Tutoring and teaching assistance roles, referred to as Graduate Lecturing Assistants (GLAs) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), are essential academic functions that are often overlooked in higher education policy and practice. While these roles significantly support undergraduate learning, they also offer postgraduate students unique opportunities to acquire pedagogical, administrative, and academic professional skills.

This thesis explores how tutoring and teaching assistant roles in the Political Studies Department at UWC function as Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) experiences and how they can be better structured to support academic professional development.

Drawing on Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) and Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning Theory (SLT), this study adopts a qualitative case study methodology. It includes data collected from 12 tutors, 3 GLAs, and 5 academic staff through surveys and interviews.

The findings reveal that although these roles foster essential academic skills and identity formation, they remain structurally undervalued and inconsistently supported. The study argues for formal recognition of tutoring and GLAs as WIL, particularly in the Humanities, where traditional WIL pathways are limited. This research contributes to discussions on higher education transformation, access, and inclusive academic professionalisation. Recommendations are made for institutional policy reform to acknowledge and enhance the developmental value of these roles.