Guidance for Graduate Units: Promoting Teaching Opportunities for Doctoral Students

Overview

The information in this guidance document will be helpful to graduate faculty administrators, graduate administrators, as well as supervisors in promoting and creating teaching opportunities for doctoral students. Graduate students may find helpful the list of central resources.

Background

Teaching opportunities for graduate students are a vital part of graduate education because they can lead to enhanced career opportunities, professional satisfaction, and professional and transferable skills.

Career Outcomes

The following charts overview the common occupation categories of PhD graduates and the extent to which the teaching experience was beneficial to their professional development gleaned from the 2022 Career Outcomes data and 2023 gradSERU survey.

The 2022 Career Outcomes project found that approximately 7,500 PhD students that graduated between 2000 and 2021 went on to a variety of careers including academic and non-academic. Professional and transferable skills gained from teaching-related activities (e.g., leadership and project management and communication) are helpful to their careers.

Career Outcomes of PhD Graduates

2022 Data for the Post-Secondary Education Sector (n=7,526)

In the chart above, the data shows that the two most common occupation categories are tenure stream and teaching stream faculty appointments. Teaching stream appointments, the second largest occupation category, demonstrate our students’ interest in having teaching-related activities as the centre of their career. Additionally, our students took on jobs as college lecturers and contract/sessional instructors, where teaching-related activities are also central to their jobs. The largest category of tenure-stream faculty as a career for graduates also signifies the need for teaching-related experience and mentorship for our graduate students. In all cases, teaching experience is crucial to success.

Doctoral Students’ Appreciation for Teaching Experiences and Related Professional Development

The 2023 Graduate Student Experience in the Research University survey (gradSERU) gathered responses from nearly 3,700 participants at the University of Toronto on a variety of program-related experiences, including teaching experience. In addition, the gradSERU offers comparison to other similar schools in the U.S.

Graduate Student Experience in the Research University (gradSERU) Survey

“To what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement: My teaching experience while enrolled in my current graduate/professional program…”
% Agree or Strongly Agree (n=1,386)

The data revealed that doctoral students found teaching experiences to be a valuable enhancement to their academic experience and were helpful for their professional development.

Professional and Transferable Skills Gained Through Teaching Experiences

As noted above, graduate students rely on their teaching experience as they move into both academic and non-academic careers. Professional and transferable skills are skills that are applicable to a variety of contexts and careers. Identifying transferable skills allows graduate students to highlight a wide range of relevant qualifications to jobs in different sectors. Skills such as teamwork and collaboration; communication; critical thinking and problem-solving; leadership and project management; professionalism and work ethic; and fostering diversity, equity and inclusion can be gained through teaching-related activities and relate to both academic and non-academic careers (adapted from the Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation (CTSI) resource for graduate students on Identifying and Articulating Your Transferable Skills).

Suggestions for Units in Offering Teaching Opportunities for Doctoral Graduate Students

Units providing teaching experiences may find the following recommendations beneficial for student success:

Link discussion of teaching-related activities and opportunities to professional and transferable skills students can gain as opposed to thinking of teaching opportunities largely in terms of contractual obligations. For example, CTSI has a helpful document that could be linked to on graduate unit websites (Identifying and Articulating Your Transferable Skills).
Help students balance timely degree completion with teaching opportunities. Teaching opportunities should fit into and be balanced with the normal activities of a doctoral student.
Offer a diversity of teaching opportunities where applicable (e.g., teaching assistant, grader/reader, co-teaching a course or part of a course, instructor of a course).
Encourage faculty supervisors to offer mentorship to graduate students in their teaching activities, especially as students embark on new opportunities.
Review student survey data collected by SGS (e.g., gradSERU, career outcomes) on teaching-related experiences in your units and use that to inform decision-making and supports in this area. For example, if students are reporting that teaching experiences, such as TAing, are increasing their time-to-completion, the program may wish to collaboratively discuss the balance of the developing skills through teaching opportunities and the impact on time-to-completion.
Make students aware of teaching opportunities at the university, in your division, and in your unit, possibly through your program handbook, website, and orientations (please see materials below). For example, the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program (TATP) offered by CTSI provides a significant teaching leadership opportunity by hiring doctoral students every year as graduate educational developers, leading to the development of high-level teaching-related professional and transferable skills.

While the benefits of teaching experiences are vast, units have different structural capacities to offer such experiences. Graduate-only units may have difficulty offering TA opportunities to their graduate students due to the lack of undergraduate courses. In this case, graduate-only units may want to consider forming relationships with complementary undergraduate units, so their students could have more substantial TA opportunities.

Examples of Innovative Teaching Practices and Resources in Graduate Units

As units think of enhancing their opportunities around teaching for doctoral students, the following innovative teaching practices and resources around the university could be useful to develop programming.

Examples of Programs

Writing-Integrated Teaching Program funds undergraduate units within the Faculty of Arts and Science to embed writing pedagogy in undergraduate courses. The funding involves hiring a graduate student to be Lead Writing TA (LWTA). Unlike regular TAs, the LWTA is similar to an educational developer for undergraduate course instructors and peer trainer for fellow graduate students in the unit. These LWTAs often become Unit 1 course instructors themselves.

Teaching Fellows program in the Department of Chemistry involves graduate students pitching a teaching project for specific courses.

Some units have agreements with CUPE to allow graduate students to be the instructor of an undergraduate class (typically a seminar). In these cases, the unit is allowed to choose the instructor of the course for pedagogical reasons; they can accept the best proposal from a graduate student without being required to offer the same student a subsequent teaching opportunity. Graduate units hold “competitions” for students interested in teaching an undergraduate course to submit a proposal (including often a syllabus, description of a course, and evidence of teaching effectiveness), after which a selection process is held (e.g., Graduate Department of Anthropology).

Prospective Professors in Training (PPIT) in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering offers graduate students and postdoctoral fellows the opportunity to learn about teaching, research, and administration within an engineering education context. This program includes training in developing curriculum and teaching and learning, as well as how to apply for an academic job.

Teaching Methods & Resources Committee in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering is tasked with 1) teaching methods, resources, and aids; and (2) evaluating and rewarding teaching effectiveness across both graduate and undergraduate education.

PhD Student Teaching Academy in the Faculty of Nursing provides facilitated sessions to students focused on course and curriculum development and delivery as well as opportunities for peer-learning on preparing teaching dossiers, and providing feedback on teaching dossiers and teaching practice. Students who have a TA role in the current academic year can be paid for up to four hours of TA training by attending the sessions.

Example Courses

Some units have graduate courses devoted to teaching. For example (from the School of Graduate Studies Calendar):

ENG9900H – Teaching Literature: This seminar, required of and limited to PhD students in either Year 2 or 3 and PhD U students in either Year 3 or 4, addresses the teaching of English literature at the university level. It is designed to provide the foundations for an informed, self-reflexive pedagogy and to help students develop effective methods for teaching English to undergraduate and graduate students. Guest faculty will discuss a range of pedagogical challenges and solutions.
MAT1499H – Teaching Large Mathematics Courses: This course helps train students to become effective lecturers. It is not for degree credit and is not to be offered every year.
MUS2222H – Conducting and Teaching Choral Music I: An examination of current sources and future directions in choral music education emphasizing choral literature, score analysis and interpretation, conducting and rehearsal techniques. An interactive laboratory seminar will offer students the opportunity to develop their theoretical, pedagogical, and diagnostic abilities in relation to current research in curriculum and instruction.
PHL2152H – Philosophy and Teaching: A detailed treatment of selected topics in philosophy related to teaching, pedagogy, and philosophy of education. Typically, does not assume prior background in the area. Further details on topics selected for the current year are available on the Department of Philosophy’s website.
PHM1141H – Introduction to Education Theory, Practice, and Scholarship: This course will introduce future educators to foundational aspects of teaching, learning, assessment, rooted in the discipline of social psychology, to help support effective pedagogy in diverse settings. The goal of this course is to provide students with knowledge, skills, and motivation to identify learning needs of audiences, design curriculum, use effective teaching methods, and undertake program evaluation for the purpose of quality improvement, all in a scholarly, evidence-informed manner.
SOC6811H – Seminar in Teaching (Sociology): The seminar challenges graduate students to discover and hone their teaching styles, to develop a personal philosophy about teaching and learning, to learn about the teaching resources that are available to them throughout the university and elsewhere, to experiment with designing engaging courses of study, and to discover that teaching can be a rewarding and stimulating element of an academic career. The seminar will discuss the major components of a course, including course goals, topic outline, use of readings, use of class time, evaluation of students, and evaluating yourself. In each case, we will consider the options available and their strengths and limitations.

Courses also exist that train students across the disciplines. For example:

THE500 – Teaching in Higher Education: This course is offered by Woodsworth College and open to all PhD students and postdoctoral scholars to improve their teaching practice by learning about ways in which students learn and about different teaching theories and styles.

Examples of Communities of Practice

Some units have teaching and learning communities of practice that include or are run by graduate students (e.g., Psychology).

Central Teaching Resources Available to all Graduate Students

The Teaching Assistants’ Training Program (TATP) of CTSI offers a range of teacher training and teaching professional development opportunities related to teaching to graduate students across the University of Toronto. As a peer-based program (rooted in Students as Partners framework), it hires a team of Graduate Educational Developers (Teaching Fellows) to support the design, development and delivery of all programming.

Teacher Job Training

The TATP has many different offerings related to job training for first contract teaching assistants and graduate student course instructors. All of these are directly tied to the Collective Agreement (between the university and CUPE 3902) and the recommendations from research conducted a few years back around different types of tutorials/labs across the university.

TATP offers numerous one-hour asynchronous online training modules on a range of different tutorial categories (e.g., discussion-based tutorials) and key teaching-related topics (e.g., grading). These self-paced modules cover a broad range of teaching-related topics such as educational technologies and online teaching, intercultural competencies, active learning, etc.

The self-directed elements are complemented by a range of other synchronous (online or in-person) sessions. There are three training periods at the beginning of each semester: August to October (for Fall semester); January (for the Winter semester); and May (for the Spring/Summer semester). There are also other training opportunities such as the Tri-campus TA Week, which includes 15 to 20 sessions related to various aspects of teaching. Most workshops focus on foundational pieces but there are also specialized conversations during the week (e.g., on Indigeneity, on microaggressions in the classroom, etc.).

In addition to the Online TA Week and centrally delivered sessions, the TATP also facilitates training sessions locally at departments, divisions or for specific large courses. These are designed and delivered in various ways, depending on a unit’s preference. The TATP coordinates with a department to offer something that responds to the needs of their TAs.

Teaching Professional Development

The TATP offers professional development programming to graduate students. Such professional development is also aligned to the Collective Agreement which stipulates that the university shall provide four hours of work-related paid training per academic year in which a TA holds at least one teaching appointment.

To that end, the TATP offers a range of thematic teaching-focused certificate programs. Each of the seven micro certificates focuses on distinct dimensions of teaching, such as foundational knowledge and skills, incorporation of educational technology, course design, integration of equity and inclusion, and much more. The certificates—offered in various formats and with flexible pathways to completion—are hands-on with experiential practicums and metacognitive reflection so that participants can integrate what they learn into their teaching practice, and can articulate the experiences for a range of career options.

To engage in professional development, graduate students can explore the 50 to 60 sessions and practicum options that are offered year-round through the TATP events calendar. Our customized EVE registration system allows participants to choose their own professional development journey. To further enhance their exploration of teaching strategies and professional development opportunities, graduate students can explore the many teaching-related resources and subscribe to the monthly TATP Newsletter.

Professional development opportunities also exist in many divisions across the institution. For example, UTSC graduate students are encouraged to attend teaching and learning workshops offered by the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL). CTL also offers targeted sessions for graduate students on a range of topics including preparing a teaching dossier. At UTM, graduate students are encouraged to join teaching-focused events provided through the Teaching and Learning Collaboration (TLC). Graduate students can also participate in workshops and reading groups focused on a range of pedagogical topics or arrange for specific teaching support with educational developers in the Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre (RGASC).

Teaching Awards

The TATP has been recognizing the exceptional contributions of graduate student teachers—Teaching Assistants and Course Instructors—since 2003 through its Teaching Excellence Awards. The three awards—the TA Teaching Excellence Award, the BIPOC TA Teaching Excellence Award, and the CI Teaching Excellence Award—celebrate graduate students who inspire and challenge undergraduate students, significantly enhancing their learning experiences. Recipients of the award receive a monetary prize, a certificate, and the opportunity to participate in the TA award winner panel at the Tri-campus TA Day.

Many divisions also offer teaching awards. For example, UTSC also offers divisional teaching awards for graduate students who are working as Teaching Assistants and Course Instructors, and UTM offers a divisional TA award, the June Scott Teaching Excellence Award.