Collaborative mentoring to prepare doctoral students for college teaching

Abstract

This project used psychosocial mentoring (Curtin et al., 2016) to create a collaborative mentoring experience prepare doctoral students to become the instructors of record. In the collaborative mentoring experience, we paired doctoral students with a faculty member teaching a class that the doctoral student aspired to teach. The doctoral student observed the faculty member teaching, engaged in discussions with the faculty member, and reflected on the process. The following semester, the doctoral student became the instructor of record for the course. Following this experience, two doctoral students and one faculty member completed a retrospective self-study through journaling and discussions. After analyzing the results through discussions, we identified three themes: (1) understanding the course and our learners, (2) underlying goals and processes involved in college teaching, and (3) stretching the scope of practice for instructors of record. This paper describes the theme of stretching the scope of practice for instructors of record. Implications for teaching and learning in higher education are discussed.