RAPPORT ISSUE 5 | Page 45

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) 44