Are We Practicing What We Preach? A Quantitative Study of Faculty Teaching Beliefs and Practices
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Abstract
Traditional preparation in teaching for college and university faculty primarily relies on informal mentoring in which faculty often teach in a manner similar to how they were taught (Barr & Tagg,1995; Oleson & Hora, 2014; Pallas et al., 2017; Schroeder, 2022; Wieman, 2019). Recognizing there is a distinction between a content expert and an expert teacher of content (Boyer, 1990; Shulman, 1986, 1987), the problem this study sought to investigate is the disjunction between how faculty teach and how students learn best. This quantitative study explored the relationship between how faculty were taught in their undergraduate studies and how they teach their undergraduate students. The overarching research question guiding this study was, “How do inherited mindsets and pedagogies influence undergraduate teaching?” The Comparative Teaching Paradigms, a researcher-designed conceptual framework, served as the source for the survey instrument and data analysis. The findings revealed an apparent disconnect between faculty’s reported teaching beliefs and their teaching practices.
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