Do Graduate Students' Teaching Values Align With Their Approaches to Teaching and Teaching Practices?

An online survey of graduate-student instructors of undergraduate courses (N = 156) explored their teaching values, teaching approaches, teaching practices, career teaching expectations, and experience of receiving support as teachers. Our aim was to uncover what graduate students value as important for teaching excellence and whether those values are expressed in their teaching practices. Participants most valued ethics and diversity and higher-order thinking skills in their teaching along with instructor expertise. Of these 3 domains, the first 2 aligned with endorsements of a conceptual-change, student-focused approach to teaching (r = .36 and r = .28, respectively). Despite this, most participants reported making use of non-student-centered teaching practices, such as lecturing (93.6%) or assigning textbook readings (84.0%), rather than student-focused practices, like using small-group discussions (48.0%). However, when some student-centered practices were adopted, there were links to endorsements of student-focused values: Assigning popular press articles (19.2%) correlated with valuing ethics and diversity (r = .29), whereas structuring writing assignments to be collaborative (28.8%) correlated with valuing higher-order thinking skills (r = .27). Regarding career teaching expectations and perceptions of teaching support, two thirds of participants expected teaching to be part of their career responsibilities, but fewer than half believed they received as much support as needed. The findings indicate further need for training and support to better ensure that graduate-student instructors adopt evidence-based teaching practices that align with their student-focused teaching values and approaches.