Helping doctoral students teach: transitioning to early career academia through cognitive apprenticeship

ABSTRACT

Doctoral training is strongly focused on honing research skills at the expense of developing teaching competency. As a result, emerging academics are unprepared for the pedagogical requirements of their early-career academic roles. Employing an action research approach, this study investigates the effectiveness of a competency-based teaching development intervention that aims to improve the teaching self-efficacy of doctoral candidates. To conduct this research, we apply the theoretical framework of Cognitive Apprenticeship Theory, a theory of social learning that requires learners to participate in a community of inquiry. Participants report significantly higher levels of teaching self-efficacy and a stronger sense of connectedness to the wider academic community.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic development
• action research
• doctoral education
• employability
• teaching self-efficacy
• Theory of Cognitive Apprenticeship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Dominique A. Greer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9375-7103

Abby Cathcart http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7003-1273

Larry Neale http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6077-5877

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Queensland University of Technology.