Drs. Charlene and David Spiceland to be Published in Issues in Accounting Education

For release:  August 25, 2015

Dr. Charlene Spiceland, assistant professor of Accounting, and Dr. David Spiceland, professor of Accounting, recently had their paper entitled "A Teaching Practicum/Professional Development Course as an Integral Component of a PhD Program" accepted for publication in Issues in Accounting Education. The paper was coauthored with Dr. Stephanie Hairston, former FCBE doctoral student and current assistant professor at Georgia Southern University, and Dr. Carolyn Callahan, professor at the University of Louisville.

In this paper, the authors described an approach to supplementing traditional doctoral research training with a two-semester teaching practicum. The practicum was designed to help students develop and hone pedagogical and other teaching skills, while gaining insight into academic career acumen. It consisted of two, one-hour courses taken by students during each of the first two semesters of their doctoral program. In the first semester, weekly teaching seminars were accompanied by an apprenticeship activity in which the students attended classes of faculty mentors throughout the term and teaching one of those classes toward the end of the term. In the second semester, the doctoral students were mentored through their first whole-semester teaching experience, shared issues from that experience and sharpened skills in the weekly seminar discussions. The article provided details of the practicum and implementation guidance intended to encourage other PhD programs to embrace the general approach described, adapting the specifics to reflect the resources and aspirations of their programs.