Mentorship & Research Training
Learning to Think as a Researcher
Undergraduate research can contribute to persistence, graduation, graduate study, and longer-term participation in research careers (Stormes et al., 2022; Haeger et al., 2024; Arruda et al., 2025). The experience itself varies considerably across students, projects, disciplines, and mentoring environments. Students differ in how long they participate, what responsibilities they assume, how closely they work with mentors, and how much of the reasoning behind the research becomes visible to them (Linn et al., 2015; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM], 2017).
My approach to mentorship centers on the development of research judgment. I want students to become increasingly able to evaluate evidence, identify uncertainty, justify methodological decisions, respond to critique, communicate findings, and understand how individual decisions affect the larger research argument. Research judgment develops through experience, and it becomes visible when students begin to recognize problems that once required a mentor’s attention. They become better able to identify relevant information, compare plausible explanations, anticipate the consequences of methodological choices, and determine when additional evidence is needed (NASEM, 2019).
Research Participation and Research Development
Research places students in situations where important decisions remain open. Questions evolve, measurements require interpretation, analytic choices have consequences, and conclusions depend on the quality of the evidence supporting them. Students can contribute useful work before they fully understand those decisions. They may follow a coding protocol, execute an analysis, locate literature, prepare a figure, or revise a manuscript while much of the underlying reasoning remains with the mentor.
This distinction matters when evaluating research training. Linn et al. (2015) found that studies of undergraduate research have often measured participation and student perceptions more frequently than demonstrated gains in research capability or conceptual understanding. Participation creates an environment in which development can occur, and the quality of that development depends partly on what students learn to understand and decide within the work.
I distinguish supervision and mentorship by the scope of what students are learning. Supervision supports accurate and responsible completion of research tasks, while mentorship also gives students access to the reasoning that surrounds those tasks. I want students to understand why a decision was made, what evidence supports it, what alternatives were considered, what uncertainties remain, and what findings could lead to a different decision. Research on mentoring identifies similar developmental functions, including skill development, professional socialization, career guidance, and disciplinary competence (Eby et al., 2008; NASEM, 2019).
Technical competence is part of this process. Students need to perform procedures correctly, and they also need to understand the conditions under which those procedures are appropriate. A student who can execute an analysis becomes a stronger researcher when they can explain why the model fits the question, what assumptions it requires, how alternative models would change the interpretation, and what the resulting evidence supports.
Making Research Practice Legible
Experienced researchers accumulate knowledge that becomes difficult to see from the inside. Disciplinary vocabulary, methodological expectations, standards of evidence, publication conventions, documentation practices, and professional norms become familiar through years of training and participation. New researchers encounter those same practices without that accumulated history, which can make ordinary features of research work difficult to interpret (NASEM, 2019).
Mentorship helps make important parts of research practice visible. Some uncertainty belongs to the research problem itself, while other uncertainty comes from unfamiliarity with how research communities work. Clear expectations can reduce confusion about documentation, authorship, coding standards, file organization, communication, methodological justification, and scholarly critique. This kind of clarity helps students understand the environment in which research decisions are made.
Students can then begin to see how individual practices connect to larger scholarly purposes. A coding rule connects to a construct, an analytic choice affects an inference, documentation supports reproducibility, and critique tests the strength of an argument. These connections matter because research practice can otherwise appear as a collection of procedures whose purposes remain implicit.
Mentorship quality also matters within this process. Reviews of undergraduate research identify mentoring as an important part of students’ research development (NASEM, 2017, 2019). Meta-analytic evidence links academic mentoring with performance, motivation, attitudes, and competence, with variation across outcomes and settings (Eby et al., 2008). Longitudinal studies provide another view of that development by linking research experience and mentorship with scientific integration, self-efficacy, identity, and career commitment (Estrada et al., 2018; Robnett et al., 2015; Syed et al., 2019).
Developing Research Judgment
Students often enter research with many consequential decisions already made for them. A mentor may define the question, specify the analysis, establish the coding framework, identify the relevant literature, or determine how a methodological problem should be handled. Development becomes visible as students begin to participate more fully in those decisions. Their role changes as they gain enough knowledge and experience to evaluate the reasoning behind the work.
A student who begins by applying a coding system can eventually evaluate whether the categories adequately represent the construct. A student who begins by running a specified analysis can later explain why the model addresses the research question, compare alternatives, and identify limitations. A student who begins by implementing revisions can eventually evaluate reviewer feedback and determine what kind of revision the evidence supports. These changes provide direct evidence of developing research judgment.
Students also begin to engage with methodology as a set of decisions that require justification. They learn to ask what a procedure accomplishes, what evidence supports a claim, where uncertainty enters the analysis, and what information would change the interpretation. The National Academies describes mentorship as a developmental process through which researchers acquire disciplinary knowledge, skills, confidence, professional identity, and greater competence navigating research environments (NASEM, 2019).
Feedback plays an important role in this development because later work can reveal whether earlier guidance has changed how a student reasons. If I identify a methodological problem and the student corrects it, the immediate work improves. In later work, the student may recognize a related problem earlier, ask a more precise question, identify a limitation before I mention it, or apply the earlier discussion to a new analysis. These changes give me evidence that the student is beginning to recognize underlying features across different research situations.
A discussion about confounding should influence how a student evaluates a later design. A conversation about measurement should affect how they inspect a new variable, and feedback about overstated interpretation should change how they evaluate future claims. Over time, I look for changes in the quality of students’ questions, explanations, methodological choices, and responses to new problems. These changes show that experience is becoming part of how the student approaches research.
Independent Scholarly Judgment
Research training prepares students to participate in scholarly work beyond a single project. That participation requires methodological knowledge, familiarity with disciplinary standards, experience with critique, and an ability to communicate uncertainty and justify decisions. Independent scholarly judgment develops within a collaborative environment because researchers routinely consult colleagues, methodological experts, prior scholarship, documentation, and other sources of expertise throughout their careers.
Good judgment includes knowing what one understands, where uncertainty remains, what kind of expertise is needed, and how advice should be evaluated. I want students to become increasingly capable participants in those exchanges. They should be able to explain the basis for a decision, identify gaps in their own understanding, seek help with precision, evaluate recommendations, and revise a position when stronger evidence warrants it.
My goal is for students to develop enough methodological knowledge, disciplinary understanding, and experience to make research decisions they can justify. The research literature supports this developmental orientation while also placing limits on broad claims. Mentoring effects vary across studies and outcomes, self-report measures remain common, and observational and matched-comparison designs cannot eliminate every source of selection or contextual confounding (Linn et al., 2015; Eby et al., 2008; NASEM, 2017, 2019).
My own standard is specific to what I can observe in students’ research practice. I want them to become better able to encounter an unfamiliar problem, determine what is known, identify what remains uncertain, locate or generate relevant evidence, compare plausible approaches, justify a methodological decision, communicate its limitations, and revise that decision when the evidence changes. This development is the central purpose of my mentorship because it reflects growing participation in the intellectual work of research and the judgment required to contribute responsibly to scholarly inquiry.
References
Arruda, E. H., Vu, K.-P. L., Chun, C.-A., Galvez, G., Marayong, P., & Dillon, J. G. (2025). BUILDing pathways to health-related research careers in biomedical and behavioral sciences: A longitudinal evaluation of postbaccalaureate outcomes using a matched comparison group. Frontiers in Education, 10, 1474224. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1474224
Eby, L. T., Allen, T. D., Evans, S. C., Ng, T., & DuBois, D. L. (2008). Does mentoring matter? A multidisciplinary meta-analysis comparing mentored and non-mentored individuals. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 72(2), 254–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2007.04.005
Estrada, M., Hernandez, P. R., & Schultz, P. W. (2018). A longitudinal study of how quality mentorship and research experience integrate underrepresented minorities into STEM careers. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 17(1), ar9. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.17-04-0066
Haeger, H., Bueno, E. H., & Sedlacek, Q. (2024). Participation in undergraduate research reduces equity gaps in STEM graduation rates. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 23(1), ar11. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.22-03-0061
Linn, M. C., Palmer, E., Baranger, A., Gerard, E., & Stone, E. (2015). Undergraduate research experiences: Impacts and opportunities. Science, 347(6222), 1261757. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1261757
Moon, S., Guan, S.-S. A., Vargas, J. H., Lin, J. C. P., Kwan, P., Saetermoe, C. L., Flores, G., & Chavira, G. (2025). Critical mentorship in undergraduate research experience BUILDs science identity and self-efficacy. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 23(2), 321–341. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-024-10476-0
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2017). Undergraduate research experiences for STEM students: Successes, challenges, and opportunities. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24622
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2019). The science of effective mentorship in STEMM. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25568
Robnett, R. D., Chemers, M. M., & Zurbriggen, E. L. (2015). Longitudinal associations among undergraduates’ research experience, self-efficacy, and identity. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(6), 847–867. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21221
Stormes, K. N., Streicker, N. A., Bowers, G. K., Ayala, P., & Urizar, G. G., Jr. (2022). Impact of undergraduate research training programs: An illustrative example of finding a comparison group and evaluating academic and graduate school outcomes. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, 5(3), 25–36. https://doi.org/10.18833/spur/5/3/8
Syed, M., Zurbriggen, E. L., Chemers, M. M., Goza, B. K., Bearman, S., Crosby, F. J., Shaw, J. M., Hunter, L., & Morgan, E. M. (2019). The role of self-efficacy and identity in mediating the effects of STEM support experiences. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 19(1), 7–49. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12170