RAPPORT
Issue 5 (August 2020)
universities. An AA could easily spend
four or more hours arranging and carrying
out one visit. In our subject area, an AA is
work-loaded for five hours, an allowance
that also covers any additional student
support contact, marking the student’s
presentation, and marking their final
3,000-word assessment. Where students
are struggling on placement there are
greater time resource demands placed on
the AA at a time when fostering a good
student-AA relationship is most important.
There is therefore a need to adequately
resource AAs to ensure continuation of
the student-AA relationship:
This inconsistency in approach within
our department could perhaps be
due to some of the issues outlined…
that widening access combined with
increasing demands on academics
can influence the time and quality of
academic tutoring. (Portfolio 8, CS3)
I spent significant time with Student
B, which is not reflected on my work
plan. (Portfolio 12, CS2)
Universities also need to support AA
delivery through the development of
appropriate structures/policies to enable
AAs to offer quality provision.
Developing tripartite
relationships
Creating good tripartite relationships is by
definition more than just the AA assisting
the student to work well with their
supervisor. The AA may well have to
support the supervisor to work well with
the student and with the AA themselves:
realised that the supervisors were
looking for support from me in
dealing with the student. Although
both supervisors had experience in
managing staff, the placement
situation was one in which they felt
they had little authority as she was
not a real staff member. (Portfolio 1,
CS4)
…agreed to contact her [student’s]
supervisor after the meeting about
increasing the support … for the
student as per our discussion.
(Portfolio 1, CS1)
This is likely to be unfamiliar territory for
AAs who are in someone else’s workplace
giving advice on how to work with or
manage students. It is therefore a task
that AAs may find difficult and/or may be
unwilling to do:
I hadn’t expected to be providing
support for supervisors, rather I
assumed that they would be
equipped to deal with difficult staff
and would therefore sort any issues
out themselves. (Portfolio 1, CS4)
I had to tackle the problems raised
and outline to the supervisor the
problems she needed to act upon
without making the supervisor look
unprofessional in front of the
students … had initially planned to
speak to the supervisor separately
after the meeting …and I had to
make a decision as to whether I
would wait until a future meeting to
speak to her. (Portfolio 1, CS1)
We can see then that during placement
visits AAs are performing multiple roles for
students and supervisors:
The roles the staff member may
perform during the visit are likely to
be varied dependent upon the
specifics of the situation, and they
may find themselves being
challenged by the situation.
(Portfolio 1, CS1)
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