A critical exploration of the cultivation of identities and spaces for agency in practice among Graduate Teaching Assistants in higher education

In recent years, Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) have been increasingly employed by higher education institutions to support student learning. As PhD students they find themselves in liminal and precarious positions, balancing conflicting priorities as they forge professional identities. Many institutions offer professional development opportunities to support new GTAs as they embark on teaching. However, in this project I argue that such activity is often based on a deficit model of GTA practice, and can be too narrowly focused on developing their skills and knowledge in a way that socialises them to institutional norms.

This research draws on realist social theory to explore how GTAs forge identities as teachers and cultivate spaces for agency despite the structures and cultures that may constrain them. Its contribution to knowledge and practice is twofold. Firstly, while social realism has been applied to academic identities, there has been little exploration of GTA identity and agency through this lens. Secondly, I adopted a collaborative approach of working in depth with three participants to construct fictionalised composite stories from reflections based on observations of their practice. This not only celebrates the messy, complex, emotional and often contradictory nature of GTA practice, but also deploys a methodology rarely applied to educational research in higher education contexts. While the GTAs I worked with tended to maintain rather than challenge prevailing structural and cultural forces, their experiences nonetheless offer unique insights into the spaces for agency they create through the ordinariness of everyday practice. Through this research I hope to raise critical, unsettling questions for those working in academic development, including myself, about the assumptions we make around GTA practice, the ways in which we could honour the diversity of GTA experiences, and our potential role in empowering GTAs to explore where they might enact agency in their individual contexts.