What Mathematics Graduate Teaching Assistants Value in a Professional Development Program
Many mathematics graduate students will be a graduate teaching assistant (GTA) at some point in their time at graduate school; however, few GTAs have any prior teaching experience. Fortunately, many universities offer a professional development (PD) program to help prepare GTAs for teaching. While research on higher education PD is rising, little research has been done on GTA’s perceptions of their PD experience. This study aimed to explore GTA’s perceptions by answering the question what do GTA’s value in the PD experience? To answer this question, a survey was sent to all mathematics, applied mathematics, and statistics graduate students at a southwestern university. After the survey, 12 GTAs agreed to be interviewed. Through the survey and interviews, five themes arose in what GTAs value: interactions with peers, interactions with teaching supervisors, collaborative learning spaces, observations of instructors as an undergraduate and graduate student, support provided through PD. From this study, recommendations are given for the current PD program to consider.