How compassionate spaces support career development for graduate teaching assistants

UK higher education is teeming with graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). They step in as seminar leaders and lab demonstrators to lighten the demands on our teaching staff in institutions with rapidly growing cohorts. Their tasks include marking and giving feedback, delivering materials and providing office hours. The literature tells us that these doctoral candidates or novice teachers provide invaluable support to a system that is underfunded and whose staff are overworked. 

But this support, framed as a professional development opportunity, is not always acknowledged, compensated or reciprocated. For GTAs to move towards a more stable position within our academic culture and community, more consistency is required. Importantly, GTAs need to sense that their colleagues are also invested in supporting the growth of their academic identity. 

The inconsistency of teaching assistant work itself is, of course, part of the problem. When the summer term approaches and students return home, or head off on placements or holidays, GTAs often go back to their doctoral studies, letting their staff identities fall by the wayside. 

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This article stems from my experience of developing compassionate spaces – namely a GTA reading group – at a leading UK university. In providing a regular event, I hoped to create a space where teaching assistants could routinely appear in their student-turned-staff capacity and relate with others, to address their feelings about participating in distinct communities and roles, and to better understand how their experiences at the institution influenced their professional and pedagogic growth, and how they identified as staff. The results emphasised the importance of connecting to a collective identity, one that supported the GTAs to feel respected and cared for as they asked questions and exchanged insight, helping them to feel seen. 

So, why are compassionate spaces important for GTAs?

By establishing compassionate spaces, such as a reading group, teaching assistants can connect with a fixed site for benchmarking practices and role expectations, and identifying with other teachers, temporary staff and early career academics. The advantages are a sense of community, and a space for reflection. Creating space for these activities is significant for colleagues in transient roles who lack the symbolic attachments to the wider community or the physical space (such as an office or staffroom).

1. Meaningful relationships for GTAs: Familiarity with one another and their willingness to share experiences helped the GTAs to develop trust. In this group, they revealed commonalities that helped them to feel understood, through empathetic responses, and validating one another’s contributions. I am often told that GTAs in our institution don’t know one another – so bringing them together to talk about what they had read, using an article as a catalyst for conversation, helped reduce that distance.
2. Sense of belonging for GTAs: Accommodation of interests and needs and creating room for their voices enhanced GTAs’ sense of belonging. The inclusive community celebrated the diversity of contributions, helping us to understand the role better in terms of developing disciplinary pedagogy and fitting into the academic landscape. Participants were empowered to reflect on their own trajectories during the reading group, which appeared to lessen the often-observed isolation associated with doctoral study.
3. Ongoing reflection: Opportunities for reflection helped participants to unpick pedagogic challenges, feedback and mentorship. When discussion focused on their areas of interest, they were deeply engaged and empathetic, offering more personalised feedback to one another. The teacher identity was a common topic as participants felt different from other staff; they discussed their doubt about their status in the academy, showing vulnerability that correlated with their academic qualifications, fixed-term contracts and labels. 

Creating a space for GTAs to talk about their experience

The success of this space relied on GTA availability, and facilitator expertise and pedagogic approach. Within the reading group, the GTAs considered how their roles and responsibilities prepared them for teaching activity within and beyond the institution. These conversations prioritised active listening, authentic speech, mutual respect and reciprocity. In turn, the supportive space revealed connection and empathy. Here, I outline considerations for developing a compassionate space:

1. Time sessions to fit with busy PhD candidates

Busy PhD candidates often don’t prioritise social events. The reading group should combine informal interactions with academic skills, so GTAs see its value. Our group lasted up to two hours, with relevant resources distributed beforehand. For example, facilitators could share an article published by another GTA. In order for GTAs to sense ownership of the space, there should be ample opportunity for them to co-design and feedback on the encounter. 

2. Show you care

Sometimes GTAs are offered institutional training or opportunities to apply for professional accreditation, acknowledging their competence as teachers. But human interactions and symbolic gestures have equally profound implications for how they feel about their position in the academy. While caring actions are often context and relationship dependent, they should be paired with an understanding of need. The GTAs needed someone and somewhere that they could relate to, and they wanted to belong. It is important for GTAs to know that they are cared for because their trajectory is characterised by precarity, often riddled with power imbalances and high workloads. Feeling cared for helps them to know that they are valued, and that they can lean on established members of staff for support. Sensing care can also be a great motivator for GTAs to pass on care to students; when caring is modelled by others, they feel the benefits of communicating in this way to foster confidence and belonging. 

3. Use reading material to break the ice

At the outset, to get the conversation going, you might ask the group whether the circulated material resonated with them. Anecdotes can be shared, with participants explaining how they navigated similar experiences. You might consider using the article for the GTAs to speak through, until they feel sufficiently empowered to narrate their interpretations and encounters. An early example from the reading group, taken from our interpretations of “Teacher identities of graduate teaching assistants: how we (de)legitimise GTAs’ role identities”, led to discussions on how “power relations” were experienced across faculties. Metaphors known to the literature were employed to illustrate how they felt, like “donkey of the department” and a “flight assistant”.

4. Be responsive

Dialogic teaching techniques are encouraged from the reading group facilitator because they focus on developing purposeful classroom talk, commonly used for developing critical thinking skills. By modelling active listening, open-ended questioning and affirming techniques, the facilitator can support participants to co-construct meaning, while also demonstrating techniques that may be useful in GTA small-scale teaching. Throughout the session, encourage GTAs to explore topics through new lenses and apply their new knowledge. Use affirming language to motivate GTAs and give them a sense that their contributions matter.

In this space there was some sameness; there was room to normalise the questions and curiosities the GTAs felt. It was a place for being together, understanding together, and recognising their place in the academy, together.

Kristy Campbell is a lecturer (GTA development lead) in King’s Academy at King’s College London. 

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