Drivers of Engagement for the PhD Students Who Perform Teaching Activities

PhD students are a valuable asset for universities as they are able to perform a varied number of activities. Moving on from their basic role of students, their main focus becomes researching on their theses' topics, however a PhD student life does not happen only between the walls of a library. Sometimes, PhD students perform in a benevolent or mandatory way teaching activities within their universities, which upgrades their status to collaborators of the university. However, this sort of activities bring along serious responsibilities which might require the diminishing of time dedicated for the thesis' writing. This paper's aim is to investigate which are the factors that contribute to the engagement PhD students feel for their work as teachers. According to the found driving elements, we intend to define the levels of engagement teachers-PhD students show and to layer them down in a structured way. As the research work is a complex enough work by itself, adding an activity such as the teaching one in the life of a PhD student might affect the well-run of the PhD program. Hence, a second objective of this paper is to determine if the teaching experience helps the students to cope better with the PhD requirements. Overall, the contributions of this paper can be of important value firstly for the PhD students that want to seek academic career opportunities during their PhD degree. Secondly, the paper can as well as benefit the universities that would like to manage better their PhD students and learn how to integrate them in their organizational teaching charts. Learning about their engagement drivers can lead to designing fitted win-win partnerships between the university and the PhD students that could bring added value for both sides. [For "NORDSCI International Conference Proceedings: Education and Language Edition (Athens, Greece, August 19, 2019). Book 1. Volume 2," see ED603411.]