Preparing Future Accounting Faculty Members to Teach

We investigate how accounting Ph.D. programs prepare future accounting professors to fulfill their teaching responsibilities. We collect data from 75 recent graduates about their perceptions of the pedagogy training provided by their Ph.D. programs and find that pedagogical knowledge and skills are primarily self-taught with most obtained from the process of teaching a course. The pedagogy training provided by accounting doctoral programs is perceived to cover important areas; however, on a relative basis, the amount of training is significantly less than its perceived importance. Novice teachers place highest value on training of skills that affect day-to-day teaching responsibilities. Analyses also suggest that best practices for teaching pedagogy include a separate course in university pedagogy combined with an apprenticeship-type model.