Reflections on the role of student assistant in the Architecture Workshop

Abstract

In the first year of studying Design and Architecture design courses, the student assistant plays a fundamental role in accompanying the entrants. However, their role presents wide conceptual distances between the regulations issued by the Higher Council of the institution with what is expected of their performance from the teaching staff and the expectations of the students. During the development of this article, some reflections related to its own and attributed functions are addressed, placing us in the scope of the Architecture Workshop 1A (FAUD-UNSJ), initial subject of the project area of the Architecture and Urban Planning career. A auto-ethnographic qualitative methodology is adopted with the main technique of participant observation, focusing on the position of the student assistant as an active subject in his initial training in teaching who analyzes, selects and filters the different actions of each of the participants of the subject, recognizing critically the various perspectives and demands that lie in their role: from the need for assistance to the development of the class, the instance of consultations and the psycho-emotional containment of the students. It is concluded that being a teaching assistant implies a multiplicity of tasks, which go beyond the institutional regulations that designate the position, mainly valuing the role of mediator between teachers and students and their support during the teaching-learning process.