Enhancing GTAs’ Teaching Effectiveness through a Professional Development Program: A case study of GTAs at Kansas State University

Abstract

An unfortunate assumption within higher education is that anyone with an advanced degree can also be an effective teacher. Indeed, a teacher’s degree level has tended to be the most widely studied metric of his/her educational attributes. However, research has demonstrated that a teacher’s degree level has little to do with his/her students’ educational performance (e.g., Goldhaber, 2002). Aside from possessing an advanced degree, there also appears to be an implicit assumption that someone with an advanced degree most likely has teaching experience by means of a graduate teaching assistant (GTA) position, thus further qualifying him/her to teach at the collegiate level. Although having a GTA position may offer beneficial teaching experience, this cannot be considered a formal training program. Related to this point, Savage and Sharpe (1998) argue that there are relatively few sources of formal GTA training with higher education and equate the first year of teaching for many GTAs as a “survival stage” (p. 130), referring to the tendency for new GTAs to be “thrown-in” to the classroom and expected to teach well.