The Role of Teaching in the Preparation of Future Faculty

A Model for Collaborative Teaching Teams in Counselor Education

“…Within higher education in general, doctoral preparation for teaching has received much attention (Valentine et al, 1998). Whereas many faculty members agree that mentoring relationships and teaching assistantships are preferable to courses in pedagogy (Silverman, 2003), doctoral graduates have noted the limitations of and improvements needed to those traditional types of preparation for teaching in higher education. From their studies of doctoral student teaching, Heppner (1994) and Austin (2002) concluded that the experiences of assisting with teaching or teaching as primary instructors were not enough to increase the competence of doctoral students.…”

Journal of Counselor Preparation and Supervision Volume 1, Number 2

“…Counselor educators did not find their courses on college teaching to be effective in preparing them to teach, however, they found that teaching an entire course (different from delivering lectures as a teaching assistant) was very effective in preparing them to teach. Silverman (2003) discussed that taking courses in teaching might prepare doctoral students to teach, but responses to this survey did not support that sort of activity as effective in teaching preparation. A total of 68 (36.4%) participants who reported taking one course in college teaching, and 100 (53.5%) participants reported not having any college teaching courses.…”

“…Mean effectiveness ratings for some of Silverman"s (2003) other suggested activities did indicate that they were effective in teaching preparation. For example, being a participant in a teaching practicum was given a mean rating of 5.56, which indicates that this was rated as highly effective.…”

“…There has been extensive speculation in the higher education literature regarding the importance of teaching (Silverman, 2003) and reasons for the lack of emphasis on teaching preparation at the doctoral level (DeNeef, 1993); but there have been no known empirical studies that have examined the current state of doctoral teaching preparation in any discipline including counselor education. Discussions in higher education about teaching preparation have revolved around the topics of the importance of research versus teaching and how to best utilize resources.…”

“…The identified theme of mentoring provides support for Silverman (2003) and others (Cesa & Fraser, 1989;Wilde & Schau, 1991) who have cited mentoring as an essential factor in teacher training. Many responses indicated the desire to be mentored into the role of teacher by experienced faculty.…”