Practicing biology: Undergraduate laboratory research, persistence in science, and the impact of self-efficacy beliefs

As undergraduate laboratory research internships become more popular and universities devote considerable resources towards promoting them, it is important to clarify what students specifically gain through involvement in these experiences and it is important to understand their impact on the science pipeline. By examining recent findings describing the primary benefits of undergraduate research participation, along with self-efficacy theory, this study aims to provide more explanatory power to the anecdotal and descriptive accounts regarding the relationship between undergraduate research experiences and interest in continuing in science. Furthermore, this study characterizes practices that foster students' confidence in doing scientific work with detailed description and analysis of the interactions of researchers in a laboratory. Phase 1 of the study, a survey of undergraduate biology majors (n=71) at a major research university, investigates the relationships among participation in biology laboratory research internships, biology laboratory self-efficacy strength, and interest in persisting in science. Phase 2 of the study, a two-year investigation of a university biology research laboratory, investigates how scientific communities of practice develop self-efficacy beliefs. The findings suggest that participation in lab internships results in increased interest in continuing in life science/biology graduate school and careers. They also suggest that a significant proportion of that interest is related to the students' biology laboratory self-efficacy. The findings of this study point to two primary ways that undergraduate research participation might work to raise self-efficacy strength. First, university research laboratory communities can provide students with a variety of resources that scaffold them into biology laboratory mastery experiences. Second, university research laboratory communities can provide students with coping and mastery Discourse models and mentors, offering them access to and practice with the social norms of an epistemic community. This study begins to integrate what is currently known regarding student motivation through research experience, traditionally studied by program evaluations, with social learning theories. Given the role strong self-efficacy beliefs play in motivating students, understanding the kinds of social interactions that develop science self-efficacy could provide important policy guidelines for primary investigators who work with undergraduates, department chairs, and other promoters of undergraduate research in colleges and universities.