Becoming and Belonging: New Teachers of Writing

Abstract

Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) are a continual point of interest as they teach a large portion of undergraduate students, especially at R1 universities, and represent the emerging minds in our field (Estrem and Reid; Dobrin; Dryer; Wisniewski). Therefore, it is important to understand how graduate students position themselves within this community of practice (Obermark et al.; Lave and Wenger). This dissertation traces graduate student teaching experiences over two years focusing on questions of claiming identity and maneuvering between three domains: community practice, role expectations, and individual motivations. The project is a longitudinal qualitative study of 5 new GTAs who provided observations, interviews, focus groups, and portfolios over two years participating in co-written descriptions of identity in keeping with feminist research method/olgoies (Alsup; Kirsch and Royster; Powell and Takayoshi; Selfe and Hawisher). The dissertation speaks to those who work with new teachers, specifically those in Writing Studies, and encourages us to reflect on how we define GTAs and translate these ideas to others and in our training. As Brewer notes “we must think more deeply about what...we still need to know and how much of what we know must be articulated to novices” (150). This acts as a moment of translation from GTAs’ voices to the field on how GTAs interpret Writing Studies and the mythos of the composition teacher.