RESOURCES AT BROCK FOR TAS
9 Teaching Assistant Awards
The Teaching Assistant Award was established in 1998 to recognize the important contributions to the university by teaching assistants, seminar leaders and lab demonstrators. Since 1998, three additional awards have been created to recognize and celebrate excellence in teaching demonstrated by teaching assistance at Brock.
NOVICE TA AWARD
Presented to a graduate student teaching assistant who shows promise in the field of teaching.
Award Amount: $500.00
Eligibility: Individuals eligible to receive the award are teaching assistants, seminar leaders and/or lab demonstrators who have demonstrated a commitment to assisting others in reaching their educational goals. Eligible candidates must be graduate students with one or less years of experience as a TA.
This award is sponsored by the Faculty of Graduate Studies.
TA AWARD
Presented to teaching assistant in recognition of an outstanding contribution to teaching and learning at Brock.
Award Amount: $500.00
Eligibility: Individuals eligible to receive the award are teaching assistants, seminar leaders and/or lab demonstrators who have demonstrated a commitment to assisting others in reaching their educational goals. Eligible candidates must have one or more years of experience as a TA.
This award is sponsored by the Centre for Pedagogical Innovation.
GRADUATE TA AWARD
Presented to a graduate student teaching assistant who shows promise in the field of teaching.
Award Amount: $500.00
Eligibility: Individuals eligible to receive the award are teaching assistants, seminar leaders and/or lab demonstrators who have demonstrated a commitment to assisting others in reaching their educational goals. Eligible candidates must be graduate students with one or more years of experience as a TA.
This award is sponsored by the Faculty of Graduate Studies.
International TA Award
Presented to an international graduate student teaching assistant who show promise in the field of teaching.
Award Amount: $500.00
Eligibility: Individuals eligible to receive the award are teaching assistants, seminar leaders and/or lab demonstrators who have demonstrated a commitment to assisting others in reaching their educational goals. Eligible candidates must be international graduate students with one or more years of experience as a TA.
This award is sponsored by the Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Centre for Pedagogical Innovation.
Please visit Teaching Assistant Awards web page for more information and application guidelines.
Words of Inspiration
Richard Trotter
Faculty of Education, recipient of the 2024 Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
I think the most important thing you can do when becoming a Teaching Assistant is to reflect on who you are, what you believe and why you are taking on the role before you enter a class or seminar room, and then, once you done this reflect on the big picture things that matter, both in the context of the course you’re working in and in society generally. Understanding yourself, what you value, and how you approach the bigger picture, then sharing this openly and honestly will help you better relate to the students you facilitate, better build a dialogue with them and add consistency to the themes and topics you emphasize through a term or year; it helps to build trust and makes you more accessible to the students you work with. For me, that meant reflecting on my positionality and the values underscoring my philosophy of teaching and learning and thinking about the content and purpose of the course before it started. I have a lot of privilege, believe that while there are many reasons for engaging in formal education, the two that are most important to me are personal growth, and social change towards greater equity. Privilege influences how others see me, the assumptions they make, and how they interact with me; it influences how well or poorly I can facilitate their learning. Because of my privilege I always need to remember that many other people, especially those younger and less experienced than me, likely have a harder time with things I take for granted; this matters when I interact with students and assess their work. My beliefs about education lead to me emphasizing critical thinking and concepts around social justice, and these have become recurrent themes in my facilitation. This works well in the course in which I work. The students I work with will be teachers and will influence many through their later work. Knowing this, I begin setting expectations, explain my approach and building rapport from day one.
The second most important thing you can do is learn how to facilitate other’s learning, and not assume that just because you have done well as a student or have experience working with Teaching Assistants in that past, that you will find it easy. The truth is, being a good Teaching Assistant is hard work and requires preparation and practice. I was very anxious when I was given my first Teaching Assistant position, I wanted to do a good job, but didn’t know where to start. To learn I made sure I attended the “TA Days” at the beginning of each semester, and I completed the 3-day Instructor Skills Workshop (ISW) offered by Centre for Pedagogical Innovation. The TA Days helped; I learned quickly that I wasn’t alone in my anxiety, that supports exist and how to access them. The ISW was even more helpful, and I wish I had completed it sooner. ISW provides a concrete, evidence-based approach to my seminar planning, offered suggestions for addressing student concerns, and ideas for activities that increase student engagement; most importantly the ISW provided the opportunity to practice the skills I was learning in a safe space.
I hope these few words help. Being a Teaching Assistant has been exceptionally rewarding and has helped me not only develop skills associated with facilitating others’ learning, but has helped me broaden my horizons, learn new things and added to understanding of educational concepts and theories and improved my own academic work.
Sandra Kroeker
Faculty of Social Sciences, recipient of the 2024 Teaching Assistant Award
My teaching philosophy is rooted in the theoretical and practical concept of transdisciplinarity (TD), as well as the ethical inclusion of many voices (intersectionality), but here I will focus only on TD. Transdisciplinarity allows me to not only dive deeper into my discipline, but also allows for proficiency in other disciplines. Transdisciplinarity (TD), is defined by Nicolescu as “moving beyond traditional scholarship through a critical way of knowing” (as cited in Mitchell, 2015, p. 175; Nicolescu, 2002). TD has opened new ways to explore problems and research questions by finding answers in different fields, lenses, or disciplines.
Transdisciplinarity goes “beyond or above” disciplinary boundaries (Pryse, 2000, p. 105) where epistemology and methodology “are articulated in ways that are not ‘owned’ by any specific disciplines” (Lykke, 2011, p. 142). In my teaching I utilize my background in philosophy, psychology, and gender studies to pivot around course material and student interests. For example, CHYS 1F90, presents knowledge and research from many perspectives and takes on a developmental psychology lens in term one and socio-cultural/gender studies lens in term two. As a transdisciplinary student, teacher, and researcher, this allows me to pivot between lenses easily, without too much bias towards one or the other because I understand that both qualitative and quantitative methods have their place and are interconnected. Students in Child and Youth Studies come from many disciplines because many of them want to be teachers but have different “teachables.” Therefore, I can have students with backgrounds ranging from kinesiology to mathematics. Transdisciplinarity helps me see topics from many different perspectives to better scaffold the varying interests of my students.
Lykke (2011) also defines transdisciplinarity as “an example of the development of new thinking technologies that takes place in a space beyond the existing disciplines” (p. 142-143). I use this mode of thinking when planning my seminars because I will switch up my teaching strategy in order to accommodate different types of learners. For example, I switch between large group and small group discussions and the activities can be paper and pencil, on PowerPoint slides, from social media, or on Mentimeter. My students have provided a lot of positive feedback regarding the Mentimeter platform, which can poll the class anonymously using different fun activities such as WordCloud, or traffic lights, which allows me to keep track of their learning. It also allows them to provide anonymous feedback regarding the seminars, lectures, and course material. Therefore, transdisciplinarity also allows me to target and adapt to different learning styles.
Due to the fact that transdisciplinarity allows for different approaches or lenses (Klein, 2015; Leavy, 2011; Mitchell, 2007/2013; Montuori, 2005a/2010/2013; Moore, 2018; Pycroft & Bartollas, 2014) and promotes a ‘plurality of knowledges’ (Mitchell & Moore, 2015), it is a useful tool to allow for learning styles and worldviews that are different from traditional, linear, westernized epistemologies. For example, Indigenous knowledges are based on the premise of interconnectivity (Apgar et al., 2009; Christie, 2006; Land et al., 2018) and relationships between humans and the environment (and other animals and plants etc.) are reciprocal (Moore, 2017). Therefore, transdisciplinarity allows me to include Indigenous voices in my teaching, as recommended the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015). Reconciliation is an important step towards mending the relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples (Government of Canada, 2015). In this report, call to action #10 iii calls on the federal government to develop “culturally appropriate curricula” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action, 2015, p. 2). Therefore, I aim to include Indigenous voices and knowledge systems in my teachings and research when appropriate. Below is an example.
Vignette Example 1: A vignette example of one of my teaching moments.
An example that comes to mind is one morning, when arriving to seminar, the other seminar group was still in session during the 5-10 minutes before class and my students began to line-up and flood the hallway. Since, that week was on Indigenous experiences, I took the opportunity to walk them around the corner to the portraits of Sir Isaac Brock and Tecumseh (see Figure 1 below). The two portraits from the photo below are no longer displayed outside the Guernsey market, but they do still hang in the hallway where I was running seminars in Glenridge campus. Being a member of the Indigenous Solidary Coalition at Brock, I had learned why the portrait of Tecumseh was considered controversial. I took this moment to show the students the portrait and explain that the two-row wampum belt was deleted from Tecumseh’s right hand and that is why he looks like he is awkwardly punching the air. I explained that the two-row wampum belt represented the treaty the Indigenous peoples made with the colonizers which symbolized peace and respect of the two cultures travelling down the same river, but on different paths, so as not to steer the vessel of the other. I explained that the removal of the two-row wampum from the portrait, plus the fact that the colonizers did not honour the treaty, was another example of how colonization is still alive today and is not a thing of the past. I found that after this little museum tour, the students were more engaged in their learning and participation during the seminar. Figure 1: Removal of two-row wampum belt from painting.
Sandra’s References
Apgar, J. M., Argumedo, A., & Allen, W. (2012). Flourishing though leisure: An ecological extension of the leisure and well-being model in therapeutic recreation strengths-based practice. Therapeutic Recreation Journal, 46(2), 129-152.
Christie, M. (2006). Transdisciplinary research and Aboriginal knowledge. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 35, 78-89.
Government of Canada. (n. d). Truth and reconciliation commission of Canada. https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525
Klein, J. T. (2015). Reprint of ‘discourses of transdiciplinarity: Looking back to the future.’ Futures, 65, 10-16.
Land, N., Gulamhusein, S., Scott, A., & Coon, E. (2018). Transdisciplinary conversations in child and youth care. World Futures, 74, 572-594.
Leavy, P. (2011). Essentials of transdisciplinary research: Using problem-centred methodologies. Routledge.
Lykke, N. (2011). This discipline which is not one: Feminist studies as a postdiscipline. In R. Buikema, G. Griffin, & N. Lykke (Eds.), Theories and methodologies in postgraduate feminist research: Researching differently. New York: Routledge, pp. 137-150.
Mitchell, R. C. (2007). Towards a transdisciplinary model within child and youth rights education. In A. Alen, H. Bosley, M. De Bie, J. Vande Lanotte, F. Ang, I. Delens-Ravier, et al. (Eds.), The UN children’s rights convention: Theory meets practice. Proceedings of the International Interdisciplinary Conference on Children’s Rights, 18–19 May 2006, Ghent, Belgium (pp. 181–200). Antwerp, Oxford: Intersentia.
Mitchell, R. C. (2013). Reflections on the CRC’s future from a transdisciplinary bricoleur. The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 21(1), 510–522.
Moore, S. (2017). Trickster chases the tale of education. McGill-Queen University Press.
Moore, S. A. (2018). Radical listening: Transdisciplinarity, restorative justice and change. World Futures, 74, 471-489.
Pycroft, A. & Bartollas, C. (2014). Applying complexity theory: Whole systems approaches to criminal justice and social work. Policy Press.
