Graduate Teaching Assistants' Decision Making and Perceptions of Autonomy

Graduate students are increasingly being called upon to teach engineering courses, yet little is known about their experiences. Based in self-determination theory, the purposes of this study were to investigate how autonomous graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) feel in their teaching duties and how graduate teaching assistants‟ descriptions of their teaching decisions relate to their perceptions of autonomy. Six doctoral students from five departments at a large, land-grant research university were recruited to participate in interviews about their teaching experiences. From these interviews, we found that five of the six GTAs described relationships with supervising faculty where the GTAs felt limited or discouraged in their autonomy for making teaching decisions. Our results also show that despite a perceived lack of autonomy, some GTAs continue to act autonomously when faced with decision-making in the classroom. These results can help inform faculty as they seek to support GTAs in the GTAs‟ teaching responsibilities.