The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the relationship between doctoral student and faculty member attitudes about teaching behaviors, how attitudes about teaching vary across academic disciplines, and how students' attitudes about teaching vary according to the time they have spent in their graduate programs controlling for formal teaching training experiences. An additional goal of this study was to identify a set of teaching norms for doctoral students. The literature from which this study draws its grounding includes faculty teaching cultures, faculty preparation with respect to teaching roles, the anticipatory socialization of doctoral students, the theory of observational learning, collegiate teaching norms, and academic disciplinary subcultures.

Participants in this study consisted of 1087 doctoral students and 877 faculty members. The data collection instrument was an online adaption of the College Teaching Behaviors Inventory, a survey of attitudinal ratings of appropriateness for a variety of teaching behaviors. The statistical analyses used to explore the data were t-tests, multiple regression equations, and factor analysis. The dependent variables in this study were the participants' attitudes of appropriateness on ninety-two teaching behaviors. The independent variables in this study were doctoral students' completed semester hours, student reports of formal teaching training, and students' and faculty members' academic disciplines according to Biglan's disciplinary dichotomies: hard versus soft and pure versus applied.

Faculty members' and doctoral students' attitudes were significantly different on over half of the behaviors. Additionally, doctoral students near the beginning of their program had attitudes that were significantly different from faculty members' attitudes more often than students near the end of their program. Doctoral students' attitudes were affected by their academic discipline, and differences between doctoral student and faculty member attitudes did not disappear while controlling for academic discipline. Finally, the collegiate teaching norms identified for doctoral students consisted of two inviolable norms and nine admonitory norms. These findings are an important first step in creating a body of literature that will help us to better understand the indirect transmission of faculty teaching cultures and the ability to effectively and efficiently improve the professional development of doctoral students as future collegiate educators.