Date of Award

8-2000

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract

This study sought to describe the first semester graduate teaching experience had by five newly appointed graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), each from different departments across a midwestern university campus. Its purpose was to gain insight into the ways GTAs might come to make meaning of their experiences, construct knowledge in their disciplines, develop their personal teaching styles and skills, and further their way into their chosen professions. The study spanned the fall of 1999 semester.

Qualitative methods, including participant observations, personal interviews, and reviews of journal entries written by the GTAs, were used to study the first semester graduate teaching experience. Data were analyzed for commonalities and led to the telling of individual participant stories told in three episodic sketches representing the approximate beginning, middle, and ending points of the first semester's graduate teaching experiences.

Three themes and six assertions emerged and were developed and are summarized as follows:

  1. Theme One: Preparation. Assertions #1 & #2: The advance preparation by the Graduate School (#1) and the ongoing preparatory effort which was made by only three of the five departments included in this study (#2) were perceived as inadequate for the first semester GT As studied.

  2. Theme Two: Students. Assertions #3 & #4: The connections GTAs made, as well as the collaborative negotiation of course content/material supporting and sustaining GTAs (#3), facilitated their construction of knowledge in their disciplines and strengthened the relationships between them and their students (#4).

  3. Theme Three: Peers. Assertions #5 & #6: Peers--perceived as allies or adversaries--either served to support or alienate and antagonize newly appointed GTAs (#5), and faculty members perceivably often drew lines between themselves and GTAs that detracted from the support of GTAs (#6).

The themes and assertions were supported by verbatim narrative taken from the transcribed interviews and journal entries and provided information on each of the participant's experiential meaning-making processes related to preparation, students, and peers. The themes and assertions were discussed in reference to the related literature. Recommendations for the Graduate School as well as individual departments and faculty on the campus studied were provided.

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