Composition Instructors

Abstract: This phenomenological study explores how graduate students in an English department perceive their new roles as writing teachers. The findings show that even though the participants went through the same professional development program, they constructed different teacher identities based on their other identities and their experiences as students and writers. In university English departments, teaching assistantships are very common among students in MA, MFA, and Ph.D. programs who teach the required freshmen composition courses as part of their graduate program or fellowship requirements. Since most teaching assistants (TAs) have little or no classroom teaching experience, English departments provide some kind of professional development in the form of workshops, a course, or a practicum. These new teachers develop their teacher identities relying heavily on their experiences as students and members of the discourse community of their majors. The goal of this study was to understand how TAs construct their new identities as composition instructors. My interest in this subject comes from my experiences as an English TA and eventual faculty member, during which time I struggled with the construction of my multipl