The TA Time Bind: The Arrhythmic Dilemmas of Research and Teaching
通过民族志研究，揭示了助教作为全职学生和兼职教师面临的研究与教学节奏冲突，以及他们如何通过个人化、即兴的协调来应对这种节律失调。
The labor of teaching assistants (TAs), as full-time students and part-time teachers, faces a “time bind.” Although research and teaching together compose graduate school for TAs, through this ethnography of TAing I argue these domains tend toward arrhythmia. Research and teaching engage distinct work rhythms that persistently interrupt one another, rendering individualized, improvisational coordination an organizing principle of TAing. Coordination is complicated by the commitment to research and teaching as meaningful projects. The autonomy to develop a projection of good teaching “responsibilizes” TAs, channeling surplus effort to teaching. I highlight preparatory work like lesson planning as a crucial site through which to understand the competing coordinative and projective pressures of TAing. I close by outlining some implications of arrhythmia for contemporary US higher education and for the sociology of labor.