Teaching the teacher: ethical issues in graduate student teaching

College Student Journal, June, 2003 by Tara L. Kuther

The conflicts inherent in the teaching activities of graduate students become further complicated by the academic climate in many departments that favors research over teaching. Students often are placed in the quandary whereby they must teach to secure funding, and feel a responsibility to their students to teach well; yet if they are successful teachers, they run the risk of being perceived by faculty as less serious researchers. In the words of a graduate student interviewed by Nyguist, Manning, Wulff, Austin, Sprague, Fraser et al. (1999),

   I've learned that the people who call
   the shots do not value teaching ... I
   can't spend as much time on my
   teaching as I have ... I hear every day
   that it's an irrational choice to spend
   time on teaching. I have not felt that
   teaching is valued within the department.
   It's belittled, basically--only
   he who is not a good researcher has
   to be a good teacher. I have professors
   telling me, 'Spend as little time
   as possible on your teaching, and
   make sure you're a good researcher.'
   (p. 25).

The expectation that graduate students should show little interest in teaching well is particularly ironic considering that classroom experience is needed to secure interviews for assistant professor positions and most PhDs who enter the professorate are employed at institutions that emphasize teaching (Benassi & Fernald, 1993; Graft & Lambert, 1996).

Role Conflicts

In addition to conflicts concerning competence and the balance between research and teaching, the student status of graduate students who teach may place them at risk for role conflicts and multiple relationships. Graduate student instructors usually are closer in age to undergraduates than are most faculty members. Graduate students are likely to share values, interests, and tastes with their undergraduate students. These similarities are advantageous in communicating with students, as undergraduates often perceive graduate student instructors as easily approachable. Unfortunately, the similarities also may make it more difficult for graduate student instructors to distance themselves from their students. Undergraduate students may feel comfortable approaching their graduate student instructors for advice with personal problems or to seek intimacy. Inexperience on the part of the graduate student instructor may exacerbate the problem in that they may not identify, or know of ways or diffusing, inappropriate interest of advances on the part of students.

Particularly unusual role conflicts are experienced when graduate students are asked to serve as teaching assistants for graduate-level courses. Graduate students who are assigned teaching assistantships for graduate-level courses may be placed in a position of authority over existing friends and student colleagues. Students are to be given equal consideration in instruction, evaluation, and advisement; it is unlikely that equal consideration and dispassionate evaluation can be provided when an instructor's students are his or her friends (Cahn, 1994; Markie, 1994). Friendship entails the exchange of private information, enjoyment of each other's company, shared affection, and interest in each other's welfare (Markie, 1994). When graduate students are assigned teaching roles in graduate-level courses, they are forced into multiple relationships and experience unfairly challenging role conflicts that are beyond their level of professional development and thereby encourage inequitable practices.