole. The TA should be encouraged to analyze each aspect of the course, justify its implementation in the light of perceived goals, and evaluate the results. Planning and teaching such a course under the supervision of a faculty member may be an individual's independent-study project or a group effort. The organizers would be graded not only on the design of the course but also on the assessed results obtained by the students.
To provide competent—and, particularly, competency- or proficiency-oriented—language instruction, the instructor must have both a near native command of the target language and a sound theoretical understanding of its synchronic and pragmatic aspects. TA education should foster a holistic view of the language as a communicative system that comprises more than vocabulary words and grammatical rules—a view that requires familiarity, so to speak, not only with each moving part of the language but also with the way the whole system works. Native and nonnative instructors must become aware of the gap between the standard language embodied in textbooks and the language used in actual communication—a requirement all the more crucial for languages represented in the community by nonstandard dialects, such as the Spanish, French, German, and Italian spoken in several regions of the United States. The new foreign language instructors must learn to respect regional and social linguistic differences and encourage their students to understand linguistic variation not as a result of error but as a natural component of any living language.
Continuing TA development beyond the one-term methods course moves the focus from rote technique to purposeful inquiry, from pragmatic preparation to reasoned education, from technical training to the making of a professional, a member of a group of colleagues united by their shared educational background, beliefs, ideas, and goals. There should be regular meetings for discussing learning activities, syllabus content, and problems encountered in the different sections. The format of these meetings may include individual presentations, debates on given topics, or brainstorming sessions on developing strategies for specific issues; its essential characteristic is that of a forum for open inquiry into educational problems.
There should also be occasion for discussing topics and professional issues related to advanced language education. As TAs prepare to become teaching professionals, their contacts should go beyond their department or university and reach out to individuals in other institutions. One way to achieve these contacts is to participate in professional organizations, which, as E. Leonard Jossem points out,
facilitate the exchange and discussion of information and experience. They collect data, help identify and publicize problems, and serve as a vehicle for group action … they play a role in the development of a TA in the same sense as they play a role in the continuing development of any of their members. (115)
Those of us who are involved in TA development must encourage our future colleagues to join our professional organizations and to participate in meetings concerned not only with subjects in their specific fields of academic specialization but also with issues of common interest. A professional does not spring into existence on receiving the doctorate but, rather, develops through habitually exchanging ideas with more experienced colleagues and, above all, by meditating on the nature and means of our calling as educators. 5
The author is Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley, Director of the department's Lower Division, and chair of the Catalan Studies Program at the university's Institute of International Studies. This article originated in a paper (entitled“Training or Education? Two Approaches to the Professional Preparation of Teaching Assistants’) that he delivered at the 1987 meeting of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.
1 For a brief account of the history of TAs in the United States, see Estabrook et al.
2 For further data, see Ervin and Muyskens and their bibliography.
3 TA development has been a topic at other national and regional meetings, such as the Symposium on Governance of Foreign Language Programs of the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (Princeton, NJ, Oct. 1987).
4 For a report on how peer mentors can be used interdepartmentally through an institutionalized agency, see Puccio. For a description of peer teaching, see Goepper and Knorre 448.
5 I thank Graciela Ascarrunz-Gilman (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) and Herminia Jimenez-Kerr (Univ. of California, Berkeley) for their thoughtful comments on an early version of this paper.
Chism, Nancy Van Note, and Susan B. Warner, eds. Institutional Responsibilities and Responses in the Employment and Education of Teaching Assistants: Readings from a National Conference . Columbus: Ohio State U Center for Teaching Excellence, 1987.
Eble, Kenneth. “Defending the Indefensible.” Chism and Warner 7–13.
Ervin, Gerard, and Judith A. Muyskens. “On Training TAs: Do We Know What They Want and Need?” Foreign Language Annals 15 (1982): 335–44.
Estabrook, Marina, et al. Teaching Assistants: A History and a Survey Study . TRC Monograph. Davis: U of California, Davis, 1979.
Goepper, Jane Black, and Marty Knorre. “Pre- and In-Service Training of Graduate Teaching Assistants.” Modern Language Journal 64 (1980): 446–50.
Hagiwara, Michio P. “The Training of Graduate Teaching Assistants: Past, Present, and Future.” ADFL Bulletin 7.3 (1976): 7–12. [Show Article]
Jossem, E. Leonard. “The Role of the Professional Organization in the Development of TAs in Physics.” Chism and Warner 115–17.
Monaghan, Peter. “University Officials Deplore the Lack of Adequate Training Given to Teaching Assistants, Ponder How to Improve It.” Chronicle of Higher Education 19 Nov. 1989: A17.
Puccio, Paul. “TAs Help TAs: Peer Counseling and Mentoring.” Chism and Warner 219–23.
Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms . Springfield: Merriam, 1973.
Zimpher, Nancy L, and Susan Yessayan. “An Overview of an Orientation Program for Graduate Teaching Associates at the Ohio State University.” Chism and Warner 160–66.
© 1990 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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