When I was a teaching assistant and (ostensibly) learning how to teach undergraduate History courses, I rarely had the chance to engage students in class. As a grader, my job was to sit in the classroom and listen to the lecture (along with the undergraduates) so that I could properly grade student exams and papers. Engagement with students occurred primarily in office hours, often only to discuss a grade.
Things were different in course sections that I taught. I still listened to the lectures along with the students, but at the end of the week, I would also lead one-hour sessions based on the readings and primary source materials related to the course. So, I did get to teach, but still remained outside of the more central, professor-led, lecture part of the course. For a novice instructor, this was a challenging but also common way to begin one’s teaching career.
Active learning classrooms: a game changer for Teaching Assistants
When I recently observed a class held in an active learning classroom, I saw how these spaces could transform graduate student teaching experiences, as the TAs engaged both students and instructors throughout the class meeting. In the class I observed, TAs were not just listening to a lecture, they were circulating around groups of undergraduates who were working on a collaborative project, and answering student questions. The TAs observed student work on their group table’s screens and noted which groups were moving along and which ones would soon need assistance. Occasionally, the TAs signaled for the lead instructor to help facilitate more difficult issues.
New relationships: Instructors and students, students and students
In their article, Active Learning Classrooms and Educational Alliances: Changing Relationships to Improve Learning, Paul Beapler and J. D. Walker explore the ways that active learning classrooms facilitate what they call new “educational alliances” within the classrooms. According to Beapler and Walker, active learning classrooms transform typical in-class dynamics between instructors and teachers (and among students) and allow, among other developments, all parties to communicate in more accessible and egalitarian ways. They conclude that active learning classrooms “tend to change the social context of classes taught in these rooms in constructive ways” creating these “new alliances” between and among instructors and students.
New relationships: TA’s and students
I believe that Baepler and Walker’s “new alliances” argument can apply to teaching assistants too. With undergraduates collaborating, creating, and questioning in a classroom that encourages such activities, a TA’s role can change from silent observer to an active participant. When given an opportunity to engage students in class, TA’s can find themselves more accessible to undergraduates and more apt to communicate with them. Consider what IU instructors Jill Robinson, Tessa Bent, and Julie Knapp discovered in their own research on Teaching Assistants and active learning classrooms.
After surveying students in their own active learning classroom, Professors Robinson, Bent, and Knapp discovered that students viewed TA’s as particularly helpful to their in-class learning. According to their research, students saw that TA’s in an active learning classroom could:
- “answer your questions quicker and more thorough than a teacher.”
- “help us understand the material and can sometimes explain concepts differently than the instructor.”
- “answer questions to concepts immediately in-class, which saved me time during homework and studying”
These quotes speak not only of in-class engagement between TA’s and students, but also of the sense of a shifting “alliance” in the classroom that encourages students to seek out TA’s when they need help.
New relationships: TA’s and instructors
These new teaching experiences are an opportunity for students and TAs to engage, but also provide rich opportunities for mentorship from the course instructors. When an instructor can directly observe a TA teach, that instructor can provide feedback informed by the context of a shared experience.
As Baepler and Walker observe in their conclusion, the classrooms don’t make alliances happen on their own, they need to be “well used” to leverage the possibilities to forge new relationships between instructors and students. Perhaps, too, active learning classrooms, when well used, might allow teaching assistants and students to forge new relationships that allow TA’s greater practice with student engagement. Just as important, active learning classrooms, when well-used, might provide opportunities for course instructors and TA’s to develop effective in-classroom mentorship. Perhaps active learning classrooms are the ideal spaces for novice instructors, such as teaching assistants, to grow and develop as future faculty. I know I wish I could have TA-ed in one!
If you wish to read more of JD Walker’s and Paul Baepler’s work on classroom relationships, consider these two papers, one on formal measurement and the other on associating social context with learning outcomes:
- Walker, J.D. & Baepler, P. (2017). Measuring social relations in new classroom spaces: Development and validation of the social context and learning environments (SCALE) survey. Journal of Learning Spaces 6(3), 34-41.http://libjournal.uncg.edu/jls/article/view/1525
- Walker, J.D. & Baepler, P. (2018). Social context matters: Predicting outcomes in formal learning environments. Journal of Learning Spaces 7(2), 1-11. http://libjournal.uncg.edu/jls/article/view/1639
