Teaching development for early-career faculty: Changing how we think about teaching
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56433/tk5t1q73Keywords:
teaching development, teaching conceptions, teaching identity, reflection, foundations in teachingAbstract
Abstract
This paper presents an early-stage, collaborative reflective analysis of experience in a doctoral-level course Foundations of Teaching, aimed at challenging participants' underlying conceptions of teaching and learning. The course design was grounded in the premise that for development of teacher identity and a meaningful change in teaching practice we need to address teachers’ understanding of what teaching is. Drawing on reflections from the course instructor and participating doctoral students who are co-authors of this paper, we apply thematic analysis to identify preliminary themes relating to which aspects of the course supported shifts in participants' conceptions of teaching and why these changes may have occurred. The paper contributes to discussions about how doctoral education can prepare future academics for teaching through transformative rather than purely skills-based approaches.
References
Åkerlind, G. S. (2004). A new dimension to understanding university teaching. Teaching in Higher Education, 9(3), 363–375. https://doi.org/10.1080/1356251042000216679
Åkerlind, G. S. (2007). Constraints on academics’ potential for developing as a teacher. Studies in Higher Education, 32(1), 21–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070601099416
Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Harvard University Press.
Bale, R., & Anderson, M. (2024). Teacher identities of graduate teaching assistants: how we (De)legitimise GTAs’ role identities. Teaching in Higher Education, 29(5), 1133–1148. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2022.2109015
Boud, D., Cohen, R., & Sampson, J. (1999). Peer Learning and Assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 24(4), 413–426. https://doi.org/10.1080/0260293990240405
Bovill, C., Cook‐Sather, A., & Felten, P. (2011). Students as co‐creators of teaching approaches, course design, and curricula: implications for academic developers. International Journal for Academic Development, 16(2), 133–145. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2011.568690
Kugel, P. (1993). How professors develop as teachers. Studies in Higher Education, 18(3), 315–328. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079312331382241
McDaniels, M. (2010). Doctoral student socialization for teaching roles. In Gardner, S.K., & Mendoza, P. (Eds.). On Becoming a Scholar: Socialization and Development in Doctoral Education (pp. 29-44). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003446187
McLeod, C. L., Almquist, C. B., Ess, M. P., Zhang, J., Schultz, H., Nguyen, T., Tran, K., & Hughes, M. (2025). Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs): Roles, Perspectives, and Prioritizing GTA Workforce Development Pathways. Education Sciences, 15(7), 838. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15070838
Mimirinis, M., & Ahlberg, K. (2021). Variation in education doctoral students’ conceptions of university teaching. British Journal of Educational Research, 47(3), 557–578. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3669
Nasser-Abu Alhija, F., & Fresko, B. (2021). Challenges of being a graduate teaching assistant. Higher Education Research & Development, 40(6), 1220–1235. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1806790
Sadera, E., Suonio, E. E., Chen, J. C. C., Herbert, R., Hsu, D., Bogdan, B., & Kool, B. (2024). Strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable training and professional development of graduate teaching assistants, teaching assistants, and tutors: a scoping review. Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 16(5), 2199-2215. https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-08-2023-0323
Shum, A., Lau, P., & Fryer, L. (2020). From learner to teacher: (re)training graduate teaching assistants’ teaching approaches and developing self-efficacy for and interest in teaching. Higher Education Research & Development, 40(7), 1546–1563. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1818063
Trigwell, K., Prosser, M., & Waterhouse, F. (1999). Relations between teachers' approaches to teaching and students' approaches to learning. Higher education, 37(1), 57-70. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1003548313194
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Ascd.
Winstone, N., & Moore, D. (2017). Sometimes fish, sometimes fowl? Liminality, identity work and identity malleability in graduate teaching assistants. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 54(5), 494–502. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2016.1194769
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Gorana Misic, Sulemana Abdul-Karim, Ghaida Alhooshani, Ali Awad, Ahmed Farhod, Jifeng Hong, Nawawan Panburana, David Youssef, Yifan Zhou
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice has made best effort to ensure accuracy of the contents of this journal, however makes no claims to the authenticity and completeness of the articles published. Authors are responsible for ensuring copyright clearance for any images, tables etc which are supplied from an outside source.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
