Current graduate students are our future faculty. Faculty positions typically have some teaching component, if not very high expectations for time spent teaching. Given the national movement to improve undergraduate STEM education, it should be expected that incoming instructors use teaching strategies that are known to support student success. Still, little is known about how graduate students perceive and operationalize teaching, in particular evidence-based teaching (EBT). It is critical to explore our future faculty’s perceptions of the push for increased use of EBT practices in undergraduate STEM courses.<br/>Through mixed-methods quantitative (survey instrument) and qualitative (interview) methods we explored a national sample of life graduate students and EBT. We asked: What do graduate students know about evidence-based teaching? How much training have graduate students had in EBT? And, does this training impact their potential to use EBT, and to be a successful researcher? Through these questions, we aimed to understand if graduate students are bound to the widespread perception that one must choose between productive research and evidence-based teaching. Findings indicate that graduate students can be successful in learning about EBT without their research productivity and confidence suffering, yet may be limited by teaching training opportunities offered at their institutions.

Can graduate students defy perceptions of trade-offs between research and teaching?

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.