Do graduate students aim to teach undergraduates employable skills?

Abstract

Concerns have been raised that colleges are not adequately developing the broad-based transferable skills students need to succeed in a globally competitive workforce (Arum & Roksa, 2011;Davidson, 2017) . Surveys of college administrators and business leaders indicate a considerableThis document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Do graduate students aim to teach broad-based “employable” skills in online courses?

“…Our third aim was to identify associations between self-reported teaching strategies, awareness of students' goals, and emphasis on teaching employable skills. In line with Che et al (2021), we hypothesized that the utilization of research methodology and active-learning strategies would align with teaching employable skills, unlike lecturing/testing. Further, we predicted that instructors with higher awareness of students' goals would place greater curricular emphasis on developing students' skills than their peers who were less aware of their students' goals.…”

“…Using an online survey, Che et al (2021) sought to identify whether graduate students employed as undergraduate course instructors (N = 114, 57.9% in psychology, 100% teaching in person) emphasized broad-based employable skills in their This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

“…Building on Ciarocco and Strohmetz's (2018) framework for employable skills (designed for psychology students, but broadly applicable), Che et al (2021) administered a Teaching Employable Skills survey that asked course instructors to report whether their teaching addressed skill development across four broad domains: communication (e.g., writing), analytical inquiry (e.g., research), collaboration (e.g., working in groups), and professional development (e.g., self-management). Based on a principal component analysis (PCA), Che et al (2021) categorized self-reported teaching strategies as lecturing, active learning (e.g., low-stakes writing, think-pair-share; Kaddoura, 2013), and research methodology (e.g., data collection, lab exercises). Lecturing was the most popular teaching strategy, matching earlier findings on graduate students' approaches to teaching (Schwartz et al, 2022).…”

“…Whether instruction in research methodology was restricted to specific courses (e.g., experimental psychology) is unknown because the survey did not collect data on course titles. Che et al (2021) also examined whether instructors' emphasis on skill development was associated with their being mindful of their students' academic goals, such as whether instructors considered what students hoped to gain by taking their courses. Instructors' self-ratings on the Teachers' Awareness of Goals of Students scale (Saltzman et al, 2018) correlated positively with emphasis on teaching communication, collaboration, and professional development skills.…”

“…The Teaching Employable Skills survey (Che et al, 2021) is a teacher-focused adaptation of the Employable Skills Self-Efficacy Survey (Ciarocco & Strohmetz, 2018). It comprised 51 items organized into four broad skill domains: communication, analytical inquiry, collaboration, and professional development.…”