The art of science education: Preparing graduate students of the 21st century to teach chemistry and physics in college and university settings

This study examined the attitudes of a selected sample of Chemistry and Physics faculty and doctoral students to determine their perceived value (PV) of incorporating Teaching Methodology (TM) courses into program curricula to prepare graduates to teach in higher education.;Barnes (1984) and Rosensitto (1999) determined professors' perceived need for graduate students to prepare for careers in academe. Barnes investigated professors of PhD students from several academic disciplines. Rosensitto included professors of PhD and Masters programs. This study included doctoral students, focusing on Chemistry and Physics PhD programs.;The purposes of this study were to establish the percent of sample Chemistry and Physics PhD programs offering TM; to determine the PV of faculty (PV-F) and doctoral students (PV-S) for incorporating TM into the doctoral programs; to determine if there was a significant difference between PV-F and PV-S; and to identify respondents' opinions of best practices and suggestions for ways to incorporate TM into doctoral program curricula.;The sample programs were analyzed to determine the percent of PhD programs offering TM; on-line surveys were used to gather data from faculty and doctoral students.;Of the sampled programs, more Physics (21.7%) than Chemistry (14.8%) offer TM.;The average PV-F was higher for programs offering TM than for those that do not, higher for Physics than for Chemistry, and higher for tenured than for non-tenured faculty.;The average PV-S was higher for Physics than for Chemistry, and higher for programs that do not offer TM than for those that do. The average PV-S was higher for students planning to teach than for those planning to go into research or industry.;This study looked at faculty and student responses to items on the Likert portion of the surveys. While the average PV-S (3.47) was significantly higher than PV-F (3.27), students and faculty had a remarkable similarity to the pattern for the responses to each of the statements on the surveys.;There were a variety of respondent opinions of best practices currently used by PhD programs and many suggestions for ways to incorporate teacher training into doctoral programs for Chemistry and Physics.