Twelve Easy Steps to Becoming an Effective Teaching Assistant

Extract

What does it take to be an effective teaching assistant in political science? This is a subject of interest not only to first time graduate teaching assistants, but also to the professors who make use of them, the directors of undergraduate studies who must live with their results, and the directors of graduate studies who must help prepare them for their first teaching jobs. But while the subject of training graduate students to teach is of live interest to numerous people, comparatively little direct attention has been accorded it. While 83% of graduate students say that “enjoyment of teaching” was one of the factors that lead them to enroll in graduate school, a significantly smaller percentage believe that their departments adequately prepare them to serve as teaching assistants, much less to take up the responsibilities of full-time college professors (Golde and Dore 2001). And while research on teaching has exploded since 1998, the chief focus of this research and publication has tended to be on civic education, curriculum development, and the use of technology in the classroom (Kehl 2002). Indeed, no article in PS since its inception in 1968 has ever directly taken up the topic of what sort of characteristics and practices, in general, contribute to making an effective teaching assistant.The author would like to thank the Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Notre Dame for providing the initial spark to this article by inviting him to participate in a panel discussion on becoming an effective teaching assistant. He would also like to thank Walter Nicgorski for encouraging him to turn his presentation into an article and for reading and commenting upon several drafts. Finally, he would like to thank Steve Yoder of PS and the two anonymous reviewers whose suggestions have considerably strengthened the final product.