Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322.
School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2023 Dec;22(4):ar38. doi: 10.1187/cbe.22-11-0230.
Undergraduate research and laboratory experiences provide a wide range of benefits to student learning in science and are integral to imbed authentic research experiences in biology labs. While the benefit of courses with research experience is widely accepted, it can be challenging to measure conceptual research skills in a quick and easily scalable manner. We developed a card-sorting task to differentiate between novice and expert conceptualization of research principles. There were significant differences in the way faculty/postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate students organized their information, with faculty/postdocs more likely to use deep feature sorting patterns related to research approach. When provided scaffolding of group names reflecting expert-like organization, participant groups were better able to sort by that organization, but undergraduate students did not reach expert levels. Undergraduates with Advanced Placement experience were more likely to display expert-like thinking than undergraduates without Advanced Placement Biology experience and non-PEER (persons excluded because of their Ethnicity or Race) students displayed more expert-like thinking than PEER students. We found evidence of undergraduates in various stages of development toward expert-like thinking in written responses. This card-sorting task can provide a framework for analyzing student's conceptualizations of research and identify areas to provide added scaffolding to help shift from novice-like to expert-like thinking.
本科研究和实验室经验为学生在科学领域的学习提供了广泛的益处，也是将真实的研究经验融入生物学实验室的关键。虽然具有研究经验的课程的好处是被广泛认可的，但以快速且易于扩展的方式衡量概念研究技能是具有挑战性的。我们开发了一种卡片分类任务，以区分研究原理的新手和专家概念化。教师/博士后、研究生和本科生在组织信息的方式上存在显著差异，教师/博士后更有可能使用与研究方法相关的深层次特征分类模式。当提供反映专家组织的小组名称的支架时，参与者小组能够更好地按照该组织进行分类，但本科生没有达到专家水平。具有先修课程经验的本科生比没有先修生物学经验的本科生更有可能表现出专家思维，而非同等群体（因其种族或民族而被排除的人）学生比同等群体学生表现出更多的专家思维。我们在书面回答中发现了处于向专家思维发展的不同阶段的本科生的证据。这种卡片分类任务可以为分析学生对研究的概念化提供一个框架，并确定需要提供额外支架的领域，以帮助从新手思维转变为专家思维。
