Toward a Holistic View of Undergraduate Research Experiences: An Exploratory Study of Impact on Graduate/Postdoctoral Mentors
Toward a Holistic View of Undergraduate Research Experiences: An Exploratory Study of Impact on Graduate/Postdoctoral Mentors
复制标题
DOI：
10.1007/s10956-009-9165-3
复制
发表时间：
2009-12-01
影响因子：
4.4
通讯作者：
Johnson, Deborah
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dolan, Erin;Johnson, Deborah
参与研究已经成为美国本科科学教育的一个固定项目。研究生和博士后学生经常被要求指导研究型大学的本科生，但本科生-研究生/博士后学生二人组和本科生-研究生/博士后学生-教师三人组中的指导关系基本上没有被研究过。在这里，我们提出了一个探索性的案例研究的结果框架的关系理论，确定的动机，收益和研究生/博士后学生谁指导本科生的研究报告的挑战。研究生/博士后导师经历了广泛的收获，包括提高资格和职业准备，认知和社会情感的增长，提高教学和沟通技能，以及更好地享受自己的学徒经验。值得注意的是，研究生/博士后导师报告的收益是挑战的两倍，两者都不受他们指导动机的限制。事实上，他们的动机相当狭窄和直接，专注于指导如何作为达到目的的手段，而他们报告的收益和挑战表明了指导如何影响他们的个人，认知和专业成长的长期愿景。我们建议，了解指导本科生对研究生/博士后学生的教育和培训的影响，可能会发现通过本科生的研究经验所获得的好处的新思路。
Involvement in research has become a fixture in undergraduate science education across the United States. Graduate and postdoctoral students are often called upon to mentor undergraduates at research universities, yet mentoring relationships in undergraduate-graduate/postdoctoral student dyads and undergraduate-graduate/postdoctoral student-faculty triads have been largely unexamined. Here, we present findings of an exploratory case study framed by relational theory that identifies the motives, gains, and challenges reported by graduate/postdoctoral students who mentored undergraduates in research. Graduate/postdoctoral mentors experienced a wide range of gains, including improved qualifications and career preparation, cognitive and socioemotional growth, improved teaching and communication skills, and greater enjoyment of their own apprenticeship experience. Notably, graduate/postdoctoral mentors reported twice as many gains as challenges, neither of which were limited by their motives for mentoring. Indeed, their motives were fairly narrow and immediate, focusing on how mentoring would serve as a means to an end, while the gains and challenges they reported indicated a longer-term vision of how mentoring influenced their personal, cognitive, and professional growth. We propose that understanding the impact of mentoring undergraduates on the education and training of graduate/postdoctoral students may uncover new ideas about the benefits reaped through undergraduate research experiences.