We May Not be Teaching Pedagogy in Our Doctoral Programs,but We Are Delivering Great Pedagogy!

Crafting the opening commentary for each issue of the Journal of Marketing Education always involves a few days of in-depth thinking (and going down a few rabbit holes) about marketing and about marketing education specifically. Other than the last issue where I got out of bed with the flu to meet our production deadline, I enjoy this dedicated time to thinking about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in marketing education.

We are lucky to have a strong pipeline of accepted manuscripts from which to build a Table of Contents for each issue. I try to move manuscripts from OnlineFirst to print copy according to dates in the system, so the accepted manuscripts tend to create the framework for my thinking about the Editor’s Corner for an issue. Except for one article that I fast-forwarded to help build a (somewhat) storyline for this print edition, I am following a first-in, first-out inventory/accounting method. Thankfully, none of our content is perishable so I do not have to worry about spoilage. And with the benefit of OnlineFirst, our marketing educational scholarship gets in readers’ hands quickly anyway (as noted by some of the citation metrics).

With that framing in mind, this issue begins with an article by O.C. Ferrell, Paul Radich, Linda Ferrell, and Thomas Martin Key. As noted by the title, “The Current State of Marketing Doctoral Programs: Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities,” the authors review the state of marketing doctoral programs based on a survey of marketing doctoral program directors. While I leave the review of the research in this area to the authors, the article made me think about the evolution of doctoral programming in general and its relation to teaching and learning. Needless to say, that was an interesting rabbit hole to go down.

In that rabbit hole, I was intrigued by an article by Taylor (2023). Noting that the PhD was intended for only the best and the brightest and that completion of one’s doctoral work took as long as needed, I understood why I (we) might have once been a part of an elite group. But a lot of changes over time led to where we are today with our doctoral programs in marketing. Taylor (2023) categorized four major programmatic changes: formalization, growth and diversification of the candidate population, diversification of modes of study, and diversification of purposes. Based on the work of Ferrell et al. in this issue, it becomes clear that marketing doctoral programs have likely followed a similar trajectory (and could maybe even fit within those basic categories of thinking). Yet it is one sentence in Taylor’s writing (which I might be taking a bit out of context) that jumped out at me: “Historically again, the primary purpose of the doctorate has been to reproduce the academic workforce, i.e. to train new generations of researchers for universities” (Taylor, 2023, p. 14). Not surprisingly, my thinking jumped to teaching and learning, that is, marketing education.

But before heading in the teaching and learning direction, it is important to look at the article in this issue by Charles S. Gulas, Marc G. Weinberger, and Kevin Willardsen. In “A Cohort Analysis of Marketing Scholarship,” Gulas et al. (this issue) explore research productivity at various stages of one’s academic career. The work by these authors coalesces nicely with the Ferrell at al. (this issue) article as both focus on the research emphasis in our doctoral programming. Training the new generation of academics has long been the purview of traditional scholarly research as shown by Gulas et al. and as supported by the content found in the article by Ferrell et al.

Ten years ago, Marx et al. (2016) published an article about the dearth of teaching preparation in business doctoral programs. The overall findings from the work by these scholars were little formal instructional training and a lack of any consistent approach to the development of teaching in our business doctoral programs. Yet a graduate of a doctoral program would then be expected to step into the classroom in their first appointment. A phrase found in the interview data by the authors was: “teaching expertise is caught and not taught” (Marx et al., 2016, p. 497). This phrase may forever be embedded in my mind, but I am particularly proud of the scholars who publish in the Journal of Marketing Education and other educational scholarship journals because we all do our best to enable our teaching and learning expertise. Acknowledging that business doctoral programs seem to have escaped renovations (which is something I think Ferrell et al. allude to), Lewicki and Bailey (2016) offer what they call a partial list of competencies of an effective teacher in business school, and I abbreviate that list here:

Honestly, I was thrilled with this list, and I think we publish extensively on all these topics in the Journal of Marketing Education. It took constraint for me to not look at the journal’s articles over the past decade (or two or three) and see if I could slot all of them into an item on this list (seems like a fun adventure; maybe for later in life). Wouldn’t that make for a great teaching and learning curriculum for a rising doctoral student? Needless to say, though, you will not see this as doctoral program content in the research conducted by Ferrell et al. in this issue.

The rabbit hole of marketing doctoral programs and related content also took me to a place that is becoming increasingly evident in our business schools – that of adjunct faculty members. In their work, Henkel and Haley (2020) reported that adjunct instructors accounted for more than half of all faculty appointments, with that number expected to continue to increase. Having conducted some unrelated-to-education research about the gig economy, I was compelled to read an article (yes, the Google Scholar rabbit hole) by Nelson et al. (2020) on the coming of the gig economy to academia. While the focus of the authors’ research was on job satisfaction, I was particularly intrigued by the framing within the gig economy as independent workers or contingent workers. Many of us reading this commentary may feel familiarity with both types of adjunct commitments at a college or a university. A statement in the findings that jumped out at me (and, again, I am likely pulling out of context but take it as food for thought): “The highest ranked faculty members who responded to the survey are less satisfied when asked about intrinsic factors of their job than adjunct faculty even though adjunct faculty positions enjoy less security, much lower pay, and few benefits” (Nelson et al., 2020, p. 10/18).

Is the satisfaction result because adjunct faculty members really get to enjoy the teaching and learning process with their students without the pressure of research and service? I will now tie that to a closing comment by Henkel and Haley (2020, p. 56): “An essential task for higher education in the 21^st century is to create a business model that includes a fully engaged adjunct faculty workforce.” Will, or should, that engagement include the SoTL? Who is crafting the pedagogical mix for our marketing students?

Madhavaram and Laverie (2010) opine on the need for pedagogical competency and who is responsible for helping instill that competency – from doctoral programs to marketing departments to senior marketing faculty. However, a lot has changed since 2010, and a quick organic search highlights the importance of what one author refers to as “modern” teaching methods in marketing. That is, Foster (2025) is clear in her assertion that marketing is not limited to the four walls of a class, and I believe the content we publish in the Journal of Marketing Education substantiates that claim.

A recent overview in a SpringerNature (2026) brief referred to the need for marketing academics to help our students develop meta-skills (e.g., creative problem-solving, resilience, self-awareness) and AI-driven technology (e.g., analytics). Four articles in this issue address each of these needs. In terms of meta-skills, a team of marketing educators out of Kalamazoo, Michigan (USA) examined the key academic and social factors that contribute to a student’s sense of belonging and how that sense of belonging relates to academic outcomes. In “Understanding Sense of Belonging Among Undergraduate Marketing Majors,” the data and results presented by Mohammad Sakif Amin, JoAnn L. Atkin, Scott Cowley, James A. Eckert, Bruce G. Ferrin, Teresa Greenlees, Robert L. Harrison, Eric Harvey, Karen M. Lancendorfer, Thaweephan Leingpibul, Amy MacMillan, Alhassan G. Mumuni, Kelley O’Reilly, Ann Veeck, Zachary Williams, Hu Xie, Marcellis M. Zondag, and Russell J. Zwanka (this issue) show that a sense of belonging is critical to promoting positive outcomes in students majoring in marketing.

Continuing with the need for developing meta-skills, Giulia Pavone (this issue) draws on Self-Regulated Learning Theory in conjunction with GenAI. Results portrayed in “Generative AI in the Learning Process: Threat or Tool? Understanding the Role of Self-Esteem and Academic Anxiety in Shaping Student Motivations” show a difference in perspective about AI in education based on student self-esteem and student anxiety. This link between meta-skills and AI called to mind a recent issue at a local college in Boston, Massachusetts (USA). As reported by Friedman (2026), students at Berklee College of Music created an online petition calling on the college to disband a class, “Bots and Beats: AI and the Future of Songwriting” (Berklee College of Music, 2026), as well as stopping the use of any other promotion of GenAI at the college. It might make for an interesting research project to examine student self-esteem and student anxiety and the use of GenAI in a non-business classroom to see whether Pavone’s findings hold up outside of the business academic setting.

Belsie (2026) explores the Bots & Beats example from Berklee College of Music by capturing student thoughts on music co-created by a student and AI. This brief look into human creativity in conjunction with machines appears somewhat like the work presented by Anas Al-Fattal in this issue of the journal. In “You Do It, AI Does It, You Compare and Reflect: Exploring Reflective Learning with Generative AI in Principles of Marketing,” Al-Fattal highlights the importance of designing classroom assignments that integrate critical reflection alongside technological integration.

While student use of GenAI appears to have become immersed in our teaching and learning in marketing education, marketing educators are also using GenAI in research that can assist professors in helping student learning. Using LIWC, a large language model (LLM) that is a prominent subset of GenAI, April Kemp, Elizabeth R. McDougal, Nicole A. Flink, and Rebecca Dingus show how language use in student sales role-plays can have an impact on performance scores. In “The Power of Words: Analyzing Sales Role-Playing Performance using LIWC Linguistic Insights,” the authors highlight the importance of word choices in signaling cognitive rigidity or situational confidence. Again, our marketing educators are showing the power of using AI technology in teaching meta-skills to our marketing students.

Writing this Editor’s Corner has been, yet again, an enlightening experience for me. I love being able to take the time to re-read the great content contributed by my friends and colleagues from around the world. I never cease to be amazed at the quality of educational scholarship being amassed in our journal. We are publishing content that adheres to the high expectations of the SoTL in marketing education. As always, it is through the work of our authors and review teams that another wonderful issue of the Journal of Marketing Education is now in print.