Feeding Two Birds With One Scone? The Relationship Between Teaching and Research for Graduate Students Across the Disciplines

We surveyed over 300 graduate students at a Southeastern research university to increase our understanding of their perceptions of (a) the connection between teaching and research, (b) the means by which integration occurs, and (c) the extent to which teaching and research contribute to a shared skill set that is of value in both contexts. We also examined differences across disciplines in the perception of this teaching-research nexus. Overall, findings indicate that graduate students perceive important relationships between teaching and research, and they point toward opportunities for administrators to promote teaching and research integration

Graduate students\u27 teaching experiences improve their methodological research skills

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate students are often encouraged to maximize their engagement with supervised research and minimize teaching obligations. However, the process of teaching students engaged in inquiry provides practice in the application of important research skills. Using a performance rubric, we compared the quality of methodological skills demonstrated in written research proposals for two groups of early career graduate students (those with both teaching and research responsibilities and those with only research responsibilities) at the beginning and end of an academic year. After statistically controlling for preexisting differences between groups, students who both taught and conducted research demonstrate significantly greater improvement in their abilities to generate testable hypotheses and design valid experiments. These results indicate that teaching experience can contribute substantially to the improvement of essential research skills

A call for performance-based data in the study of STEM Ph.D. education

Understanding the scholarly development of Ph.D. students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is vital to the preparation of the scientific workforce. During doctoral study, students learn to be professional scientists and acquire the competencies to succeed in those roles. However, this complex process is not well studied. Research to date suffers from overreliance on a narrow range of methods that cannot provide data appropriate for addressing questions of causality or effectiveness of specific practices in doctoral education. We advocate a shift in focus from student and instructor self-report toward the use of actual performance data as a remedy that can ultimately contribute to improved student outcomes

Graduate students’ teaching experiences improve their methodological research skills

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate students are often encouraged to maximize their engagement with supervised research and minimize teaching obligations. However, the process of teaching students engaged in inquiry provides practice in the application of important research skills. Using a performance rubric, we compared the quality of methodological skills demonstrated in written research proposals for two groups of early career graduate students (those with both teaching and research responsibilities and those with only research responsibilities) at the beginning and end of an academic year. After statistically controlling for preexisting differences between groups, students who both taught and conducted research demonstrate significantly greater improvement in their abilities to generate testable hypotheses and design valid experiments. These results indicate that teaching experience can contribute substantially to the improvement of essential research skills

Faculty perceptions of common challenges encountered by novice doctoral writers

Although learning to write for publication is an important outcome of doctoral education, it has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. Within a socialization and supervisor pedagogy framework, this study uses narratives of faculty who regularly write with their doctoral students for publication to expose challenges students commonly encounter in the writing process. Common challenges include international students\u27 \u27writing problem\u27, misconstruing the nature of disciplinary writing and not realizing that \u27public\u27 is part of publication

Faculty Mentors’, Graduate Students’, and Performance-Based Assessments of Students’ Research Skill Development

Faculty mentorship is thought to be a linchpin of graduate education in STEM disciplines. This mixed-method study investigates agreement between student mentees\u27 and their faculty mentors\u27 perceptions of the students\u27 developing research knowledge and skills in STEM. We also compare both assessments against independent ratings of the students\u27 written research proposals. In most cases, students and their mentors identified divergent strengths and weaknesses. However, when mentor-mentee pairs did identify the same characteristics, mentors and mentees disagreed about the mentee\u27s abilities in 44% of cases in the Fall semester and 75% in the Spring semester. When compared against performance-based assessments of mentees\u27 work, neither faculty mentors\u27 nor their mentees\u27 perceptions aligned with rubric scores at rates greater than chance in most categories