Exploring the complexity of GTAs’ co-teaching experience through zine-making: a collaborative self-study

Abstract

GTAs bring their own educational values into their teaching (Robertson & Yazan, 2022), making it important to examine factors shaping their instructional decisions. While some studies addressed identity tensions or peer support among GTAs, research on their co-teaching experiences is limited. This collaborative self-study investigates the evolving identities of two graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), one experienced, one novice, using zine-making as a data collection tool in a co-teaching context. Drawing on Zhuo’s (2024) conceptualisation of zine-making as a narrative inquiry method, we created our personal zines to reflect on our co-teaching experiences. The experienced GTA focused on how her teaching strategies shifted with different co-teachers and how these shifts shaped her identity over time. The novice GTA’s zine captured her first two co-teaching experiences, exploring how uncertainty, collaboration and mentorship shaped her emerging sense of self as a teacher. Upon completing our zines, we shared them through oral presentations, extending the narrative beyond the page and enabling dialogic engagement. Qualitative content analysis, one of the analytic approaches demonstrated in Zhuo’s (2024) study, was used to analyse both the visual-textual elements of the zines and the transcripts of our oral zine presentations. This process revealed four key themes in GTAs’ co-teaching, including identity negotiation, relational dynamics, emotional trajectory and key factors for GTAs’ learning. Specifically, it identifies trust, clear communication, mutual respect, and structured reflection as crucial factors in leveraging co-teaching for effective professional development of GTAs. The study concludes that zine-making offers a powerful, reflexive methodology for GTAs to articulate the complexity of their co-teaching experiences and the development of their professional identities. As such, this study adds to the emerging literature on GTA teaching and offers practical insights for programs seeking to optimise co- teaching models for GTAs’ professional development. Additionally, it proposes and demonstrates zine-making as an effective approach to researching GTAs’ experiences and identity.