Career Coaches as a Source of Vicarious Learning for Racial and Ethnic Minority PhD Students in the Biomedical Sciences: A Qualitative Study
Career Coaches as a Source of Vicarious Learning for Racial and Ethnic Minority PhD Students in the Biomedical Sciences: A Qualitative Study
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0160038
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发表时间：
2016-07-28
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Mcgee, Richard
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Williams, Simon N.;Thakore, Bhoomi K.;Mcgee, Richard
最近的许多指导倡议都试图帮助提高在整个生物医学科学的学术职位中未被充分代表的种族和少数民族（urm）的比例。然而，代表性不足的棘手问题表明，许多年轻科学家可能需要补充的职业发展，而不是许多导师能够提供的。作为传统科学指导的补充，我们为生物医学博士生创造了一种新颖的学术生涯“指导”干预。目的探讨学术生涯教练是否能为医学大学生物医学专业博士生提供有效的职业发展相关学习体验。我们特别关注替代学习经验，即个人通过他人的经验间接学习。方法该干预措施作为纵向随机对照试验（RCT）的一部分进行测试。在这里，我们描述了一项嵌套定性研究，使用框架方法分析来自24名URM博士生的48次半结构化访谈数据（每位参与者2次访谈，1次基线访谈，1次12个月随访）（16名女性，8名男性；11名黑人，12名西班牙裔，1名美洲原住民）。我们探索了教练作为替代学习来源的作用，这与学生成为未来生物医学科学教师的目标有关。结果：在研究中，大多数学生都能通过教练来间接学习如何追求学术生涯并取得成功。在学生的研究导师无法提供这种替代学习机会的情况下，教练尤其有用，例如，因为导师太忙了，无法与学生进行与职业相关的讨论，或者因为他们拥有或重视与学生希望实现的类型不同的学术生涯。教育是解决学生在家庭培训环境中缺乏结构化职业发展的重要途径。
IntroductionMany recent mentoring initiatives have sought to help improve the proportion of underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities (URMs) in academic positions across the biomedical sciences. However, the intractable nature of the problem of underrepresentation suggests that many young scientists may require supplemental career development beyond what many mentors are able to offer. As an adjunct to traditional scientific mentoring, we created a novel academic career "coaching" intervention for PhD students in the biomedical sciences.ObjectiveTo determine whether and how academic career coaches can provide effective career-development-related learning experiences for URM PhD students in the biomedical sciences. We focus specifically on vicarious learning experiences, where individuals learn indirectly through the experiences of others.MethodThe intervention is being tested as part of a longitudinal randomized control trial (RCT). Here, we describe a nested qualitative study, using a framework approach to analyze data from a total of 48 semi-structured interviews from 24 URM PhD students (2 interviews per participant, 1 at baseline, 1 at 12-month follow-up) (16 female, 8 male; 11 Black, 12 Hispanic, 1 Native-American). We explored the role of the coach as a source of vicarious learning, in relation to the students' goal of being future biomedical science faculty.ResultsCoaches were resources through which most students in the study were able to learn vicariously about how to pursue, and succeed within, an academic career. Coaches were particularly useful in instances where students' research mentors are unable to provide such vicarious learning opportunities, for example because the mentor is too busy to have career-related discussions with a student, or because they have, or value, a different type of academic career to the type the student hopes to achieve.ImplicationsCoaching can be an important way to address the lack of structured career development that students receive in their home training environment.