'Our true intent is all for your delight': Placing materiality, mobility, atmosphere, and affect at Scotland's travelling fairgrounds

Travelling fairgrounds have toured Scotland since the late-eighteenth century. Today, the arrival of the fair remains a staple feature of annual civic festivities in towns across the country, from Ayr to Elgin and everywhere in between. The much-loved fairground experience is dependent on the manufacture and design of movable machinery that magically transforms into looping, spinning, whirling, and flashing objects. The traditional array of amusement rides, supporting stalls, and food concessions that go to make ‘all the fun of the fair’, are owned and transported by family firms, several of whom have a long history in the trade spanning multiple generations. These Showpeople have multiple geographies of their own, combining year-round communities and seasonal journeys according to a recognised calendar of fairs. Travelling between towns across Scotland enables Showpeople to share their craft, heritage, and history with thrill-seeking publics. Although recognised by Scotland’s former first minister as ‘an important part of Scotland’s culture, history, and economy’ (Salmond, 2009), Showpeople have long struggled to find recognition as a community. As such, it is important to examine the material and immaterial geographies of the fair, questioning how they impact awareness of Showpeople in contemporary Scottish society. Shaped by oral histories and ethnographic experience, this thesis addresses the material and immaterial culture of Scotland’s travelling fairgrounds in terms of design, mobility, and artistry; engages with the production of fairs as spaces of affect and nostalgia; pre-theorises contemporary popular culture; and, critically considers the social constraints placed on travellers in contemporary Scotland. It reconfigures the fairground space and aims to challenge commonplace prejudices associated with the material and immaterial heritage of Scotland’s show-culture and Showpeople. Ultimately, this thesis presents a different representation of Scotland’s travelling fairgrounds, offering insights into the geographies at work in this space

Cultivating Accessible Learning Communities: The Role of GTAs and Small Group Teaching

As highlighted by Muzaka (2009), the flexible approach of GTAs to delivering course material has great strengths in the small group setting, providing collaborative, adaptive and student-centred environments. The diversity of our GTA cohort in Geographical and Earth Sciences (GES) compliments this flexibility and is key in constructing and maintaining effective learning spaces. The GTA support and progression structure in GES is key to developing the confidence and independence that underpins our model for iterative teaching development which empowers student and GTA voices within the community of practice. We reflect on a positively-received year of online tutorial and lab-teaching, foregrounding the value of GTAs in achieving this. Utilising local examples from SGT contexts, we offer a framework to increase opportunities for student and GTA involvement in curriculum co-design, working towards an inclusive learning environment

GTA facilitated active learning in early-years undergraduate practical classes in the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences

In the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences (GES) Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) are responsible for delivering practical classes (labs and tutorials) across early years' (Level 1 and 2) undergraduate programs. Here we reflect on our pedagogical approach as practical class convenors and our considerations for GTA development in the context of facilitating active learning. Through flexible and active pedagogies (e.g., Blumenfeld et al, 1991 and Rivet, 2017), we are working to transform delivery from traditionally didactic and front-led sessions towards dynamic, problem-based learning spaces. Using a consistent framework across modules, we implement collaborative exercises and peer-to-peer learning as a way of scaffolding active teaching practice. Cooperation between practical convenors and GTA teams provides a consistent and supportive framework for sharing best practice for effective and embodied learning (e.g., Gower, et.al, 2022; ALN, 2019). It is our intention that these reflections inform our GTA training framework within GES going forward and will have cross-disciplinary applications for enhancing GTA pedagogy

Shaping Graduate Teacher Identity: A Model for the Training and Support of GTA Skills Development and Graduate Attributes

In the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences (GES) Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) are crucial to our teaching community, where they are responsible for delivering practical classes (labs and tutorials) across early years' (Level 1 and 2) undergraduate programs. In these spaces, GTAs act as near-peer role models for both undergraduate and postgraduate cohorts. Consequently, investment in the support and training of GTAs has an important knock-on effect on the quality of learning and community creation throughout the school. Increasing professionalisation of GTA roles, as facilitated by both the shift to fixed term contracts and through emphasis in the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF), has prompted a positive shift in the profile of GTAs within the Higher Education (HE) sector. However, wider GTA-impacting issues around casualisation of contracts (Rawat and Meena, 2014; Young, 2006), lack of training (Austin, 2002), detachment from the development of module content (Pearson, 2018), and hierarchical departmental culture(s) (Watson, 2018; Zotos et al, 2020) remain concerns across the University and wider HE. We believe it is imperative that GTAs are supported and mentored to feel confident, respected, and valued as teachers and facilitators of learning. The GTA support and progression structure in GES is key to developing confidence and independence for an evolving teaching practice. Development is enabled through engagement with our teaching identity framework, where guidance and training are tailored across three stages of GTA maturation: ‘hatchling’, ‘fledgling’ and ‘on the wing’ (Mathers et al., 2021). The University of Glasgow Graduate Attributes are embedded in our approach, promoting ‘career learning’ (Watts, 2006), which aims to build awareness of transferable skills, and empower student and GTA voices within the community of practice. Here, we present our graduate teaching identity framework as a transferable model for professional training, underpinned by both the UKPSF and the University’s Graduate Attributes frameworks. Our three-tiered interdisciplinary model aims to support GTAs through a trajectory of teacher identities, embedding transferable skills and graduate attribute development at each stage, in addition to core pedagogical and teaching skills. Our findings drawn from two data sets (including Mathers et al., 2021) from past and current GTAs between 2019-2021, demonstrate how our framework supports ‘career learning’ and recognised attainment of selected UofG graduate attributes. We also outline some of the challenges and limitations of our model, which include the casualisation of contracts, the integration and visibility of GTAs within the department, and a lack of funding for in-house training

The value of teaching observations for the development of GTA educator identity

No abstract available