In November 2024, the GSTA widely distributed a survey to learn more about psychology graduate student’s teaching experiences. In this month’s corners, we wanted to highlight some of the preliminary results.

We received 57 responses. Of the respondents, most were located in the United States (93%) with some in Canada (7%). When asked what program they were currently in, 70% were in a PhD program, 16% in a joint Masters and PhD program, 11% in a Masters program, and 4% in a PsyD program. 

Though we did not ask for specific demographic information, 46% of respondents optionally provided information about their identity, many of which had intersecting categories: Identifying as BIPOC (n = 12), first generation student (n = 12), LGBTQIA+ (n = 11), low income (n = 5), having a disability/ neurodivergence (n = 4), non-traditional age student (n = 1).

When asked whether they had heard about the Society for Teaching Psychology, 81% of graduate students indicated they had not prior to the survey. Additionally, 59% indicated they had not known about the Annual Conference on Teaching. 

When asked about how supported they felt by their department and advisors to pursue a teaching focused career after graduate school, 59% indicated feeling very supported by their advisor whereas only 30% felt very supported by the department.

 

From this first look at the survey results, the GSTA suggests that advisors & teaching stream faculty spread the word about STP & ACT to graduate students in their department. This can be as easy as sending/ forwarding an email announcement regarding STP events to graduate students at your institution. As a reminder, GSTA offers a generous Graduate Student Travel Award to attend ACT (Due June 15, 2025).

If you have further questions about the survey please email: gsta@teachpsych.org

Survey originally created by Lauren Girouard-Hallam. Data analysis done by Josh Lovett & Sherry Nguyen. Written synopsis by Alexa Sacchi. Images made using Canva.

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