Graduate Council Sub-Committee on GATs

GAT Training and Supervision

ABOR Policy #2-407 requires:

Each university will develop and maintain appropriate programs to provide training in basic teaching methods and skills for all graduate teaching assistants and associates.

Each university will require that an appropriate regular faculty member formally assess the teaching performance of each graduate teaching assistant and associate every semester and submit a written report of the assessment to the department chair and to the graduate teaching assistant or associate.

At the University of Arizona, standards and practices for training GATs in basic teaching methods and for evaluating their teaching performance are left to individual programs. The Graduate College’s Teaching Assistant Training Online offers general modules about teaching and learning, but there is no university-wide assessment or oversight of GATs.

The disparate needs of diverse units make it impossible, and undesirable, to impose specific practices on all GATs. However, to ensure consistent, effective training and supervision of GATs across disciplines, we recommend that the university facilitate implementation of the following guidelines. *

Graduate assistant or associate teachers should be trained to:

  • Create-- or work with a supervisor on-- effective course materials
  • Assess or respond to student work
  • Lead a student-centered classroom or lab

+ Facilitate engaging discussions about course content

  • Manage the learning environment effectively

+ Develop a teaching persona

+ Learn how to handle disruptive students

+ Enforce UA and departmental classroom policies fairly

  • Teach subject matter

+ Demonstrate knowledge proficiency in a subject matter

+ Develop student comprehension of concepts outlined in course

objectives

+ Teach analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of fundamental ideas

  • Gain understanding of teaching

+ Use supervisor feedback and student comments to improve their own

teaching practices

  • Develop professionally

+ Build a teaching portfolio that documents the GAT’s teaching strengths

Implementation

Although the University Teaching Center (now part of the Office of Instruction and Assessment) offers teaching workshops and individual consulting, a survey of graduate students showed underutilization of these resources by GATs. Usage rates averaged around only 20%. A more effective means of reaching all graduate teaching assistants is to provide training for a faculty supervisor from each department that employs GATs.

Given the wide diversity of roles that GATs play in departments and programs across campus, their training and supervision must by necessity vary substantially from unit to unit. Centralizing this training and supervision would not be productive. Instead, the Graduate College should help propagate the best practices for training and supervision that are already in place in many departments and programs.

Towards this end, the Graduate College should create a website that would serve as a repository of information about GAT training and supervision as practiced in different units. As an example, the schedule and some of the materials used by the pre-semester training program in the English department could be put on the website. The website would also include contact information for those responsible for GAT training and supervision in each unit that has GATs. Finally, a listserv would be created to give those responsible for training and supervision a chance to pose questions and seek advice from others with similar responsibilities.

* The UA English Department’s Writing Program formulated the guidelines for training and supervision of GATs. The Writing Program is a national model of best practices in training, supervision, evaluation, professional development, and student learning outcomes.