University of California Santa Cruz, Education Department, Santa Cruz, 95064 CA, USA.
University of California Santa Cruz, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, Santa Cruz, 95064 CA, USA.
Integr Comp Biol. 2021 Oct 4;61(3):957-968. doi: 10.1093/icb/icab121.
Field courses have been identified as powerful tools for student success in science, but the potential for field courses to address demographic disparities and the mechanisms behind these benefits are not well understood. To address these knowledge gaps, we studied students in a nonmajors Ecology and Evolutionary Biology course, Introduction to Field Research and Conservation, at the University of California Santa Cruz, a large Hispanic-Serving Institution. We examined (a) the effects of participation on students' perception of their scientific competencies and (b) how the field course shaped student experiences and built their sense of community, confidence and belonging in science. Our mixed-methods approach included the Persistence in the Sciences (PITS) survey with field course students and a control group; interviews, focus groups, and prompted student journal entries with a subset of field course students; and participant-observation. We found that field course participants scored higher on all science identity items of the PITS instrument than students in the control (lecture course) group. Field course students from underrepresented minority groups also scored similarly to or higher than their well-represented peers on each of the six PITS survey components. From our qualitative data, themes of growth in peer community, relationships with mentors, confidence living and working outdoors, team-based science experiences, and a sense of contributing to knowledge and discovery interacted throughout the course-especially from the initial overnight field trip to the final one-to assist these gains and strengthen interest in science and support persistence. These findings highlight the importance of holistic support and community building as necessary driving factors in inclusive course design, especially as a way to begin to dismantle structures of exclusion in the sciences.
实地课程已被确定为学生在科学领域取得成功的有力工具，但对于实地课程在解决人口统计学差异方面的潜力以及这些益处背后的机制，我们的了解还不够充分。为了解决这些知识差距，我们研究了加州大学圣克鲁兹分校非专业生态学和进化生物学课程——实地研究与保护入门课程的学生。我们考察了：（a）参与对学生科学能力认知的影响；（b）实地课程如何塑造学生的经历并培养他们对科学的社区感、信心和归属感。我们的混合方法研究包括实地课程学生和对照组学生的“科学领域坚持性调查”（Persistence in the Sciences，简称 PITS）；对部分实地课程学生的访谈、焦点小组讨论以及受提示的学生日志条目；以及参与式观察。我们发现，实地课程参与者在 PITS 工具的所有科学认同项目上的得分均高于对照组（讲座课程）学生。来自代表性不足群体的实地课程学生在 PITS 调查的六个组成部分中的每一项上的得分也与或高于他们表现良好的同龄人。从我们的定性数据中，同伴社区成长、与导师的关系、在户外生活和工作的信心、基于团队的科学体验以及对知识和发现做出贡献的意识等主题在整个课程中相互作用——尤其是从最初的过夜实地考察到最后的一次考察——以帮助这些学生取得进步并加强对科学的兴趣和支持。这些发现强调了整体支持和社区建设作为包容性课程设计的必要驱动因素的重要性，尤其是作为一种开始消除科学领域排斥结构的方式。
