Section 6.3 Continuing to assign TAs to paradigms courses to provide continuity as well as to support both students and faculty.
¶The department also has continued to assign teaching assistants to the paradigm courses; they can provide a lot of support to a new faculty member as well as to the students. One of the faculty members noted:
And a lot of times, since we make good use of the TAs in paradigms, (a new faculty member) may have the TA from the year before who was with (an experienced faculty member) for example...that continuity helps. Typically people don't have TAs in the upper division courses except as graders, but now we have paradigms TAs and that can help to transition new professors (to teach), as long as we overlap them...
This more professional role for TAs also provides strong preparation for these future faculty members to become deeply committed and skilled in interactive engagement practices.
One of the interviewees commented upon the power of TA experiences to encourage physics graduate students to consider teaching careers as well as the discouragement experienced later as a new faculty member in a department with a traditional culture:
I hadn't had much interest in teaching before I was a TA for the paradigms and the process of collaborating with brilliant people on teaching was why I considered a teaching position, when I was leaving Oregon State.
The traditional culture of her new institution was isolating:
As it turned out...when I was actually teaching on my own, I didn't have as much of that sense of collaboration that I'd had at the paradigms, in the paradigms program...(at her new institution) one person would be responsible for a course and they would teach it and you could ask your colleagues' advice or whatever but you weren't working with them...the courses that I taught on my own, I felt overwhelmed and isolated more because I wasn't working with anybody, I was working on my own.
Her comments suggest the importance of at least on-going meetings such as those that occur regularly as part of the Paradigms in Physics program.