Theorizing the Teaching Triad

In this conversation essay, the authors incorporate teaching assistants (TAs) into pedagogical theorizing through what they call the teaching triad, an analytic heuristic to understand faculty-TA-undergraduate interactions. TAs are graduate students who are tasked with running discussion sections, smaller settings where undergraduates interact more directly with the material and one another. Yet, faculty pedagogies enable or constrain the work of TAs and shape classroom climates. We discuss three types of faculty pedagogies and their effects: (1) authoritarian pedagogies, wherein faculty exhibit inflexible, controlling behaviors that create a silencing and distrustful climate; (2) absentee pedagogies, characterized by a lack of faculty presence, which results in additional labor for TAs and confusion and panic for students; and (3) advocate pedagogies, which involve proactively engaged and flexible faculty approaches, cultivating an empowered environment. Understanding these dynamics is important for first-generation and/or working-class students, particularly those of color, who already face barriers to learning.