The Role of the Teaching Assistant

Although the specific terminology varies from department to department, teaching assistants are those individuals who conduct sessions that meet in addition to lecture presentations by faculty members. These sessions most commonly serve as an aid to large lecture classes, and the primary purpose of the sessions is to amplify and clarify the concepts covered in the lectures-often through problem solving and discussion. Teaching assistants are in a unique position because they often deal with only a subset of the members in a class and, in some senses, must function not only in an instructional role but also as a mediator between the undergraduates and the professor.

As noted earlier many of the ideas outlined under discussion leading are appropriate to the teaching assistant. Because teaching assistants are often just beginning their graduate training, especially in the physical sciences, they are often more uncertain about how much they can offer their students. One of the keys t o making this position work is to realize its unique and full potential. The teaching assistant role is an excellent one for demonstrating how to approach the material at hand in a more effective manner. Many students, especially freshmen, may begin by assuming that your role is an information-giving one. Make it clear from the start that the information you provide is meant to supplement, not replace, the information presented in the main lectures.

Let your students know from the outset that your sessions with them will be used to help show them, largely through demonstration, how to arrive at more appropriate questions, how to avoid the conceptual pitfalls, and how to approach the material in a more efficient and systematic fashion. Unlike the pure self-contained discussion group, the agendas for your sessions with students will be entirely determined by the questions and problems that your students encounter with the material.

The secret here is to learn how to be organized yet spontaneous and to show students through your behavior that you are there to help them. Be careful about using sarcasm or humor in responding to questions because an excessive use of either can inhibit students from expressing themselves freely. Also, before you begin, you should make a point of talking with the professor about the rationale and goals of the course and your section. You should also plan to attend most of, if not all, the lectures. In view of the overall agenda for the course, you can then begin to define your objectives as clearly as possible.

As you are reviewing the material or attending the lectures, try to remember the kinds of obstacles that you encountered in learning the material. Keep a list of these obstacles and raise them as initial questions when you begin a session. Find out whether your students experienced similar kinds of difficulties and confusion with the concepts, lectures, or problem sets.

Often it will help for you to encourage your students to attempt to articulate what they do not understand. In other words, generally students will merely indicate that they are confused by a concept or a section of their text, but they cannot articulate which aspects of that section or concept confuse them. Before you begin to address a topic, problem, or concept try to get your students to specify explicitly what is and is not clear. By keeping the issues and topics narrowed to very specific questions, you will be less likely to accidentally lapse into unplanned lectures, and the students themselves will be more likely to stay on track.

Once you have addressed one specific question on a topic, before going on to a new topic, you might then ask for related questions from the other students. Often these remaining questions can be clustered, and it will usually be more efficient to deal with clusters of similar questions rather than take them one at a time. When a question is raised that is too detailed or threatens to take the discussion on a tangent, you can avoid counterproductive digressions by responding briefly to the question but by then inviting the student who has raised it to meet with you later-either after the session or during your office hours. It is permissible to stop a discussion short but only after giving a brief explanation for why you are doing so and what the conditions are for getting the question answered.

In short, the sessions you conduct should remain as task focused as possible. Also, you should always strive to stay in touch with your students. Although all teachers must continually assess what their students can and cannot do, teaching assistants must be especially cognizant of any difficulties their students may be having. Yours is an excellent position for personalizing the subject matter for the students and also for providing concrete feedback to the professor of the course about those aspects of the lectures that have been the most and the least accessible to the students-information that is only rarely available to faculty when they teach large lecture classes.