A Texas Model for TA Training

Abstract

During the 1976-1977 academic year the Texas State Legislature, following allegations by some faculty members that undergraduate education at the University of Texas was being neglected by regular faculty in favor of prestigious research undertakings, and that the training of most of the teachers of undergraduates, i.e., graduate teaching assistants, was being left to chance, enacted legislation to regulate both the faculty teaching workload and the duties of graduate teaching assistants (TAs) throughout the entire university system. According to these legislative pronouncements, only graduate students who had earned the Master's Degree or the equivalent number of graduate hours and who had completed a pedagogical training course would be permitted to teach undergraduates in lower division courses without the in-class supervision of a faculty member. Such graduate students were to be given the title of Assistant Instructor (AI). Graduate students who had not earned the M.A. or the equivalent or who lacked a pedagogical training course were to be called Assistants, and their stipend was to be lower than that of an AI. TAs would be' able to teach, but only under the direct supervision of a faculty member who held the Ph.D. This faculty member was to be the official teacher of record for the class taught and was to be present in class at all times. Furthermore, all new TAs would be required to complete a graduate level course in pedagogy taught by a faculty member in the TAs' department during their first semester of graduate study. The Department of Germanic Languages had already been regulating and guiding the efforts of its teaching assistants for several years, but in view of the new laws the training would have to take on new dimensions. The revised TA training program, dubbed Teaching Apprenticeship, lasts for three or four semesters, depending on the academic and pedagogical progress of each TA. It is considered finished when the TA completes the M.A. degree or earns thirty graduate credits. The departmental training program consists of four rather distinct but interrelated phases: orientation, theoretical training, practicum, and evaluation.