| Doctoral students often have difficulty in adjusting to new faculty positions that require some level of teaching (Boice, 1992; Golde & Dore, 2001; Magner, 2000; Nyquist & Woodford, 2000) because many have not been prepared to teach. This problem is seen across academic fields but is particularly pertinent in the social sciences, languages and arts, where larger numbers of graduates move into college positions that require teaching than do those in the "hard sciences."; For many years organizational communication and organizational behavioral researchers have examined the effect of socialization tactics and information-seeking on the way newcomers adjust to responsibilities. The term "newcomer role adjustment" has been used (Ashforth & Saks, 2000) to explain role outcomes such as ambiguity, conflict, orientation and intention to persist in the position. Role adjustment has also been shown to have an effect on how long individuals stay in the position, how well they perform and their job satisfaction.; Therefore, this study examined these concepts of "newcomer role adjustment" in a new context, that of graduate teaching assistants' (GTAs) adjustment to the role of teaching. GTAs in the social sciences, languages or arts who had taught two years or less were surveyed using a web-based survey. This study is able to establish a response rate for web-based surveys because it reaches a target population. In this case the response rate was 36%.; The findings demonstrate that the socialization tactics departments use to orient GTAs to their teaching role are important to role adjustment. Socialization tactics influence these role adjustment outcomes directly, but they also influence the GTAs' information-seeking strategies and level of efficacy, and thus influence their levels of role ambiguity and role conflict indirectly as well. In general, institutionalized socialization, though frowned upon by many of those discussing the changes in doctoral education, was shown to have directly and indirectly the most positive effect on GTAs' level of ambiguity and conflict. This finding and others, showing the interaction of these organizational and individual variables on role adjustment, provide valuable insight to academic departments determined to better prepare their GTAs for the teaching role. |
