Resources for Teaching Assistants

Individual Consulting

The Center provides individual consulting to teaching assistants in both electronic and personal formats.  If you are looking for quick advice or information, contact the Center.

If you would like to obtain more extended and personal consultations, call or e-mail the Center..  TAs frequently seek individual consultation at the Center for a variety of reasons: they are teaching their own course for the first time, and want help with planning and design; they are seeking new ideas for getting their students involved in discussion and problem-solving exercises; they are having difficulties negotiating their teaching and research schedules, and are seeking ways to teach more effectively and efficiently.  Perhaps they recognize that teaching is a serious intellectual enterprise, the highest form of scholarship because it necessarily involves all of the others (discovery, integration, and application).  Consultations are completely confidential.  Make an appointment and learn how other TAs have successfully handled the difficult situation you are now facing.  For personal consultations, contact the Center. 

Conceptions of Teaching

Our research on teaching suggests that the way teachers conceive of their enterprise determines more about their success or failure than does any other single factor. 

How do you conceive of teaching?  Do you think about teaching as merely the communication of information to your students, or do you think about it more broadly as anything you might do to cultivate learning?

If you conceive of teaching as fostering learning, you can recognize that the growing body of research and theoretical literature on human learning can help inform your pedagogical choices.  Some of that literature comes from research scientists in the learning sciences, some from researchers who look at teaching, and some from people who teach, either reflecting on their teaching experience or reporting the results of classroom research they have conducted on learning in the classes they have taught.

Library Resources

Below is a list of articles on teaching and learning, available at the Center for Teaching Excellence, which many TAs have found helpful in thinking about, planning for, and fulfilling their TA assignments.  Please contact the Center if you would like copies of any of these articles.  We can provide the set of articles annotated below as a TA reading packet, or we can send copies of individual articles.  If these articles raise specific questions or issues you would like to explore in more depth, we can provide you with bibliographies on any teaching topic or issue you select.

You are welcome to consult, browse through, and check materials out of the Center's general library as well.

• McKeachie, Wilbert J. Chapter 23:  "The Teaching Assistantship: A Preparation for Multiple   Roles", Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers.  Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Co., 1994. 239-49..

 
Great article for new or experienced TAs.  Explains the multiple responsibilities of TAs and the skills needed to accomplish them effectively; common TA concerns and ways to address them; the benefits of a TAship, and strategies to maximize those benefits.  Also discusses how to create a team relationship between professors and TAs.

• Andrews, J.D.W. "Why TA Training Needs Instructional Innovation", Strengthening the Teaching Assistant Faculty:  New Directions for Teaching and Learning. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, no. 22, 1985. 47-62.

 
This article provides classroom exercises and teaching techniques designed to foster an active learning environment.  Topics include: drawing out student questions, setting a class agenda, and offering objective-based review sessions.  In general, the article shows how to develop active student participation in the classroom without creating an unstructured, free-for-all discussion.
• Frederick, Peter. "The Dreaded Discussion:  Ten Ways to Start", Improving College and University Teaching 3 (1980): 109-14.

 
Frederick offers a list of "assumptions and principles" for discussion sessions.  He elaborates on these principles by suggesting ten specific and practice-oriented techniques for engaging students in discussions.  An extremely popular and widely-reproduced essay, this piece is a must for TAs who lead discussion groups.
• Instructional Development Services. "Alternative Classroom Formats", Teaching Guide for New and Experienced TAs, University of California- Irvine, 1994.

 
Thirteen classroom formats or activities, all alternatives to the standard lecture or classroom discussion, are discussed in detail.  This helpful guide explains how and why you might consider adopting these alternative formats in your classes.  In addition, it outlines the new roles that the instructor or TA must take on based on these changes.
• Searle Center for Teaching Excellence. "Laboratory TAs:  Some Practical and Theoretical Considerations." Northwestern University, 1997.

 
This article, produced by the Center for laboratory TAs, gives suggestions on how to prepare for a lab.  It details some methods for assuring that the students get the most out of the laboratory exercise, and explains what to look for and do while the lab is in progress. A good starting place or refresher piece for TAs who have lab responsibilities.
• Arons, Arnold.  "'Critical Thinking' and the Baccalaureate Curriculum." Liberal Education 71.2 (1985): 141-157.

 
Arons, a physicist, offers a fairly comprehensive overview of the term 'critical thinking,' a skill which many of us want to inculcate in our students, but may have trouble defining precisely.  Arons sets out a list of intellectual and reasoning abilities which constitute the capacity for critical thinking in a higher education setting.  He spells out the implications of his definitions for some fundamental teaching tasks, such as testing and ascertaining student difficulties in the classroom.
• Hatch, Deborah H. and Christine R. Farris.  "Helping TAs Use Active Learning Strategies."  Teaching Assistant Training in the 1990's, New Directions for Teaching and Learning 39 (1990): 89-97.

 
This article emphasizes the role that teaching assistants can play in helping students effectively and meaningfully engage with the course.  It demonstrates some practical ways that TAs move beyond the approach of simply entering their sections and asking for questions or struggling to solicit responses with a painfully silent discussion section.  It discusses such strategies as using writing in the classroom and small-group discussions.
• Bruffee, Kenneth.  "Consensus Groups: A Basic Model of Classroom Collaboration." Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge.  Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. 28-51.

 
Bruffee proposes a complex and theoretically-informed model for engineering student small-group work in the classroom.  He argues convincingly for the effectiveness of this kind of model for increasing student learning and teaching our students some important lessons about the nature and construction of knowledge.  See our web page on fostering classroom discussions for an elaboration of Bruffee's model.
• Hodges, Elizabeth.  "Negotiating the Margins: Some Principles for Responding to Our Students' Writing, Some Strategies for Helping Students Read Our Comments."  Writing to Learn: New Directions for Teaching and Learning 69 (Spring 1997): 77-89.

 
If you evaluate the written work of students, you should be aware of Hodges' study.  She taped and analyzed the oral explanations of teachers who were writing comments on their students' papers, and then did the same for the students as they first read and digested those comments.  The disparaties between what the teachers intended the students to understood and what the students actually understood are striking and telling.  She concludes the article with some basic principles for responding effectively to student writing in a way that helps our students understand our reactions to their work and learn from them.
• Treisman, Uri.  "Studying Students Studying Calculus: A Look at the Lives of Minority Mathematics Students in College."  The College Mathematical Journal 23.5 (1992): 362-372.

 
Treisman conducted a study of minority students in calculus classes, and tried to understand why they did not perform as well as their colleagues.  His answers are arresting, and focus upon the study patterns and habits of the minority students, who worked in isolation from their peers.  Treisman explains how he transformed those habits at his university, and drastically increased the success rates of the minority students in calculus classes.  The conclusions of the article have broad applications for anyone who teaches traditionally under-represented minority groups.

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