CAREER: Supporting Undergraduate Students' Agency to Shape Science Practices from Field Stations to Classrooms

Science moves forward through the construction and critique of knowledge claims — two central and interrelated practices that scientists use to do their work. Student participation in these science practices is an essential, but largely absent, part of learning in college science courses. There is significant momentum behind calls to engage students in the practices that scientists use to generate, critique, and revise knowledge through undergraduate research experiences.

However, there is a critical research need to examine the roles students are permitted to take up as doers of science in research experiences: as technicians who follow instructions or as “epistemic agents” who shape the construction and critique of knowledge claims. This project seeks to serve the national interest by developing research-based understandings on how to foster undergraduate students’ agency to shape science practices and how such participation supports science learning.

The findings from this project will improve undergraduate science education by informing the design of undergraduate research experiences that empower students’ agency to construct and critique knowledge, preparing them to be leaders and innovators for the advancement of science.

This project, housed at Idaho State University, will examine how students construct and critique knowledge claims during course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) and summer research experiences at a biological field station. This project will draw on sociocultural perspectives to frame science learning as involving multiple integrated components: making meaning of science experiences and phenomena, participating in science practices, shifting or solidifying identities, and navigating belonging in science communities.

This research project will explore how participating in the science practices of construction and critique creates learning opportunities for students’ becoming and belonging in the science communities of their research experiences. The specific objectives are to (1) study and foster undergraduate students’ epistemic agency, (2) study and support educator moves and tools to foster epistemic agency, and (3) study how epistemic agency relates to sociocultural components of science learning.

To accomplish these objectives across two contexts of research experiences (CUREs and summer research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory field station), the project team will draw on naturalistic case study methodology in conjunction with design-based research methodology. Data collection strategies will include direct observations and fieldnotes of students participating in research experiences, surveys, and semi-structured interviews.

These data will be analyzed using qualitative methods, including discourse analysis, critical event analysis, content analysis, and conjecture mapping. Based on the research findings, the project team will design and implement a professional development program for faculty to learn how to foster students’ epistemic agency through CUREs. The success of the project will be assessed by the production of: (1) the faculty professional development program, (2) local theory explaining how students learn science through participation in science practices, and (3) rich empirical descriptions of students shaping science practices at field stations and in CUREs.

An expert advisory board will provide annual feedback on the project's progress, as well as formative and summative evaluation. The results of the project will be disseminated through publications in peer reviewed science education journals, presentations, and workshops at science and science education conferences. This project will advance new understandings in the field about (1) how students take up epistemic agency to shape science; (2) how educators open avenues for students’ participation in science practices; and (3) how such participation is intertwined with developing identities and sense of belonging.

Ultimately, this project will improve undergraduate science education by supporting educators to attune to diverse repertoires of participation in science and to value, design for, and recognize students’ agency to shape science practices. The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a National Science Foundation (NSF)-wide activity that supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education. This CAREER project is supported by NSF’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.