Graduate education follows an apprenticeship model, primarily aimed at preparing students for academic careers; however, the inclusion of teaching within this apprenticeship is not always clear as faculty, staff, students, and other stakeholders do not agree on the need for instructional training. Despite the variability in instructional training available to graduate students, over half will be graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) at some point in their education. This number increases to 91% for chemistry graduate programs. This discrepancy between hiring graduate students as GTAs and inconsistent inclusion of instructional training indicates a misalignment between the needs of graduate students and the support graduate programs offer.<br/>To better prepare graduate students as instructors, we must first understand how graduate student identities as students, scientists, and instructors are developed. The foci of studies are generally placed either on teaching or research identity, but not both simultaneously. Graduate or doctoral student identity has also been introduced as a lens for encompassing multiple sub-identities, however teaching identity is not emphasized in this work. The lack of emphasis on teaching as an important aspect of graduate education speaks to the imbalance in graduate student professionalization that is prevalent in the preparedness of new faculty to teach.<br/>Sociocultural theory and the lens of identity will be employed in this research to uncover the nature of graduate student identity and associated sub-identities. Through the collection of interview data from chemistry graduate students and subsequent qualitative analysis via known science and professional identity frameworks, this work aims to expand upon the conceptualization of graduate student identity. This research will also serve as pilot data in the redesign of a graduate student training course, which includes information regarding both teaching and research responsibilities as a graduate student.

Exploring graduate student identity development and the intersection of multiple sub-identities

ACS Fall 2020 Virtual Meeting

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