Exploring Undergraduate Students' Experiences of the Culture of Scientific Research in a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience

Abstract

Scientific research has its own culture that can be difficult to enter. Students often learn about and interact with the scientific research culture for the first time as undergraduates when they participate in research experiences such as Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURE). However, the lack of a single framework that describes the culture of scientific research has resulted in little work specifically exploring students’ experiences and perceptions of this culture, especially in the context of CUREs. This three-paper dissertation fills this gap in the literature by establishing the Culture of Scientific Research (CSR) Framework and using the framework to explore undergraduate students’ experiences and perceptions of the culture of scientific research in the context of a CURE. In the first study, a systematic literature review was performed to identify cultural aspects of scientific research described in prior work. Specifically, the Practices, Norms/Expectations, and Values/Beliefs of scientific research were identified and organized into the CSR Framework. This framework was also validated for biology with practicing biological researchers. The second study presents the first application of the CSR Framework in the context of a biology CURE. Students were interviewed about their feelings of participating in the CURE. The cultural aspects of scientific research that students mentioned in these interviews, as well as their perceptions of those aspects, were investigated. Students’ responses were also compared across the type of project students performed (bench-based vs. computational). Students mentioned nearly all of the aspects in the CSR Framework, but a small number of aspects were the most salient to students. Additionally, bench-based and computational students found different Practices to be salient and held different perceptions of the same cultural aspects. The third study compared the experiences and perceptions of women and men participating in the same CURE course that was the context for the second study. The results found that women and men mentioned many of the same cultural aspects of scientific research and perceived them in similar ways. However, there were subtle differences in how women and men talked about certain aspects. Altogether, these studies provide insight into undergraduates’ experiences and perceptions of the culture of scientific research. More specifically, this work broadens the current understanding of students’ experiences in CUREs and provides a model for how subtle but important differences between students’ experiences can be identified. Understanding students’ experiences of the scientific research culture will allow for future work that drives changes to the culture of scientific research to enable equitable access for all students.