Pilot Course: A Teaching Practicum/Professional Development Course as an Integral Component of a PhD Program

• In Event: Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum II

Abstract

Internal and external pressures are reshaping expectations in our classrooms. Students, parents, and professional constituencies are demanding higher quality in the classroom in exchange for increasingly higher tuitions as education funds shrink. Higher education officials and accounting program administrators, in turn, are insisting on greater accountability, classroom excellence that will attract students to counter declining enrollments, and faculty actions that will accommodate retention and student success. As these pressures alter expectations for quality teaching in accounting classrooms, those expectations will influence the doctoral programs that supply the teachers for those classrooms. In this article, we describe one approach to supplementing traditional training in research with formal teaching training, and related preparation for a successful career in academe. The Teaching Practicum consists of a two-course sequence in consecutive semesters in which PhD students participate during their first year of doctoral training. A two-year pilot program has been quite well received by the doctoral students and their prospective employers. We believe that programs like this are aptly responsive to the shifting landscape in accounting education.

Authors

• Carolyn M Callahan, University of Memphis

• Charlene Parnell Spiceland, University of Memphis

• Stephanie Antionette Hairston, University of Memphis

• J. David Spiceland, University of Memphis