Teaching Assistants in the Discipline of History

Introduction

In the Spring of 1985, the Committee on History in the Classroom (CHC), funded by Southeast Missouri State University, conducted the first national survey of those departments of history that employ teaching assistants.

Specifically, the survey asked depart­ment chairpersons to define their ratio­nale for having teaching assistants, to delineate their expectations of teaching assistants, to describe characteristics of their training programs, and to evaluate how well their institutions train teaching assistants.

A related survey of approximately 1,700 teaching assistants is currently underway to determine their specific teaching responsibilities and to solicit their evaluation of the training that they receive.

The survey population was defined as all schools listed as having teaching as­sistants in the Educational Testing Serv­ice’s Directory of Graduate Programs: 1984 & 1985, Volume D. One hundred and ninety-six schools were surveyed using the strategies set forth by Donald Dill­man in his work Mail and Telephone Surveys: The Total Design Method. The result of this approach was a 90 percent return rate (176 out of 196 depart­ments), a rate that is close to the norm for homogeneous groups of profession­al educators when Dillman’s strategy is used. Two general limitations of the surveys might be acknowledged.

1. First is a problem inherent to all surveys, namely, commonly used words often have ambiguous and/or multiple meanings. It became obvious in the present study that there was no standard definition of “teaching assistant.” Some institutions included graders as TAs, others did not. The sizes of institu­tional programs, therefore, are not al­ways comparable since department chairpersons might have used differing definitions for the term “teaching assist­ant.”
2. Since the number of TAs in each program depended upon the self-defi­nition used, the results presented are based on institutional responses that are not weighted by the number of TAs within the program. Thus results from schools with small programs have been combined with schools having large programs to provide a global picture of TA training in departments of history.

Summary of Results

Descriptive data

Despite data reported in the Educa­tional Testing Service’s Directory of Grad­uate Programs: 1984 & 1985, Volume D, one-third (forty-four) of the schools responding stated that they did not cur­rently have TA programs. Two com­mon themes emerged from respon­dents’ comments:

1. Decreased funding caused a num­ber of departments to give up teaching assistants, or in one instance, an entire graduate
2. Some departments dropped teach­ing assistants because they believed that TAs did not provide an adequate quali­ty of

In the 132 departments reporting programs, the number of TAs ranged from one to sixty-five, the median num­ber of TAs per program was 11.5, and the total number of TAs was 1,803. Of the 132 departments, thirty-six (or 27 percent of those responding) offered masters programs and ninety-six (or 73 percent of those responding) offered doctoral programs.

Reasons for having TAs

Given a list of seven options, respon­dents ranked their three top reasons for having T As. To provide a more accurate indication of each item’s overall importance, the percentages of first and second rankings have been combined. Table 1 provides a rank ordering of the seven reasons for having TAs.

Expectations of TAs in the classroom

Given a list of twelve classroom behav­iors (see Table 4 for a complete listing), chairpersons were asked to rank order their expectations of teaching assistants from one through five. Knowing subject matter and being enthusiastic were the expectations that received the strongest endorsement, far exceeding any others. Sixty-nine percent ranked “knowing subject matter” either first or second in importance, while 67 percent ranked “having enthusiasm” either first or sec­ond. The third highest rate of endorse­ment was “leading an effective discus­sion.” It only received a total of 30 percent while “organized lectures” re­ceived a total of 15 percent. Each of the remaining eight items were less than 8 percent.

Evaluation of teaching assistant performance

Chairpersons were asked how they evaluated the performance of their teaching assistants. Table 2 reports the specific evaluative techniques used.

These responses must be tempered by the fact that over one-third of the de­partments stated that they do not evalu­ate the performance of teaching assis­tants systematically.

Percentage of schools that have training programs

In response to the question “Does your institution provide some training for TAs?,” 51 percent said “Yes” and 49 percent said “No.” The following mate­rial, which will focus on training provid­ed within departments of history, must be kept within the perspective that sixty­ four of the 132 institutions responding provide no training for their teaching assistants.

Characteristics of trained programs

Chairpersons were asked “Does your training program have the following characteristics?” Table 3 reports twelve characteristics ranked by the percentage of positive (Yes) responses.

Evaluation of the training of teaching assistants

Chairpersons were asked to evaluate the training of teaching assistants using a five-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Dis­agree.” Table 4 reports the total per­centage of respondents who marked “Agree” or “Strongly Agree” to the statements, “Our training . . . .”

Overall evaluation of training by respondents

On a scale ranging from a high of seven (Outstanding) to a low of 1 (Poor) the median response was a value of five (Above Average).

Discussion

The most striking result of the study was the total absence of training of teaching assistants in nearly half of the departments of history. Although de­partments consistently stated that pro­viding teaching experience was a pri­mary rationale for having teaching assis­tants only slightly more than half (51 percent) of the institutions surveyed have training programs in any form.

Since most of this study has dealt with departments that do have training, it is instructive to place the results of the survey within the perspective of all institutions who have teaching assistants. When looking at the percentage of institutions providing specific types of training compared to the total number of  institutions who have teaching assistants, the figures are bleak. For instance, only 36 percent (forty-eight in­stitutions out of the 132 responding) stated that they provide regular meet­ings for teaching assistants to discuss methods, problems, etc.

Similarly, only one-third of the insti­tutions provide planning sessions, sup­port materials, or hold sessions to ex­plore teaching methodologies. Approxi­mately one-quarter of the schools have seminars designed to increase subject matter and less than 15 percent require observation of other instructors. It would appear, therefore, that teaching assistants are provided with very little formal support from the historical pro­fession.

Rather than a formal system of train­ing, the data suggest that departments have relied primarily upon a mentoring system for the training of their teaching assistants. Seventy-eight percent of the departments responding apprentice teaching assistants to experienced in­structors, presumably with the assump­tion that this relationship will provide adequate training. The survey suggests, however, that the mentoring system is less effective than might be desired.

To begin with, 22 percent of the departments do not assign TAs to experi­enced faculty members. Although these teaching assistants may receive support from others, I suspect that they are left to sink or swim on their own. Many of those who are supervised apparently receive minimal evaluation and feed­back. Over one-third of the depart­ments stated that they do not evaluate the performance of teaching assistants systematically.

Indeed, the teaching assistants in 22 percent of the departments are never visited by supervisors. (One might sur­mise that these were classes of PhD candidates with extensive experience. In reality, twelve of the twenty-eight departments that do not visit classes offer an MA as their terminal degree.) Even when supervisors do visit classes, there is little evidence to suggest that faculty, trained in this same system, have sufficient knowledge to evaluate teaching.

In my own experience with the uni­versity promotion process, letters for­warded to support the teaching effec­tiveness of a candidate often focused on superficial mechanics such as “his eye contact was good” or hearsay evidence such as “the students say she is a good teacher.”

If as a profession we say that teaching is important, then why are we not more systematic about our efforts to train young historians to teach? At the 1985 Annual Meeting of the AHA, Milton Klein of the University of Tennessee focused on the central issue when he stated that the problem lies in the per­ception that a university’s primary re­sponsibility is to train scholars rather than teachers, a value which is clearly implicit in the existing reward structure.

Also, since liberal arts faculty have such little regard for colleges of educa­tion, many historians are reluctant to express an interest in pedagogy for fear of being considered “educationists.” If Kline is correct, meaningful change in the training of teaching assistants will not occur until we examine our funda­mental values with regard to the role of teaching within the profession.

Such an examination is long overdue. Most graduating PhDs will not have careers based on scholarly activity: they primarily will be teachers. We also do not have to fear the influence of the “educationists.” The historical profes­sion itself possesses the expertise to en­hance teaching effectiveness if it desires to do so. As an example, the OAH/FIPSE Project recently developed a se­ries of teaching/learning workshops that are appropriate for instructors at any level of experience. Finally, if higher education is to achieve the much talked about goal of “excellence” in education, this study suggests that one of the most effective approaches that historians can take is to upgrade the training of TAs with respect to teaching. Teaching assis­tants will readily admit that they need such training and the approximately 80,000 undergraduates in their class­ rooms would undoubtedly agree.