Power and positionality shape identity work during a science research apprenticeship for girls

ABSTRACT

The research apprenticeship is a situated form of learning that can be effective in connecting learners to science. It is commonly assumed that this pathway is characterised by power transitions from those positioned as experts to those positioned as novices, yet power and positionality during a research apprenticeship have rarely been explicitly investigated. Using a qualitative approach, we explored this area in the context of a summer research apprenticeship for girls, involving primarily female scientist mentors. We found that scientist mentors positioned, and were positioned by, learners in three different ways, and that these positionalities were associated with different kinds of identity work among learners. Given stereotypical societal views of science that can be at odds with gendered identities, these patterns may be particularly consequential for girls. We discuss implications for teacher professional development, as well as future research directions.

KEYWORDS:

• positionality
• identity
• research apprenticeship
• community of practice

Introduction

It has long been recognised that there are gendered patterns of participation in many segments of the STEM workforce, with women underrepresented in particular STEM fields. This pattern has roots in experiences during youth, where girls sometimes receive sociocultural cues in school and at home about what science is and who does science that are inconsistent with gendered identities and the interests and concerns of girls (Brickhouse et al., 2000; Calabrese Barton et al., 2008). Important social influencers such as parents and teachers can also contribute to girls’ disconnect from science by (often unintentionally) promoting negative stereotypes about girls’ science abilities, which, although not accurate, can result in activation of stereotype threat, leading to lowered participation or performance in science and math (Andre et al., 1999; Bouchey & Harter, 2005; Nosek et al., 2009; Tenenbaum & Leaper, 2003). Further, science is often viewed by society as masculine, and it is frequently enacted in ways that conflict with societal views of gendered identities (Archer et al., 2013; Miller et al., 2006).

The research apprenticeship approach to science learning can offer different sociocultural cues by immersing learners in the authentic practices and settings of science under the tutelage of practising scientists (Barab & Hay, 2001; Charney et al., 2007; Feldman et al., 2013; Mogk & Goodwin, 2012). These opportunities are characterised by ‘intense relationships with a mentor, learning through doing authentic activity, using authentic tools, and learning as part of a community that values the practices’ (Barab & Hay, 2001, p. 71). When such programmes are designed with inclusivity and access in mind, they can open up the potential for girls to see science as exciting and relevant, in contrast to commonly held views that science is boring, rote, and passionless (Miller et al., 2006). Documented outcomes associated with research apprenticeships for youth include increased interest, confidence, and self-efficacy towards science (reviewed in Sadler et al., 2010). Research apprenticeships can also offer the chance for girls to interact with gender-matched role models, if female scientists are primarily selected as mentors. While not all studies have found benefits for gender matching (see Carsten Conner & Danielson, 2016) some studies have found such matching to have significant positive impacts (e.g. Buck et al., 2008; Stout et al., 2011).

Whether mentors are gender matched with learners or not, it is broadly accepted that working ‘at the elbows’ of experts (Barab & Hay, 2001) is a key piece of the apprenticeship model. The holding of deep disciplinary knowledge, in terms of both concepts and skills, is thought to be an important part of what the scientist has to offer an apprentice, as this ‘insider’ knowledge of a science community of practice can be brought to bear to shape the pathways of the learners. It is commonly assumed that this pathway is characterised by power transitions from those positioned as experts to those positioned as novices, yet power and positionality during a research apprenticeship have rarely been explicitly investigated (Teo & Tan, 2020). The ways in which positionalities and power play out within the research apprenticeship are important, as positionality has long been recognised as a key feature in building identification with science in other learning settings (e.g. Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2010; Carlone & Johnson, 2007).

A few studies have investigated power and positionality in research apprenticeships, and in these cases, the focus has been on settings in which the apprentices are working on specific tasks or projects that are defined by scientists in high-powered labs (Hay & Barab, 2001; Teo & Tan, 2020). As an example, Hay and Barab’s (2001) work investigated the outcomes of a research apprenticeship in which students were assigned to work in the labs of chemists, geologists, and other science disciplinary experts. They found that, although the learners were engaged in authentic scientific practices, ‘the scientist directed almost every aspect of the research methodology. The practice was often very precise, demanding, and nonnegotiable’ (p. 295). What students learned about the community of practice was, in turn, mostly with respect to specific aspects of scientific methodology, such as the differences between subjective and objective measures. While the students benefited from performing science practices in a situated setting, they did not feel a sense of idea ownership. Instead, ‘The practices were to be accepted on blind faith based on the scientist's unspoken, but obvious, authority’ (p. 311).

The present study is concerned with research apprenticeships in which the participants have more agency in which to design their research projects while still working directly with professional scientists as mentors. We posited that positionality, both in terms of how the experts position the learners, as well as how the learners position the experts, might be different under these circumstances, and that it could shape learning trajectories and membership in the community of practice in important ways. Taking a situative perspective, we consider how power and positioning of and by learners plays out in the context of a two-week summer academy in which learners, with the guidance of scientists, design the research questions and methodology, collect and analyse their own data, and present the results to members of the science community of practice. We were particularly interested in the relationship between positioning and science identity work conducted among the participants.

Conceptual framing

We draw on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) conceptions of apprenticeship and community of practice in this study. The apprenticeship model of learning, in which learners are immersed in the practices of the discipline and work side by side with experts, is a hallmark of graduate student training in the sciences. The model has been adapted for secondary students, often taking the form of informal science learning experiences during the summer (Sadler et al., 2010). In a research apprenticeship, novices learn the nature and the ways of being and acting within the science community of practice through ‘legitimate peripheral participation,’ in which the novice is guided by an expert. The expert provides context and meaning in terms of values, skills, and norms within the community (Streule & Craig, 2016) during the apprenticeship, and the novice engages in legitimate practices of the COP, building expertise over time.

Elements of the COP include the ‘domain’, which refers to the collective subject knowledge of the community, and which they help shape; the ‘practice’, which refers to the way things are done in the community, including skills and practices associated with the domain; and the ‘community’, which refers to the social aspects of participation in the COP, through which a sense of belonging is attained (Wenger, 1998). The community of practice is thus a social endeavour that has implications for ‘becoming’ in the sense of building identification with the disciplinary domain of the COP. We draw on the notion of ‘identity work’ here to acknowledge that identities are fluid and contextually sensitive, and that, while they take a long time to build, individuals can take small steps to ‘try on’ different identities to learn more about who they want to become in the future (Calabrese Barton et al., 2013; Lee, 2017; Markus & Nurius, 1986). Individuals can situationally or more deeply adopt interest in the COP domain, feelings of belonging in the domain, and other such dispositions that might serve as markers of identity work carried out during a given experience.

Because an apprenticeship involves guidance of a novice by an expert, power and positionality are embedded features of the pathway towards COP membership and may influence the nature of the identity work engaged in by the apprentice. Cornelius and Herrenkohl (2004, p. 470) noted that ‘ownership of ideas’ is a central way that power and positionality are negotiated in social practice. Specifically, the perception of who owns an idea influences both the relationship of that person to the idea, and the relationship between people within the learning setting. Both reflexive positioning, or how one positions themselves, and interactive positioning, or how one is positioned by someone else (Davies & Harré, 1990), influence these perceptions. This has implications for COPs and how novices and experts may interact and experience, or wield, power. If experts position themselves, or are positioned by learners, as the knowledge holders, they then hold power. On the other hand, power shifts involving positioning learners as experts can result in feelings of recognition, which can be key in building identification with science (e.g. Avraamidou, 2020; Carlone & Johnson, 2007). In this study, we examine these different positionalities and their consequences in terms of the types of identity work conducted by apprentices and how this relates to their connection to the science COP.

Study context

The context of the study was the BRIGHT Girls summer academy, a ten-day research apprenticeship experience for high-school aged, female-identified participants. The academies included laboratory and classroom components as well as in-depth field experiences in one of two field settings: (1) a riparian area in the interior of Alaska, or (2) a tidewater fjord region in a coastal community of the state. The academy is provided at no cost and advertised through local high schools.

In the year that this study was conducted, the participants were mentored by a group of six seasoned, mostly female, scientists (one male scientist participated). These scientists have disciplinary backgrounds in one of the focal sciences of the academy, such as biology, marine science, or the geosciences. All were employed by the University as professors, assistant professors, post-doctoral researchers or professional staff. Throughout, the mentors actively sought ways to shift agency to the learners.

The academy is interdisciplinary in focus, blending biology, geology, and technology to answer questions about habitat and life history of salmon or harbour seals. The participants operate in a science community of practice that includes initial exploration of the environment and tools used to study it, followed by the opportunity to carry out their own research projects in groups. During week 1, the girls engaged in exploratory practices, learning how to use a range of tools including a secchi disk, a YSI probe (oxygen, temperature, and conductivity), a Marsh-McBirney flow metre (water velocity), a GPS unit, rock hammers, and a CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) probe to characterise the environment. In some cases, they built their own tools, such as PVC pipe camera mounts to help document characteristics of the study sites. They collected observational data and recorded it in notebooks.

In week two, girls drew on their initial knowledge of the focal species, tools, and habitat to ask and pursue their own research questions. First, areas of interest were identified by the participants through a period of brainstorming focused on girls’ earlier explorations and observations. Once initial areas of interest were established, the girls broke into groups based on shared interests. One scientist mentor primarily led each group of 3–4 girls in the conception and enactment of their research project, although in many cases, the scientist-mentors worked with other groups for short periods, as well. The scientist mentors sat with a group of girls as they attempted to narrow down their initial broad questions to something that could be testable in the constraints of the academy, using questions and prompts to help guide girls to be more specific about terms or what they were asking. The scientist mentors also guided the girls as they developed their own methodologies to answer their questions. The girls drew on the exploratory experiences they had in week one to think of initial approaches, and the scientists used guiding questions and prompts to help the girls think through how they might refine the approach. The girls then spent 1–2 days (depending on location) collecting data on a field expedition conducted from various types of watercraft. Data analysis and presentation development took place the days after data collection, again in the core research groups, and led by scientist mentors. On the last day, the experience culminated in a public presentation of their findings to University scientists external to the academy, as well as families of participants.

Methods

Study design and participants

This study was qualitative in nature, undertaken from a participant-observer perspective. All three of the authors participated in the academies, with one author serving as a scientist-mentor and the other two authors serving a more general support role in the academy, interacting with the participants daily but not leading participant research groups. The study was conducted in the context of two different BRIGHT Girls academies that took place during the same summer, one in each of the locations described above. Data sources for this study included video, post-academy interviews, and field notes (author 3 took the field notes). We captured video and took field notes throughout the entire two weeks of the academy, with video being collected from both stationary cameras and Go-Pros worn by a subset of participants during field activities. Girls typically worked in groups, and one girl per group per day (different girls on different days) was selected to wear the Go-Pro in order to obtain both first-person perspectives and second person footage of others in the group. On the last day of the academy, we conducted post-interviews, which typically lasted ∼20–30 min. The interviews were semi-structured in nature, and focused on questions that might be aligned with evidence of identity work, given the nature of our research question. Examples include: ‘What was the most interesting thing you learned in the academy? Why?’; ‘Are you good at science? Do you feel differently about your science ability after being in the academy?’; ‘Was there a time during the academy that you felt like a scientist?’; ‘What was something you liked doing, and why?’ All interviews were transcribed and entered into Dedoose software for analysis. Twenty-seven girls participated in the study (all were interviewed), ranging in age from 14 to 18 (5% Asian, 16% Alaska Native, 5% African American, 2% Hispanic, 72% Caucasian; 34% low income; 37% would be first generation to college). All names used in this study, for both the scientist mentors and the academy participants, are pseudonyms.

Data analysis

For this study, we used a grounded theory approach (e.g. Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Glaser & Strauss, 2017) to allow codes and themes to emerge from the data with respect to both positionality and evidence of science identity work. With respect to positionality, we coded for instances where the language in the interviews indicated that that the learners positioned either themselves (e.g. ‘I feel like we had more freedom here … we could kind of take our ideas and apply them to reality’) or the scientists (e.g. ‘[she was] always telling you different information about the seals’) as holding power and knowledge. Once data were coded for positionality, we then engaged in further rounds of coding, looking for evidence of identity work related to becoming a member of the science community of practice. Codes that emerged from the data in this area included self-confidence in science, science interest, science learning, and feeling like a scientist. The first author did the majority of the coding, with the second author coding a subset of the data. Inter-rater reliability was 90%. We then looked for associations between positionalities and identity work. We also used the interview text to identify moments in the academy, captured in video, that the girls referred to as significant in terms of an interaction with a mentor that was related to these ideas. We used Inqscribe software to transcribe these occurrences line-by-line and analysed the text and tonality of each instance for evidence of positionality. The second author led the video analysis efforts (with the other authors contributing), consisting of ∼5 h of video analysed in total.

Findings

Three patterns emerged with respect to power and positionality: (1) instances where learners felt positioned as empowered authors of their research, and which engendered feelings of being a scientist and deepened science self-confidence; (2) instances where learners positioned the scientist as a source of subject authority, and which were primarily associated with satisfying or deepening learners’ curiosity and interest; and (3) instances where these two kinds of positionalities interacted in fluctuating power roles, and which were associated with science self-confidence. Table 1 summarises these patterns. We discuss each of these patterns, and the associated outcomes, below.

Table 1. Links between emergent positionality patterns, perceived ownership of ideas, mentor actions, and participant identity work.

Emergent positionality patterns	Where girls locate ownership of ideas	Mentor actions associated with each pattern	Identity work engaged in by participants
Empowered author of research experience	Novice	Guide novices through collegial positioning and subtle questions	Feeling like a scientist; self-confidence in science
Scientist as source of subject authority	Mentor	Mentor shares knowledge in a situated context	Science interest; science learning
Mixed positionality	Mentor and novice	Mentor affirms value of novice ideas	Self-confidence in science

Empowered authors of research experience

The first pattern we describe is one in which the language that the girls use in describing their experiences suggests a sense of ownership of their projects and their ideas. Girls frequently referred to being ‘in charge’ of their research, or that they felt that they had freedom or independence in making research-related choices. Associated with these feelings of ownership were descriptions consistent with the idea of coming to feel as though they were members of the science COP. Specifically, girls described ways in which the ownership of their research and ideas led to ‘feeling like a scientist’ or increased their self confidence in their ability to do science. These instances involved scientist mentors relinquishing power and positioning girls as experts who were free to make their own choices about their projects through trust of the COP novices:

Annie: Like she let us go pick our own areas and we didn't know that much stuff about fish yet, but her confidence thinking like you guys can do this on your own and everything. And so I think I really did feel like a scientist the whole entire time because of the instructors like letting us be independent and them trusting us what we can do. And that was really cool.

A close look at the dynamics of these interactions revealed that this ‘relinquishing of power’ involved interactions in which the mentor scientist served as a guide, leveraging their expertise to guide girls into the COP but in a way that was collegial and empowering. The following quote illustrates this relationship:

Mindy: When we were going up [into the fjord], it was kind of like running your own mini project with your group. And it felt like you were a little scientist.

Interviewer: Why is it that that particular activity made you feel like a scientist?

Mindy: I think it was – The instructors, they helped you a lot and guided you, but, for the most part, they kind of let you do your own stuff. And you got to plan what you were going to do and you got to create your own question with your group.

Here, Mindy refers both to the acts of generating the research question within her group, and carrying out the planned research project at the field site. We turned to video to take a close look at what kinds of actions scientist mentors performed in order to negotiate the power relationship during research question development. We focus here on an instance where Sylvia, a seal biologist, works with a group of girls to generate a research question. The instance described follows a structured brainstorming session in which broad interests were determined, and entails Sylvia working closely with this self-determined group to generate a ‘testable’ question within the bounds of the academy timeframe and resources.

Sylvia: And then maybe … so the first thing you want to think about is your research question.

(The girls spend the next 28 seconds discussing where to write the question on their large poster paper).

Joanne: Um well, the population of seals based on their environment / habitat is a broad … it’s just our project in a nutshell. So...um.

Amy: So, turn that sentence into a question?

Mia: How does the environment / habitat affect the population of seals?

Amy: There you go.

Joanne: Want to write that, Amy, or do you want me to?

Sylvia: Someone say that again?

Mia: How does- we don’t need the- how does the- how does environment / habitat affect the population of seals?

Sylvia: Do you want to be a little bit more specific about what environment or habitat is?

Joanne: The … um fjord … the fjord is what we’re basically focusing on.

Amy: Tidewater glacier fjord?

Sylvia: Yeah, but, but there’s something you’re going to be quantifying.

In this interaction, Sylvia asks the girls to define their terms, prompting the girls to identify what they intend to measure. As can be seen from field notes, Sylvia first leverages her expertise in generating scientific research questions, as well as her specific content knowledge about seals and fjord habitat, to probe the girls’ initial topical ideas. In the video segment above, Sylvia then pushes the girls to state and revise their research question, and in doing so, apprentices them into the practice of developing a scientific question. Sylvia used a conversational, collegial style and guiding questions to encourage the girls to develop their ideas. She sits in a circle of chairs around clustered desks with the girls, with her chair slightly drawn back to allow the girls to interact primarily with each other. She lets the girls take charge of the conversation, only prompting occasionally. Importantly, while Sylvia is guiding the girls’ thinking, her body language, tone, and word choices position her as a collaborator, rather than an authoritative decision maker.

This team of girls then goes on to discuss what to measure and how to measure it. During this process, Sylvia creates the space for the girls to take ownership of data collection procedures, including creating their own system of iceberg size classification. This shared set of definitions and language that the girls create positions them as owners of ideas, as well as accomplished practitioners, within the context of the science COP.

Scientist as source of subject authority

In contrast to the pattern described above, the second dominant pattern that emerged largely involved the girls positioning scientists as the owners of ideas. Specifically, the girls used language suggesting that they perceived scientists as sources of subject authority. Frequently, girls referred to the extensive training that these scientists received, as well as their deep knowledge of the various subjects brought together during the programme. This is not surprising, as the majority of the scientist mentors held advanced degrees in their subject. In these instances, girls implicitly assigned a power role to these scientists, in which they could go to the scientists to satisfy curiosity, or learn the answers to ‘look up’ questions. The following vignette is illustrative.

In a video segment, participant Tamara can be seen walking along a river floodplain while engaged in a telemetry activity. As she walks, she stoops and picks up a rock. Over the next several minutes, she can be seen collecting an occasional rock as she walks. A few minutes later, she spots Portia, a mentor and a geologist, also picking up rocks. Tamara then approaches Portia to show her a rock she has collected. The two hang back together and discuss the characteristics and history of the rock. Tamara’s interview elucidates the significance of their discussion:

Tamara: I think it's nice to actually find things. Like if you find a rock in like a gravel bottom you can refer to Portia, the geologist, to see why it’s purple. In other settings that doesn't happen so I think science is unique in that way. You find a reason for different things which is cool. Yeah.

In her interaction with Portia, Tamara positions Portia as a knowledgeable resource who she can consult to deepen her interest and knowledge. She does not indicate ownership in shaping this knowledge – instead she uses the word ‘refer’ to assign the ownership of this knowledge to the scientist. Tamara assigns value to referring to this knowledge source and to the knowledge itself, saying it is ‘cool’ to find a reason for things.

Other girls positioning the scientists as knowledge holders also assigned value to the knowledge they gained. For instance, one girl characterised the scientist mentors as ‘really, really smart’ and went on to state, ‘I can learn a lot from them [the scientist mentors] and they can answer all of my simple questions.’ Another girl suggested that her teachers at school could answer some questions, but that going ‘deeper into science questions’ was better accomplished by asking scientists the answers:

Lucy: I felt like there was [sic] opportunities to ask questions and they would get answered if you wanted to ask a question. Like all the time at school and stuff if you ask a question, you know, the teacher might not go into super, duper- like here we started asking like even more like, you know, deeper into science questions the instructors would totally just like go as far as you wanted to go, which was cool.’

As with Tamara, Lucy positions the scientists in the academy as the knowledge holders, in this case contrasting the way that a teacher might answer a question with the way a scientist might answer a question. Like Tamara, Lucy characterises the knowledge that she gains from the scientists as ‘cool,’ indicating that she values this knowledge, even if she does not position herself as the owner of the knowledge. In another example, Celia indicates that she got to ‘ask’ a scientist about things that fell into the realm of the scientist’s expertise:

Celia: When we were on the boat for the first time there were a lot of ‘tideologies’ and stuff that I got to ask Portia about, which were really interesting.

In sum, the girls who positioned the scientists as subject experts characterised their interactions with the scientists as opportunities to gain domain knowledge of the COP. The language the girls use in referring to these interactions does not suggest knowledge ownership or a power transition from mentor to apprentice, yet it does suggest that the girls valued the knowledge that they gained from these subject experts.

Mixed positionality

The final pattern that emerged was characterised by fluctuating or mixed positionalities, in which girls experiencing initial self-doubt had their ideas affirmed by a scientist mentor, thus putting them in a position of power – but these moves were effective in large part because of the girls’ perceptions of the scientists as powerful knowledge holders. In these cases, the girls’ perceptions of the scientist as expert knowledge holder ‘boosted confidence’ in their abilities, and seemed to feed back into their experiences as authors of their own research. Thus, there was a circularity of positionality, with ebbs and flows of power.

In one example of this cycle, a group of girls posed a research question of personal interest, related to the effects of trash on a local river. The group was struggling to determine whether their research question was interesting and valid from a ‘scientific’ point of view. Sandy noted in her interview that a pivotal moment for her involved the actions of her mentor, James, when he confirmed during the development of their research question that the topic they had chosen is a ‘problem that scientists are curious about.’ James’ position as a practising fisheries scientist lent credibility to his statements and allowed the group to feel like their study was valuable:

Sandy: Before he came in and before we presented what we were doing, we were talking about teens and how we mess up the Earth and, then, it’s just like how that affects teens on the (xx) River. That makes sense. So, it kind of made me feel a lot better about the fact that it was super-relevant and I didn’t choose something that was already studied and already done … It kind of boosted my confidence in knowing we could do this and knowing there was actually a problem that could be fixed and it wasn’t just a closed case file.

These conversations between the scientist mentor and the girls appeared to provide the girls with necessary validation to pursue their own authentic research question, which was born out of their own experience and interest as teens who spend time around rivers. Another participant, Beth, sums up this cycle of fluctuating positionality:

Beth: It makes me trust my ideas or theories more, because we had some great scientists here that we kind of could talk to a lot. And if we had a question at all, or maybe a theory, we could talk to them about it. And maybe we’d figure out, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s a valid theory,’ and test to see if it made sense. And it gives you more, I guess, confidence about science.

In this quote, we can see that Beth positions the mentor scientists as knowledge holders who one can consult with about scientific ideas and questions, who in turn provide validation for the girls’ own ideas as they come to own those ideas. This recognition, in turn, engenders confidence, a marker of growing membership in the science COP.

Another example of this cycle comes from a moment where a group had developed some initial research project ideas and methodology, but was experiencing struggle and self-doubt in terms of determining the next steps of their research project:

Kara: We were really struggling … Gina [scientist mentor] came in and she was like ‘okay, well,’ and she started adding to the conversation and helping us brainstorm and then when were unsure that we really wanted to go through with it, she, you know, kind of gave us reassurance, and so did James, and kind of made us confident enough to actually do it. So that was nice.

In this passage, Kara suggests that her group did not have the initial COP knowledge to feel confident in the decisions the group made about pursuing their research project, and that Gina gave them ‘reassurance,’ or affirmation that they were on the right track, which gave them the confidence to pursue their ideas. Kara also states later in her interview that ‘the people [the scientist mentors] are kind of professionals’ and that presenting their results to scientists was ‘kind of like, scary,’ indicating that she assigned the scientists a position of power. As in the examples with Sandy and Beth, Kara experienced a shifting positionality in which her own sense of COP membership is growing, but this growth occurs because of her perception of the scientists as powerful knowledge holders.

Conclusions and discussion

Taken together, our results show that positionality during research apprenticeships can take more than one form, and that these different forms can shape science identity work and membership in the science COP in different ways. Indeed, identity work and membership in the science community of practice are linked, as ‘the formation of a community of practice is also the negotiation of identities’ (Wenger, 1998, p. 149). Previous work has identified many important markers along science identity pathways (e.g. Avraamidou, 2020; Bell et al., 2012; Carlone & Johnson, 2007). Our work here shows that different kinds of identity markers, such as feeling like a scientist, science self-confidence, science interest and domain knowledge, were associated with three different positionality patterns (Table 1).

When girls were positioned in ways that let them develop their own research questions and methodology under the guidance of the scientist mentors, they used language suggesting that they were coming to feel as though they were part of the community of practice, gaining confidence in their own ideas and feeling like scientists themselves (e.g. ‘I felt like a little scientist’). When girls positioned scientists as the knowledge holders, they tended to use language suggesting that they were ‘outsiders’ in terms of COP membership, but that they did gain domain knowledge from the scientists (e.g. ‘you can refer to Portia, the geologist, to see why it’s purple’). While this suggests a possibly shallower connection to the COP, it is known that domain-related interest can initiate identity pathways in science (e.g. Bell et al., 2012). To the extent that gaining this domain knowledge supported deepened interest in science concepts, this type of positioning does represent a potential ‘way in’ to the science COP. It is important to note that this ‘knowledge transfer’ to which the girls’ assigned value occurred in a situated manner, in response to things that the girls were curious about, often based on field observations. Without this learner connection to the subject matter, the results would likely be different. Finally, we saw when the girls’ ideas were validated by a scientist that the girls initially positioned as a power holder, they gained confidence in their own science ideas, suggesting feelings of membership in the science COP (e.g. ‘it kind of boosted my confidence, in knowing we could do this and knowing there was actually a problem that could be fixed’). Given stereotypical societal views of science that can be at odds with gendered identities, such positionalities may be particularly important for girls.

These results illustrate that the expertise of the scientist within a research apprenticeship programme is important, and that it can be leveraged in a number of ways in order to effectively apprentice learners to the science COP. In the first pattern explored, the deep COP knowledge held by scientist mentors enabled them to guide the girls into deeper, disciplinary-appropriate ways of thinking about research questions and methodology, which led to a sense of idea ownership by the participants. In the second, the perceived expertise of the scientist helped support the perception that domain knowledge was valuable, or deeper than what might be available in a typical school setting. In the third pattern, the perceived expertise of the scientist, combined with discussions about scientific ideas, was a source of validation to the girls.

The importance of the expertise of the scientist underscores recent calls for the reformation of teacher professional development. It has long been recognised that the majority of K-12 teachers do not have direct experience with scientific research (e.g. Blanchard et al., 2009), and that time spent in field experiences or other kinds of teacher research experiences are valuable situated experiences that can increase both explicit and tacit knowledge of the way science is done (e.g. Hemler & Repine, 2006). Documented outcomes of such experiences include increased knowledge of the nature of science, science skills, the application of science practices, and changes to teacher classroom practice (Dresner & Worley, 2006; Nugent et al., 2012; Sadler et al., 2010). It may be that such experiences would also better support teachers in positioning students in the ways described in this paper, which in turn might support science identity work among learners.

This study provides insight into different ways that mentoring by professional scientists during a research apprenticeship can support girls in performing science identity work. It is important to note that in our study, the majority of the scientist mentors were female (all but one). It may be that positionality and power could take different forms in other learning settings depending on gender matching between scientist mentors and the learners, with different outcomes for those learners. Further, power dynamics might take different forms in mixed-gender groups of learners, particularly given evidence of gendered patterns of interactions between teachers and students more generally. Future studies might take up these questions through a comparative approach.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the participating girls and the scientist mentors for their participation in this research study. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for comments that improved the manuscript. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under [grant number: NSF-DRL 1513328].