Becoming a “Science Person”: Faculty Recognition and the Development of Cultural Capital in the Context of Undergraduate Biology Research

Abstract

We argue that cultural capital plays an underexamined role in students’ recognition as budding scientists by faculty. By triangulating interview data from undergraduates and faculty mentors in a multi-institutional biology research network, we identified a set of intersecting domains of capital that help render students recognizable to faculty. We argue that faculty recognition often reflects a (mis)alignment between the cultural capital that students possess and display and what faculty expect to see. To understand why mis- or underrecognition occurs, and how this influenced students’ opportunities to further develop cultural capital, we explored our data set for patterns of explanation. Several key themes cut across students’ experiences and influenced their recognition by faculty: Faculty more easily recognized students interested in research science trajectories and those involved in institutional programs to support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics success. Students with competing family responsibilities struggled to maintain faculty recognition. Finally, faculty who broadened their scopes of recognition were able to affirm the science identities of students with fewer incoming cultural resources in science and support their development of capital. Students can and do develop scientific cultural capital through practice, but this requires access to research and mentorship that explicitly teaches students the implicit “rules of the game.”

Cultural capital in undergraduate research: an exploration of how biology students operationalize knowledge to access research experiences at a large, public research-intensive institution

“…Indeed, we agree that the responsibility should be placed on the system to change and not on the student. In order to create sustainable change with regard to who gets to participate in research, we posit that science faculty need to value scientific research cultural capital that does not align with what is traditionally valued by academia (Thompson & Jensen-Ryan, 2018). We argue that it may be unethical for faculty to rely on the unwritten rules as a way to select students into their lab if such rules are only available to a select, potentially more privileged, group of students.…”

“…While this is likely already happening, especially given the number of students in our study who said that they found out about research experiences through faculty and graduate students, it is possible that faculty and graduate students are only sharing this information with undergraduates who already have high levels of cultural capital (for example, those who come asking about how to find undergraduate research or those who know to ask faculty specifically about the research that they do). Thompson and Jensen-Ryan (2018) suggested that faculty recognition and cultural capital operate in a positive feedback loop, which can create consequences for students who do not enter undergraduate science disciplines with forms of cultural capital recognized by scientists. That is, faculty are more likely to recognize students who possess cultural capital and facilitate students' access to additional opportunities, such as undergraduate research experiences, which will in turn build additional scientific cultural capital (Thompson & Jensen-Ryan, 2018).…”

“…The study identified that undergraduates who worked with both a postgraduate and a faculty mentor realized greater outcomes than students who worked with only a postgraduate. Additionally, researchers have studied the role that cultural capital plays in faculty recognizing students as budding scientists (Thompson & Jensen-Ryan, 2018). This study focused exclusively on students who had already gained access to research experiences and found that faculty more easily recognized students as science people when students were interested in scientific research careers and did not have competing family responsibilities.…”

Advancing Science while Training Undergraduates: Recommendations from a Collaborative Biology Research Network

“…Including undergraduates can both facilitate student learning about research design and analysis and free faculty to dedicate time to other research activities-a two-for-one advantage of merging experiential learning with innovative and productive research (Bowne et al, 2011). As BRNs increasingly include undergraduates, students have the opportunity to contribute to scientific knowledge production, interact and share insights with students and faculty at other institutions, and develop scientific identity and cultural capital (Bowne et al, 2011;Thompson et al, 2016;Thompson and Jensen-Ryan, 2018). Undergraduate BRNs also effectively prepare student for scientific careers (Simmons et al, 2016).…”

Mentorship as a way of developing primary research skills

“…The modern educational paradigm and changes in the functionality of the educational process offer new opportunities through mentored experience. Mentorship has generated considerable recent research interest [15][16][17]. Mentoring models are extremely diverse [18][19][20][21], but their application is not always systematized.…”