Campbell - Social Process of Managing PHD Students

Social Studies of Science
http://sss.sagepub.com Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists: The Social Process of Managing Students
Robert A. Campbell Social Studies of Science 2003; 33; 897 DOI: 10.1177/0306312703336004 The online version of this article can be found at: http://sss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/33/6/897
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ABSTRACT The present paper examines aspects of how students are trained to be scientists during their years in graduate school. The data were collected through open-ended interviews with academic research scientists, and the framework for analysis is provided by a generic social process scheme. My objective is to demonstrate how the social process of managing students is integral to our understanding of the day-to-day activities of scientists. Among the ndings is the notion that what is formally taught and written down is not as signicant as those things that the students learn through doing and participating in formal and informal interaction with senior students and faculty. The data also appear to suggest that any notion we might have of the rigid and prescribed nature of graduate science education does not match what actually takes place. Rather, the successful completion of research projects and the transition from student to scientist emerges through social interaction that reects individual differences and the circumstances arising in particular situations and contexts. Keywords enculturation, generic social processes, graduate science training, socialization
Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists: The Social Process of Managing Students
Robert A. Campbell
In the present paper I contribute to a research thread already well established in this Journal through a series of articles that has as its focus the socialization and enculturation of science graduate students (Roth & Bowen, 1999, 2001; Delamont & Atkinson, 2001). Roth and Bowen are primarily concerned with the knowledge production activities of science students, especially the ways in which observations and analysis are meditated through instrumentation and mathematical conventions. Delamont and Atkinson describe the formal supervision and informal enculturation processes that graduate students go through as they make the transition from undergraduate students operating in a relatively controlled environment to mature scientists, who are able to carry out, condently and competently, the work of scientic research from conceptualization to publication. Among other things, these authors draw attention to the importance of tacit knowledge and everyday problem solving, as students
Social Studies of Science 33/6(December 2003) 897927 SSS and SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi) [0306-3127(200312)33:6;897927;040177] www.sagepublications.com
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learn to deal with the indeterminate and open-ended nature of independent eldwork and the uncertain and unstable conditions that often surround laboratory research. Their data show that one of the major phenomena that differentiates undergraduate from graduate science training is that graduate science students not only become aware of, but they must learn to cope with, the often messy and contingent nature of sciences.1 So, contrary to our expectations that the training of scientists might follow some rigid and prescriptive structure reecting a popular view of the rational and objective nature of science itself, we are discovering that science education is an intersubjective accomplishment, arising out of a good deal of trial, error and negotiation among faculty and students. In light of this observation, my specic contribution to this important line of research is to report on how science faculty members view and engage in the process of preparing the next generation of scientists. My concern here is not with epistemological issues of scientic knowledge construction, nor am I attempting to detail the methods and discursive practices employed by scientists and students on a daily basis. Rather, I am interested in describing the social processes that scientists identify as constituting the task of training graduate students. While some may view what I present here as partial or one-sided, I contend that as long as the scientists themselves continue to construct, maintain, and pass on their perspectives, then exploring the social processes associated with their perspectives should be of great interest to anyone interested in the social study of science. My basic premise here is that, as with other social groups, processes of socialization and enculturation are an integral aspect of what constitutes science. If we are to gain a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the scientic enterprise as a human endeavor, then we must gain sufcient insight into how the culture reproduces itself.2 As part of this process, we should be interested in discovering how scientists describe the activities they engage in, as they prepare the next generation of scientists. The framework for analysis that I employ here is based in symbolic interactionism and in the qualitative research tradition.3 Specically, I use the generic social process scheme that was developed by Robert Prus as a means of facilitating conceptual development through the collection and analysis of qualitative data.4 What this means is that the questions asked of respondents, the way in which transcripts were analyzed, and the way that data are presented use common social processes as sensitizing concepts (Blumer, 1969: 158), rather than as typologies of action. In other words, we are interested in structuring action only to the extent that it helps us to communicate our ideas and observations to others.5 I refer to the activities documented here as constituting a social process of managing students, a critically important and vastly understudied set of activities engaged in by academic research scientists. The data presented here come from a larger study of the daily activity of academic research scientists (Campbell, 1998). The objective of the larger study was to gain insight into those social processes that constituted
Campbell: Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists
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the day-to-day practice of academic science. In this respect, scientists identied such activities as pursuing funding, managing equipment, and dealing with students in the classroom and in the laboratory, as taking up major portions of their time. More specically, for present purposes, material is drawn from a series of open-ended interviews (n 28) with biologists (n 9), chemists (n 8), geologists (n 4), and physicists (n 7) at Canadian universities.6 These four disciplines were selected because they represent the historically most common division of the natural sciences in academic settings. The intention was to base the research on a fairly broad notion of what constitutes an academic research scientist, rather than selecting representatives from a particular subdiscipline for a more focused exploration.7 The respondents reect a range of experience from ve to more than 30 years, and they also represent a diverse set of research programs, with varying levels of funding and with widely varying numbers of collaborators, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students. In the interview process, I asked the scientists to describe the sorts of activities that constituted their research on a daily basis, and to discuss any other pertinent activities that they were engaged in at that time.8 I purposefully allowed the scientists to take the interviews in whatever direction they saw t, while attempting to ensure that they provided descriptions of specic activities and processes, rather than generalities or the ne details of the relevant scientic theories.9 Consequently, to as great an extent as possible, in what follows, I let the scientists speak for themselves. I begin, however, with a review of how science education has been viewed by some major contributors to science studies.10
Becoming Scientists
As new members become part of the scientic enterprise, they gain stocks of knowledge both through interaction with established members and through participation in the intersubjective accomplishment of science. In other words, they are not passive recipients of knowledge, and much of what they learn, they learn by doing (that is, through practice). As they encounter the various objects that make up their life-world, they attribute meanings to these objects through processes of interpretation that are mediated by patterns of social interaction centered on training. Existing (more established) members of the scientic community engage in a range of formal and informal activities with students that help the newcomers acquire the perspectives of the community. As with medical doctors and members of other professions, new scientists encounter a complex worldview that has been constructed through the relationships and associations among many groups.11 While many researchers may acknowledge that new scientists participate in activities common to new members of other groups, Ludwik Fleck (1979) suggested that there is something special taking place in the case of the scientic enterprise. Scientic experience in particular derives from special conditions established by the history of ideas and by society.
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Traditional patterns of training are involved in this experience, which is, however, not accessible to everyone (Fleck, 1979: 48). Entry into science is somehow more restrictive and more closely associated with what members of society, as a whole, have determined to be special knowledge. Thus, for Fleck, the extraordinary nature of science is reected in the fact that entry is restricted to extraordinary individuals, who will undergo a correspondingly extraordinary process of socialization. Part of what makes the socialization process special is the fact that members of the scientic community expend great effort to make their worldview seem as natural as possible. In other words, as the socialization process continues it should become more and more difcult for the new member to see how things could be otherwise.
An intellect is prepared for a given eld; it is received into a self-contained world and, as it were, initiated. If the initiation has been disseminated for generations as in the case of introducing the basic ideas of physics, it will become so self-evident that the person will completely forget he has ever been initiated, because he will never meet anyone who has not been similarly processed. (Fleck, 1979: 54)
As new members of the scientic community embark upon their careers, they acquire perspectives and achieve identities which reect the systems of meaning that have been established by the existing members. This process of initiation might be interpreted to support an internalist view of the scientic enterprise. In other words, not only are we left with the impression that scientists are unlikely to encounter others who do not share their perspectives, but also it may be that part of managing students in science to establish the perception that the scientic community is selfcontained and self-reliant. Fleck provided a religious analogy.
There is an apprenticeship period for every trade, every religious community, every eld of knowledge, during which the authoritarian suggestion of ideastakes place, irreplaceable by a generally rational organization of ideas . . . . The Holy Ghost as it were descends upon the novice, who will now be able to see what has hitherto been invisible to him. (Fleck, 1979: 104)
Socialization into science, then, can be conceived of as an all-encompassing immersion into an institutional setting, where every aspect of ones behavior appears to be controlled by some objective and impersonal force that is an integral part of the structure of science. So, while it may overstate the case to conceive of science as a total institution (Goffman, 1961), Flecks comments make us aware not only of the centrality of achieving an identity within, and acquiring the perspectives of, the scientic community, but also how scientists and students participate together in the intersubjective construction of the scientic life-world. This life-world becomes natural and, like breathing, almost unconscious, as a result of education and training as well as through his participation in the communication of thoughts within his collective (Fleck, 1979: 141). Thomas Kuhn (1970
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[1962]) provided further insight into how this naturalization process takes place. In his discussion of normal science, Kuhn placed an emphasis on the training of student scientists, particularly through the use of textbooks. For example, he (1970 [1962]: 137) suggested that the domination of mature science by such texts signicantly differentiates its development pattern from that of other elds. Students learn preliminary notions of normal science from textbooks that expound the body of accepted theory, illustrate many or all of its successful applications, and compare these applications with exemplary observations and experiments (1970 [1962]: 10). So, new members of the scientic community learn to view these texts both as repositories of the established knowledge of their group and as recipe books for their own work. Kuhns concept of normal science then is similar to what Fleck referred to as vademecum or handbook science, and it is this kind of science that new members are prepared to perform. Both Fleck and Kuhn identied this kind of training as, if not unique to the scientic enterprise, then, at least present in a more dominant form than is the case in other areas of human group life. Offering his own religious analogy, Kuhn (1970 [1962]: 166) argued that the education of scientists is a narrow and rigid education, probably more so than any other except perhaps orthodox theology. This observation might appear to imply that the structure of the scientic enterprise constrains the activities of the individual scientist to the point where human interaction and interpretation may have little or no impact. Kuhn (1970 [1962]: 20) balanced this view with the argument that: Given a textbook, however, the creative scientist can begin his research where it leaves off and thus concentrate exclusively upon the subtlest and most esoteric aspects of the natural phenomena that concern his group. One of the implications of this statement might be that in order to become a full and active participant in the scientic enterprise, the new member must learn an established corpus of knowledge and techniques, but must also learn to identify where the gaps in this corpus are, and how those gaps might be lled. Similarly, this statement might imply that success in science involves moving beyond the seemingly more objective elements of the particular science into a realm of activities that emerges out of processes of interpretation and interaction with others. Science, then, might be viewed as exceptional not just with respect to the way in which its new members are trained, but also with respect to the amount of training involved. At the same time, however, it is an open question whether the actual activities scientists engage in when managing students are unique to science, or whether they might share similarities with what goes on in other human groups.12 Both Fleck and Kuhn to some extent drew upon their own experiences as science students to develop their ideas. The fact that both of these scholars came to view science in what might be considered radically different ways from the majority of their peers might account for their emphasis on the rigidity and dogmatism of scientic training. At the same
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time, their experiences made them particularly aware of the processes surrounding the establishment and maintenance of the scientic communities of which they were a part. While it is reasonable to conclude from their work that training is an integral aspect of the intersubjective accomplishment of science, little detail is provided with respect to the specic activities that individual scientists engage in with their students. At the same time, however, the description of scientic training provided by Fleck and Kuhn might resemble more closely the way in which contemporary academic scientists view the training process than any description that has been forthcoming through more recent eld research. More detailed analyses of the training process in science have emerged from both quantitative and qualitative research projects. For example, Barbara Reskin (1979) discusses the relationship between sponsorship and scientists careers. Building on a Mertonian understanding of science and employing statistical analyses of citation and biographical data on a sample of scientists, Reskin suggests that the success of new scientists may be linked to the quality of training they receive from their sponsors/teachers and the related passing on of professional status:
[S]ponsors inuence on their students careers may reect both achievement and ascription. In training students, sponsors transmit to them professional skills that will enhance their scientic performance and hence their job prospects. But in assuming responsibility for students, sponsors also ascribe to them an origin status in the scientic stratication system. Sponsors may provide other rather substantial ascriptive advantages as well, including introductions, nominations, and recommendations and accordingly may increase their students visibility to employers and other status judges. (Reskin, 1979: 13031)
Irrespective of Reskins ndings with respect to the relative importance of various factors, she identies a number of processes and activities (for example, co-authoring of publications, writing letters of reference) that take place in the training of science students, that center on interaction with a particular established member of the scientic community, namely, the students graduate supervisor. Thus, it becomes clear that there is much more to learning science than just learning the particular science, and that the primary source of this complementary learning is the individual supervisor. Reporting on a study of graduate supervision in experimental physics, Geoffrey Walford (1981) points out that individual differences among supervisors and students, as well as the diverse circumstances under which they work, makes it nearly impossible to suggest that there could be anything like a single supervisory role. While his remarks support the notion that it is difcult, and perhaps pointless, to generalize about graduate supervision, his position is not inconsistent with the idea that there are common, or generic, social processes that all supervisors engage in, even if the details of these are more case specic. Elsewhere Walford (1983: 252) describes the contribution that graduate students make to the research of their supervisors, stating that efciency and probably quality of
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experimentation are sacriced to the aim of training future scientists, while at the same time observing that, much physics research is conducted only because there happens to be a postgraduate available who is interested enough to do it. His comments in this instance are motivated by widespread criticisms of spending on academic research in the UK, and the introduction of a government program to reduce the numbers of graduate students going into science. However, Walford appears to be suggesting that, while graduate students are not particularly good at doing science, in their absence, their supervisors would not be inclined to perform scientic research on their own. In her ethnographic study of the high-energy-physics community, Sharon Traweek (1988) emphasizes the apprenticeship aspects of this particular scientic subculture, recognizing three distinct stages in the education process (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral training), spread over a period of about 15 years, each identied with its own separate traditions (textbooks, specialization, and learning oral tradition). Consistent with Kuhns analysis, Traweek indicates that in the undergraduate phase, students learn primarily from textbooks. They learn that:
. . . science is the product of individual great men; that this product is independent of all social or political contexts; that all knowledge is dependent upon or derivative from physics; that only a few physicists will be invited into the community of particle physics; and that the boundaries of particle physics are rigidly dened. (Traweek, 1988: 78)
As graduate students, their education takes on a more specialized quality, during which they develop certain practical skills that they will need in order to carry out their own research. The students learn:
how to differentiate between errors and signicant deviations in their data, and come to understand the difference between mediocre and good experimental work. They are learning to become meticulous, patient, and persistent, and that these emotional qualities are crucial for doing good physics. They also are beginning to learn what is meant by good taste, good judgment, and creative work in physics. (Traweek, 1988: 82)
In the nal stages, the young physicist must learn to rely on oral rather than written information (1988: 86). Much of the post-doctoral training consists of the negotiation of relationships and risk, whereby students learn to respect the tacit knowledge of their elders by not following their explicit instructions (1988: 88). In other words, the students are engaged in processes of interpretation, through which some of the meanings that have been handed down to them are assessed and modied as new potential courses of action are evaluated and embarked upon. Struggling with this processual aspect of the scientic enterprise, the young physicists learn the signicance of the lifetimes of detectors, research groups, laboratories, careers, and ideas (1988: 94). Thus, Traweek not only provides a more nely grained analysis of the evolutionary nature of the training process throughout its various stages, she also demonstrates the importance of
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communication (written, oral, reective) among senior scientists and novices. Based on the discussion so far, it may appear that students undergo a rigorous and highly dogmatic course of indoctrination into science, just so they can arrive at a point where they are in a position to call the things that they have learned into question. Stephan Fuchs (1993) indicates that this may be just the kind of mechanism that the scientic community has determined is integral to its identity and longevity.
Positivist rhetoric is also likely to surface during the induction of novices into the Hall of Science. Textbooks and teaching materials are strongholds of positivist rhetoric because new members must be recruited as rm believers in the superiority of science. Such naive faith in the ofcial propaganda might later wane and even turn cynical, but it is crucial for new students primary socialization into the ranks of the community. (Fuchs, 1993: 15)
Taking a somewhat different perspective on this situation, David Hulls (1988) analysis of the training of scientists draws attention to the ongoing and emergent aspect of the scientic enterprise, and identies skills and attributes that may not be addressed through conventional training. He (1998: 365) suggests that: If we are genuinely interested in educating students who are most likely to contribute to the growth of science, we might well give applicants to graduate school aggressiveness tests as well as achievement tests. Here, Hull is supporting the view that our concept of scientic knowledge may need to be expanded to encompass various elements associated with the kinds of activities engaged in by members of all human groups, as they attempt to accomplish their goals and objectives in the face of various obstacles. In other words, a more comprehensive perspective on how individuals excel in science might be gained by examining how individuals achieve success in, for example, politics or business.13 Delamont et al. (2000) explore the doctoral experience in the social and natural sciences from both the supervisors and the students points of view. The framework for their study is provided by Pierre Bourdieus notion of habitus, that is, the habitual patterns of disposition and practice that generate and constitute cultural forms and values (Delamont et al. 2000: 7). Consistent with Traweek, the authors nd that some of the uncertainty and anxiety associated with being a graduate student results from a tension between explicit training and implicit enculturation (2000: 176). Similarly, as both Fleck and Kuhn observed, Delamont et al. (2000: 181) remark that, given the way in which students progressively learn the classic texts and techniques of their discipline, [t]he process of initiation is thus akin to a kind of conversion experience. Perhaps one of their most important conclusions, however, is that enculturation processes act as powerful mechanisms for the stability of symbolic systems (2000: 180). That is, in spite of the ubiquitous presence of uncertainty and change, the maintenance of order, expressed as absorbing and participating in the
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creation of cumulative knowledge and learning disciplinary norms, constitutes a major locus of activity. The present project also accepts this position, and seeks to illustrate some of the processes engaged in by those who seek to propagate such systems. The data presented here specically add to our understanding of how scientic training is carried out by those individuals (academic scientists) who are actively engaged in the process of managing students on a day-today basis. This aspect of doing science can be viewed as involving a number of activities, such as: Recruiting students Teaching and training Supervising programs of study Selecting projects for students Inuencing career decisions This list of processes is meant to be illustrative rather than comprehensive, and while it provides a framework for the presentation of data, it is not meant to imply that scientists would necessarily articulate their activities this way, or that they would view these processes in any way as separate or distinct.
Recruiting Students
Scientists working in the university environment are exposed to large numbers of undergraduate students primarily through their teaching activities. Not all of these students will become science majors, an even smaller number will enter graduate programs in the sciences, and a very few will go on to become scientists themselves. One of the difculties confronting academic scientists is how to determine which students have the potential to become good graduate students and, by extension, potential new members of the scientic community. Even when this determination can be made, however, how does the process of recruitment occur? As Prus (1996: 153) indicates, potential new members to any group may take one or more of a number of entry paths. Interested individuals may engage in seekership, whereby they search out groups that they feel share their ideas, and would provide an environment within which to carry out some set of activities relating to work, or perhaps a hobby. Similarly, existing members of a group may actively seek out potential new members through a variety of recruiting activities, through which they can expose potential members to their worldview. In a related vein, an existing member may sponsor an individual, acting as a personal guide and gateway into the group. In some circumstances, individuals may feel obliged to join a certain group in order to fulll a particular commitment to family or friends. This kind of closure may result in later conict, as the individual discovers that they do not share the perspective of the group. The way in which any of these mechanisms comes into play, however, may be the result of chance. In some cases, the particular circumstances
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within which the concerned parties nd themselves may give rise to a combination of actions taking place.
This year, theres a very good (undergraduate) student graduating. She was going to go to another school and basically what I did was I wrote her a nice letter. It was coincidental, she was supervising an exam for me, and she started telling me about her experience. She asked me about where shes going and so on. So we got talking and I wrote her a letter saying, Here are some of my papers. I would like to have you in my group. (A)
Part of this process involves determining the competence, or goodness-oft, of potential members.
In our case, he has to understand optics, or if he doesnt know optics, he has to become procient in optics at least the fundamentals, then he has to have an electronics background, and then to some extent, he has to also be mechanically inclined. Now, you do not its rare that you get a student that is going to be able to do all of these things, so youve got to get students with different strengths, and they use these strengths in their specic area. At the same time, they become procient maybe not fantastic in other things. (B)
The decision to open a group to a new member is not just a question of the individuals perceived competence as a scientist, but consideration is also given to how a newcomer will mesh with the existing members and relationships that presently make up the group.
Theres a certain chemistry that works between certain people and doesnt work between other people. Like I see some students, for example, in other labs and I think that its difcult to achieve, to recognize which people will get along well with them and vice versa of course. Its mutual. (A)
The hiring of new faculty members in science departments also provides an opportunity for the recruitment of students.
At the beginning when somebody new comes in, he comes in with completely new baggage, new everything from outside, and its completely different research to what other people were doing in the faculty before. And that novelty aspect, I think, attracts students. Plus, I was lucky to get good students, and those will attract people as well. (A)
So, not only does the introduction of a new perspective provide some advantage in the recruitment process, but once a few students have become exposed to that perspective they will communicate it to others. Faculty members and students both play a role in the recruitment process. This phenomenon might be seen to constitute yet another expression of the Matthew effect, whereby scientists who have been successful in acquiring resources (students) in the past are likely to have high levels of success in acquiring resources (students) in the future (Merton, 1973: 43959).
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As others have pointed out (Gumport, 1993: 264; Delamont et al. 2000: 166), the ability to attract graduate students is strongly linked to the availability of sufcient levels of funding, and the need for students to be adequately prepared, in terms of appropriate grade levels and program and course completion, is perhaps self-evident. What the data presented here suggest is that the more informal elements of goodness-of-t and awareness of opportunity also play an important part in determining if and how supervisor and student will get together.
Teaching and Training

Another set of activities that is widely recognized as a major component of doing science in the university environment is teaching and training. Through formalized courses, scientists present their worldviews to new members, and provide students with opportunities for developing attitudes, skills and knowledge, appropriate to the discipline at hand. By taking classes and participating in laboratory exercises, science students engage in activities that help them to acquire perspectives, achieve identities, and initiate their careers. However, scientists do not operate in isolation from each other, or from members of other groups. Interaction with representatives from funding agencies, equipment manufacturers, and public interest groups, to mention only a few possibilities, is an important component of accomplishing scientic goals. Consequently, Harry Collins (1992: 161) suggests that, during the training process, more time should be devoted even to doing some social science training, so that new scientists will be better prepared to make informed decisions about the future of the scientic enterprise, both as professionals and as citizens. In speaking with scientists, four aspects of teaching and training emerged that provide a convenient way to subdivide the presentation of material in this section in order to facilitate communication. The four are: Differentiating activities Teaching specic things Preparing students for the discipline Preparing students for the next step While these activities overlap and can be seen as part of the overall supervision process, scientists reach out to a somewhat larger audience (beyond their own students) through classroom teaching and training students in the laboratory; this is likely to consist of graduate students supervised by others, who have widely varying backgrounds, interests, and skill levels. Differentiating Activities One of the difculties faced by academic scientists is determining where the activities of teaching and training students t into the broader range of activities that they engage in.
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Well, in the university its difcult. Theres a certain amount of tension tension sounds very stressful but I guess its the word I want to use anyway between research and teaching, and administration is sort of assumed to be there. Its part of the job. (A)
There would seem to be at least a practical distinction between three areas of activity, namely: teaching, research, and administration, with the last of these being characterized as somewhat less important by the scientists, and the rst two existing in some kind of ambiguous and potentially conictual relationship. Merton (1973: 520) identies four principal roles that scientists engage in, namely: research, teaching, administration, and gatekeeping. He states that the research role is central, for without the production of new knowledge there would be nothing to teach, nothing to administer, and nothing for gatekeepers to regulate. The teaching role is itself blurred, as one would anticipate some differences between teaching undergraduates and graduate students. While the primary focus in this study is graduate teaching, because of the more direct linkage graduate students have with research programs and funding, it would be equally benecial to explore activities related to the design and delivery of undergraduate courses.
The graduate activity that is something that is to some extent an uneasy, in-between sort of situation, between teaching and research. In some discussions you hear graduate activity categorized as teaching, and in other discussions you hear it categorized as research. Well, its both. (C)
So, not only is the distinction between teaching and research problematic at times, but the scientists themselves do not seem clear on whether managing students is one, or the other, or both. As with many aspects of the scientic enterprise, the best way to understand what is taking place is to examine a particular activity in some specic context or situation. In other words, the way in which scientists understand teaching and training will vary with the circumstances.
Many of the students I accept, however, are what I regard as teaching service. They already have something in mind that they want to work on while I supervise them. To me its sort of a service its not directly in my chosen areas of research. Its not a project that Im working on myself. They will not contribute to my publications in those projects that Im working on. Im performing a teaching service supervising their programs. (D)
In other instances, the students plans may be more directly aligned with the research program being carried out by the supervisor. Regardless of the particulars of any case, Merton observes that there is:
an ambivalence toward the preferred relations between the teaching and research roles. For some, the norm requires the scientist to recognize his prime obligation to train up new generations of scientists, but he must not allow teaching to preempt his energies at the expense of advancing knowledge. For others, the norm reads just as persuasively in reverse. (Merton, 1973: 521, emphasis in original)
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So, while Merton appears to suggest that the scientists perceptions of the proper balance between teaching and research is based on some criteria that transcend specic situations, it is clear that teaching activities are part of the broader service to the scientic community, especially with respect to preparing the next generation of scientists. What would be interesting to explore in more detail is how the scientists themselves see the distinction between teaching and research, and what things they take into account in determining how to allot their time between these two. Walford (1983: 252) observed that: The Ph.D. system is a good way of teaching research but a very bad way of doing research. I would suggest that some of the apparent tension that exists between these activities might emerge out of the way that tenure and review processes and workload allocation take place at universities, and that if less of a distinction was drawn between research and teaching, scientic productivity, not to mention levels of satisfaction on the part of both faculty and students, might increase. Teaching Specic Things The actual content of courses and instruction will reect the scientists perspectives on what they have determined is important for the students to learn, and it may be very different from what the students expect, or from some public conception of scientic training. Ronald Giere points out that, with respect to classical mechanics for example, there is a logical progression laid out in the textbooks that reects a widely accepted notion of what students need to learn and how they should learn it.
A typical progression would be to proceed rst to treat motion in one dimension. Within that category one might progress from uniform forces as a function of position only, to forces that are a function of both position and velocity, and nally to forces that are a function of position, velocity, and time. (Giere, 1988: 66)
Ian Hacking (1992: 39) points out a similar progression with respect to learning optics. Beyond these basics, however, there is a great deal more that will be transmitted to the novice scientists.
Well, you train people rst of all how to think, if nothing else, and how to solve problems. In real life there are no textbooks that will provide solutions to all the problems, so you give them the skills to think the problem through to total conclusion, and maybe or maybe not, but most likely they wont nd the same problem when they go out into industry. But you are not going to be providing them with canned solutions. You are training them to think, to problem-solve, and its scientic problemsolving. It could be organic synthesis something that is hard to synthesize how to go from A to B. It could be chemical analysis. What do I have here? This is a rock. What is the composition? How would I go about analyzing it? Maybe in my laboratory they do rocks. In somebody elses they could be doing blood samples. When they move to get a different job, they could be doing DNA ngerprinting. It is still problem solving scientic problem solving. This is what I think Im trying to instill in the
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students a good sense of scientic thinking. And we dont try things for the sake of trying things. There has to be a reason for trying it, and whatever it is that we try, it has to be based on the scientic basics. This is part of the zero-based approach that were taking. It is not only what are you going to do, but also how you are going to do it how you are going to get from point A to point B. (A)
The focus in scientic training, then, is on how to do science and, as with the approach advocated in this project, process takes precedence over products. In other words, the skills and knowledge imparted to the students have to do with preparing them for the emergent and ongoing character of scientic work.
If I start teaching now something thats already obsolete, what would happen 10 or 15 years down the line? This is part of the reason why Im emphasizing in my courses thinking about how to solve the problem rather than the actual solution, because the actual solution changes. Whats current today, and the method of choice today, may not necessarily be the method of choice tomorrow. But, if you know how to devise a solution based on the choice today, in most likelihood you will know how to devise a solution 10 years down the line. (E)
The emphasis on passing on a more generic approach to understanding and doing science does not mean that specics do not have to be learned. At the same time, while each particular subculture within the scientic enterprise may have some peculiar theories or methods, which are essential for new members to learn, there are some pragmatic skills that all students learn in order to take their place in the broader community of scientists. Further research might explore in greater detail the relationship between the learning of specic (technical, procedural) skills and the acquisition of more broadly based problem-solving skills. It might be the case that learning the type of textbook science identied particularly by Fleck and Kuhn is an important element in learning the scientic ethos or habitus, but that it falls short of preparing students to be active contributors to the scientic enterprise. Preparing Students for the Discipline As students acquire the perspectives of the group with which they are involved, they also undergo a transition from being a student to achieving an identity as a scientist. Through interaction with their supervisor and others around them, they learn their role in the scientic community and, as with the scientic work they are carrying out, this shift in identity can be viewed as an intersubjective accomplishment.
One of the great joys of my job is to see . . . well, for example, I have my fourth grad student, that Im writing a couple of papers with I wrote a paper with him last year, and Im doing another one right now. Of the rst four grad students Ive had, hes the only one that I would say has become scientically mature. So, one out of four 25 % hmm. He essentially has learned the rules of science. Hes learned the rules of publication.
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Hes learned how to accept scientic criticism, and just as important, to respond to it in an effective and condent way. And this person, his development into a scientist, as far as Im concerned, most students, including this person, when they came in, still dont know how science works. (E)
Here, we see that much of becoming a scientist has to do with learning to interact with other scientists, and learning to interpret what goes on in the scientic enterprise in a way that might reect the expectations of a number of different groups. Not only are we interested in knowing more about what these expectations might be, we would like to examine how scientists and students take these expectations into account. Related to this, it is important to observe that not every student will necessarily learn this aspect of being a scientist.
I have a grad student right now, who still hasnt quite come to understand the difference between paraphrasing, and what I would consider to be marginal to blatant plagiarism. And I have to take this person aside and say, Look, this is not acceptable. This is the way that we deal with these kinds of problems, and better you learn this now on your term paper than on your thesis, because on your thesis, Im going to crucify you on something like this. So, theres immaturity because of unfamiliarity with the system. (A)
There are a number ways in which academic scientists try to prepare students to take their place as scientists, ranging from the more personal approach just mentioned to more formal arrangements aimed at all students. In some cases, this activity is integrated into the work that students do for a particular course.
Theres a major essay writing component in this course, that I essentially run as an editor of a journal. We sort of have this mock exercise its called, publish or perish. I have a whole booklet that I wrote on how it works its very mechanical, it works very nicely. This exercise is something that takes the students from . . . well, they write essays on topics that they choose, and get my approval, and the idea is that they eventually submit them to me, being the editor of a journal, and I send them out to reviewers, which are the other students you never get to review your own work obviously and the reviewers get to have a list of things they look for. They have to write a critique of the paper in terms of presentation, scientic content this and that. The critique comes back to me and I look at the critique. I evaluate the critique. I dont evaluate the essay at this point. Then, the critique and the annotated essays or critiqued essays go back to the original writers, who then respond, who then improve their essays, and they send them back to me at the end of the semester. All this process takes place over a month and a half or so, and I eventually read all the essays and I grade them. And it seems that when students initially hear about this, they get really worried. They are very intimidated. It sounds like a lot of work. (E)
Here, the students take on a variety of roles that they will be required to ll over their careers as members of the scientic community. In other cases, the opportunity to learn is less formal, and may be of a more voluntary nature.
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I organized a fraternity discussion room. We have six to eight meetings each fall and winter. And it started with a student in biology that I had contacted about giving a talk, so he was calling back to say that, yes, he and another student will go together to give a talk, and it has been operating now 26 years. Typically in the fall, I have outsiders because travel conditions are better then; people from off campus, from nearby universities within an hour or twos drive, and summer students reporting on their thesis research. Then in winter, we tend to have our local people here. (F)
Through this type of activity, students are exposed to a broader range of members from the scientic community, from whom they may be introduced to alternative approaches, and from whom they have the opportunity to see how different scientists have developed their careers. At the heart of this disciplinary training is the notion of exposing your work to others and having to comment on the efforts of others. From their research on a graduate student writing project, similar to the one reported by one of my interview subjects, Rosemary Caffarella and Bruce Barnett (2000) report that while students found the direct interaction with others and the iterative process of revision to be extremely valuable, they also found the process emotionally draining and often frustrating. Thus, it is reasonable for us to observe that the development of decorum, objectivity, and what is often referred to as a thick skin, are all part of the process of learning the discipline, and clearly supervisors have an important role to play in this regard. Preparing Students for the Next Step As students complete their graduate programs, they often have a number of options open to them. While some may select to discontinue their involvement by moving into other lines of work (for example, business, medicine) at this point, others will choose to stay in the academic setting, or go elsewhere to practice science (for example, industry, private laboratories). The graduate supervisor typically not only indicates what the possible paths may be, he or she also attempts to provide the students with the best possible preparation for success.
When you go for a post-doc, or an industrial job, or government job, you list the equipment that youre familiar with, and thats very important. The more you know obviously the better, and the more sophisticated these things are the better. (A)
At the same time, scientists respond to individual differences among students, and the structure of their programs will vary accordingly.
We do have a lot of equipment thats the nature of the science were doing, and students have to be . . . . Some people are excellent at this type of learning new techniques, and also doing the maintenance and troubleshooting where other students dont have much of a feel for it. They just do routine things. (G)
Similarly, the interaction that takes place between the supervisor and any individual student will reect the perception that the supervisor has of that
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student, along with an evaluation of how best to proceed with that student.
Inevitably, they waste a lot of time, but they are not going to learn anything if I come along, and I say, Let me take your hand, and here, this is exactly how you operate this dial, and this is how you do this. Some people would do that. I dont have the patience for that. You know, they have to struggle a little bit its the only way theyre going to appreciate its how they are going to retain what they learn. (A)
So, part of the preparation for a scientic career is to struggle with various challenges and encounter setbacks. At the same time, if the students learn to deal with these contingencies and accept them as a normal part of everyday life, then they will be in a better position to gain from these experiences.
I dont think the students appreciate this until much later on, that the techniques become vehicles for learning how to solve problems. I like to think that my students can leave here and go into other labs, or into industry, and address different sorts of problems, and that they have learned how to solve problems, and on the computing side, they have learned how to exploit resources with a sophistication and an efciency that most other students dont have. (H)
Tony Becher (1993: 13033) points out that forms of interaction between supervisors and students, which do not directly contribute to the completion of a degree, can be limited by the number of students being supervised, and therefore the time available to an individual student, and also to those students who show promise, and thus appear to be worth the investment. Notwithstanding these constraints, the data presented here indicate that supervisors recognize these activities as an important aspect of teaching and training. Looking at the broader area of managing students, teaching and training activities appear to be an integral part of carrying out science in an academic setting. Not only are there specic elements that might be characterized as distinctly pedagogical, the activities more generally contribute to the intersubjective accomplishment of scientic work, and to the preservation of the eld, irrespective of where the work is carried.
Supervising Programs of Study

As pointed out by Reskin, part of the mechanism through which scientists acquire their credentials is their attachment to a graduate supervisor, or thesis director, who will oversee their particular program. As with many other aspects of the scientic enterprise, there is a great deal of variance in the form that these relationships may take and, particularly in some smaller undergraduate institutions, scientists may never be involved in this aspect of science at all. In addition, as others have pointed out (Walford, 1981: 149; Delamont et al. 2000: 64), the experience in the natural sciences can be quite different from what is found in other disciplines.
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Theres a difference between the way arts people and the way science people supervise graduate students. We see them every day. Theyre in and out of the ofce all of the time, and theyre always right there in the laboratory. In the arts, students may only see their supervisor once every couple of months. (G)
While we are not interested specically in quantifying the activities around managing students, it is important for present purposes to note that at any given time scientists may be interacting with several students at various stages in their programs, and may even share responsibility for a student with other scientists. The thing that we are interested in is the array of activities that constitutes the relationship between the supervisor and the student.
Well, its difcult to generalize, theyre all different situations and their backgrounds vary. Some of them spend quite a bit of their time doing course work, and a couple of students are doing course work masters, so that they dont do a thesis. They do a project, which involves much less than a thesis does. So, most of their program is spent doing courses, which is a more routine sort of operation. The thesis work involves a lot more participation involvement on my part getting them going on the research, selecting the problem, deciding how to pursue it, talking about the results as they become available. In former years, several of my students were working for government departments in the summers, and their theses were based on work for those agencies. In fact they wrote up a thesis based on their summer work, and my participation in those cases was much less. They had eld supervisors, or had a history of being supervised in the eld, or they would be working on their own at that stage, and I didnt need to teach them how to go about their work. They knew. I simply supervised the research aspect of it: how they got their results, and assessing the results, how they put it together in a thesis. So its quite a spectrum. (C)
Apart from identifying a number of processes and activities, many of which are discussed in the sections that follow, this excerpt indicates that supervision may extend beyond the university to include other interested groups. In addition, the level of involvement that supervisors have with particular students can vary greatly and, in some cases, greater onus may be placed directly on the student. Walford (1981) documents various cases of what his informants refer to as bad supervision, that reects such factors as lack of clear direction from supervisors, or lack of direct access to supervisors, because supervision has been passed on to a post-doctoral researcher or senior technician. In many cases, however, there are reciprocal benets that accrue from supervising graduate students.
There are a lot of subtleties in the university life. Having graduate students has advantages politically, having graduate students helps you to get money for graduate students, and from time to time even though those students came in not to work on my projects, as their work develops, there are things that come out of it that tie into things Im doing. (C)
Not only is the student learning to become a member of some particular group of scientists and the community of scientists as a whole, the
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supervising scientists often benet from this activity through linkages to such aspects as pursuing funding, and accomplishing their broader research goals.
Selecting Projects for Students

The projects that students carry out as part of their graduate programs are often an extension of their supervisors work. Resources have been invested in establishing a particular working environment, and student projects typically are tted into the broader range of plans and objectives that the scientist may be carrying out.14
All the research in my laboratory is carried out by students. Thats pretty common in fact, in chemistry. I dont know anybody who has a specic project that occurs by himself. In fact, I think Im somewhat unusual in having an aspect of the work which I do myself in the laboratory. In most cases the research directors in chemistry do absolutely nothing. They supervise in the laboratory; you know, they keep very close contact with whats going on, and they instruct the students in how to solve individual problems, or how to carry on research. And, of course, with new students that instruction may be very detailed, but they dont put their hands on the machines themselves. And, you know, after youve been out of the laboratory for a while, thats a good thing. The students there hate to see you come in and turn the knobs. (H)
Regardless of whether all scientists would agree with this statement, it points out that the supervising scientists often take the role of overseeing the workings in the laboratory and integrating new students into the ongoing activities of the laboratory. However, this does mean that the scientists will not perform some range of activities in the research setting.
The work that I do is on the development of this particular instrument, that in fact has taken many, many years to develop and rene. So, I have spent fteen years . . . Ive been doing this for a very long time, and it makes very little sense for the student to do that. Thats why I spend some of my time in the laboratory. As I say, its the electronics thing and computer architecture, and the building of specialized computers. The students projects then use that instrument to make measurements on various things. Now, thats not the only instrument in my laboratory, of course. The students also have to build equipment in order to carry out their research. However the equipment they build then is used with this instrument that Ive been developing, and that I regard as my responsibility if you like, then both things are used together to make the measurement and get the results. (G)
In this case, the scientist has more direct (hands on) involvement in the research being carried out, but in both instances the students are engaged in carrying out actual research work, rather than engaging in mere exercises. For clarity of presentation, the activities around selecting projects for students have been divided into these three sub-processes that reect the way in which the scientists described them to me. They are:
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Fitting students in Dealing with problems Taking a risk Fitting Students In As suggested by the two excerpts given earlier, many research activities in the laboratory are ongoing, with many students entering and leaving as work goes on. As new students come along, their work typically is channeled so that it ts into the broader scheme of activities being carried out, and into the broader developments within that particular area of science.
He or she doesnt have any feel for the scope of the eld, or what is relevant. Hopefully, by going to meetings and reviewing the literature, I do, and I also know whats feasible with the tools we have, and I also know what my expertise what narrow window my expertise gives me a handle on attacking. So Ill choose for the student. (F)
The responsibility for the selection of research projects is assumed by the supervisor, as the student is not expected to be aware of the various criteria central to making the decision. At the same time, the supervisor may provide the student with alternate research paths in order to compensate for potential setbacks or difculties that may arise.
The way I try to organize projects for the students is pretty typical of most people. When I have an incoming student . . . I do this because I have an ongoing laboratory with some projects, and some of those projects are difcult and some of them are easy, and some of them are successful and some of them are less successful. When I have an incoming student I always put lets say its a masters student with no research experience whatever I will always put that student on a project which is working, where results are being obtained. And, I will change the system thats being measured somewhat, and let the student go ahead and measure those new results which are new results of course but theyre pretty similar to the results of the other systems. While thats happening, I always give the student two projects, basically one thats working like that, and then one which he has to develop. And, the one to be developed of course is going to be difcult and risky, and the chances of success are in many cases not high. So, ne. If the new difcult project doesnt work out, the student still has results from the other one and can write a thesis on these. If that new project does work out, then the student has built effectively built another apparatus to do some different measurement, and has done some very simple measurements with that apparatus to show that it works. And therefore, I then have another apparatus working in my lab and another experiment working in the lab, which is producing results, so the next incoming student can use that apparatus and just use it to measure results. And so, thats really the bootstrap kind of process that I use, and I think thats pretty common with most people. (H)
In this case, the overall research activities of the supervisor can continue, the individual students can accomplish what they need for this step in their training, and the way is paved for new students to enter the laboratory. This kind of integrated activity depends on the cooperation of many people
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working together, in order to maximize the use of resources and maintain productivity.
Once a relatively large and complicated instrument is built, and this may include a couple of grad student generations, you know, and about half a million dollars is not untypical for the amount of resources and time that goes into building one of these complete experimental set-ups. And in one sense you want to use it for a while. You dont want to just throw it away, but the fact is that, that instrument may be only used for only another generation or so of students before its either completely dismantled, recongured, or thrown away, or abandoned. (G)
Despite the often considerable investment in human and material resources, scientists may decide to move on in response to changes taking place in the scientic enterprise, or in their particular elds. Students also make quite an investment as part of this overall scheme.
Thats the typical project for a chemical physics graduate student. The person is in the lab for, you know, four years or something; three years will be spent building an instrument, and one year will be spent making measurements and getting results. (G)
Dealing with Problems Some of the changes that take place in the research process arise in response to various obstacles that the students may encounter in the course of doing their research. Solutions may emerge through interaction with supervisors and through reective processes of interpretation, as students solidify their knowledge.
They can always come back to me, for example, and say, Look, I dont understand why this happens. I may not have an answer for them, but then you explore more until you get an answer. If there are no problems at all then you plan the experiments, and they work out exactly the way that they should, but most of the time the experiment tells you what you should do next. (A)
It is not the experiment that tells the scientist how to proceed, but the scientists experience with these kinds of systems and ways of doing science that lead to various possibilities. Harry Collins (1992: 70) indicates that as one of his informants learned to build lasers, he came to recognize the signicance of certain actions and materials, where once he had seen nothing. For the student, an integral part of carrying out the specic project is to develop this kind of skill.
I ask my students to turn their ideas upside down in their heads and to challenge their own thought processes. Just because you thought about it, that doesnt make it right. You just simply thought about it. You thought about this and that and, yes, based on what you know, would you do it the way this person is proposing to do it, or how would you do it if you did it from scratch. (A) I think that if a student started thinking about experiments they are running, and they thought about them properly, then they could graduate very rapidly, with all sorts of interesting results. (E)
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This last quotation presents an interesting avenue for further research. It would be of great benet to our understanding of socialization into science to nd out what scientists believe constitutes the notion of proper thinking, and what the specic consequences of employing such a process would have for the immediate student and the broader scientic community. Sometimes, circumstances are such that it is more advantageous to the overall goals to stop one line of research and embark upon a different course of action.
Students will always have the impression that if they just do this one last thing, then its certainly going to work, and they just keep going on and on until they waste their entire graduate course. And, there is also I say students well, certainly theres also that tendency on the part of the research director as well. So its very important to just keep focused on the big picture, and say, How much have I invested in this at this point? Because if I invest much more then its going to own me instead of the other way around, and then I wont be able to quit. I wont be able to afford to quit because Ive got so much in it now that I have to keep pushing, and so to my mind its better to quit early than late, for sure and you can modify the experiment. (E)
Taking a Risk There are occasions when the research project that a student undertakes may involve higher levels of risk than more conservative projects. Embarking on such projects may impact the allocation of resources within the laboratory, and may alter the relationship between the supervisor and the student, in such a way as to affect other courses of action. Sometimes, these more innovative projects can come along by chance.
It was an idea that I had for a while, and I asked a graduate student that was working on something else he had one of those long-term projects. Would you mind doing this as a side project? And, he said, No, sure, Ill try it. And it turned out that it works very well, and he dropped the other project. (A)
In some cases, the level of freedom and uncertainty that goes with this kind of project can appeal to certain individuals and, if they succeed, the rewards can be great.
I essentially gave him the same information Im giving you now. What I know is that nobody knows anything about this. Heres an opportunity to do a thesis that is totally out of the ordinary, that he potentially could be recognized for, that could have a lot of impact, and people will sit up and take notice. Heres a chance to be innovative, and for some people, even at the level of scientic immaturity that most grad students come in at, some people say, Hey, you know, why do I want to produce another thesis that looks at something in a very systematic, programmed sort of way, where the results are fairly predictable? Heres a chance to actually make what you want heres totally fertile ground. Once you look at the material, initially, theres an innite number of directions you can go with it, and you can go whichever direction that strikes your fancy. If the person wanted to do it in terms of strictly sedimentology, you could do that. If
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you wanted to do it in terms of geochemistry, you could do that. If you wanted to bring a stronger biological component into interpreting the sedimentology, you could do that. So I guess it was so open-ended, and the potential for impact was fairly high. It appealed to this particular student. Thats how it came about. (E)
Even in these cases, the decision to proceed with such a project is arrived at through interaction between the student and the supervisor, as the process and the outcome are likely to impact both parties.
I want to be exible, and I believe strongly that of course I set up a general scheme but I like the students to have as much input as possible into the whole thing, because thats when theyre going to work harder, and thats when theyre going to have more academic success, as opposed to some imposed set of rules, traditions, and so on. (D)
The evidence presented here may seem to indicate that the whole area of selecting projects for students is tied into considerations of the material resources (especially laboratory equipment) available in a particular setting. This kind of conclusion would appear to be consistent with, for example, what Sharon Traweek describes as taking place in high-energyphysics facilities. However, the approach taken in the present study allows us to gain greater insight into what might otherwise be treated as a structural constraint. First of all, not all of the instances point to a big science environment (see Price, 1986; Galison & Hevly, 1992). In other words, the kinds of processes described here are obtained whether the specic project costs a few thousand dollars, or a few hundred thousand dollars. Second, our primary interest is in outlining how scientists and students attach meaning to the objects that they work with, through ongoing processes of interaction and interpretation. For example, in one of the cases mentioned here, a certain project was viewed initially by both the scientist and the student as an extra piece of work, a sort of curiosity. As the project progressed, however, both came to view the project as signicant and worthy of greater attention. As a result, this project came to replace what had originally been the principal course of action. Regardless of whether the student is going to study the behavior of wasps around their nests, or the scattering of subatomic particles resulting from the collision of a high-energy beam with an elaborate detector, the social processes are similar. Through a process of negotiation the specic project to be undertaken by the student will be integrated into the overall goals, objectives and ways of doing science that the supervising scientist is already engaged in. As problems arise they will be dealt with intersubjectively within the context of understandings that comprise the life-world within which the concerned parties are operating. While it is only possible to mention these activities in the present project, further research might focus specically on the negotiation processes that take place between scientists and their students.
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Inuencing Career Decisions

In a previous section, examples were provided to show how scientists prepare their students for their future involvement in the scientic enterprise through teaching and training activities. A parallel process that takes place in this regard is the counseling and coaching of students with respect to specic courses of action to follow as their careers unfold. In some cases, students are advised to embark upon paths that will place them in the situation of encountering different perspectives from the ones that they have just devoted much time and effort to acquiring.
When I have students that leave here to go to post-docs, I encourage them to go into areas that are quite different from their thesis, because they have already learned how to do that. They should go and learn something else and get a different perspective. So, the student is sold, particularly at the post-doc level, based on their ability to solve problems, and exploit whatever tools are around. (E)
This statement would seem to indicate that students who can adapt to varying situations and contexts would fare better than those who cannot. Even for those students that have yet to complete their doctorate, similar kinds of advice may be given.
I never really recommend that a student do too many degrees in one place. I went to a different place for every degree, and its only after having done it that I realize the experience that you get. Its so hard to explain to somebody who does their bachelors, masters, and PhD in one place. (D)
In both of these cases, the goal is to make the student better prepared for a career in science enterprise, and an important part of that preparation would appear to be the ability to deal with multiple worldviews. By taking the other into account in this more sustained manner, the student is gaining a greater appreciation of the intersubjective nature of the scientic enterprise. Even if students decide to continue along a particular path, changes in the way that scientists have organized themselves may make it difcult for them pursue a certain course of action.
Many students still want to pursue parasitology, and there are fewer and fewer places where they can actually go and get trained in that. Its something that is going to have to be addressed, because the importance of parasites is not going to disappear along with the disappearance of the discipline. I guess it maybe just reects the ebb and ow of science in general. I think there is a widespread recognition in biology right now that we have to do something in terms of whole animal biology. Youve got too many people working in the molecular aspects. The recognition is there, but its going to be a long time before the jobs start opening up that will enable more balance. (I)
Here, supervisors have to take into account developments that are taking place not only within a particular subdiscipline (parasitology), but also in
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the broader community of biologists. Part of what is passed on to students, therefore, is an appreciation of the various conditions and circumstances that they will be confronted with, as future courses of action are determined. In some cases, this may involve looking beyond the connes of the academic community.
As long as I can attract grad students, and can afford to pay them to do these things, you know, I encourage grad students to keep their options open. I mean, I actively discourage some people, who I thought, well they would quit after their masters and rather than go on to achieve an academic position, I have discouraged these people from looking at me as a potential supervisor, and encourage them to look at things perhaps a little bit more applicable in terms of jobs at the masters level. And even the people who are doing PhDs and whatever, I have them taking environmental courses and geochemistry courses and things that are marketable. They may have a very academic thesis topic, but theyve got experience in environmental things, and if a company is looking for somebody who can who has demonstrated good work habits, nished the thesis on time, or theyve also got some technical knowledge formally from courses that will give them at least as much of a ghting chance as possible. (E)
In this case, the supervisor recognizes that the specic expectations that members of the academic community may place on potential new members can be different from what various industrial or government groups may expect. At the same time, it is possible to organize students programs so as to maximize their chances for success, regardless of which route they select. The decision to remain within the academic setting may actually jeopardize the chances for entering other settings.
Somebody has to have some dedication interest in research to continue on to a doctorate, because you cant guarantee them a job these days. I often feel that somebody with a PhD is overqualied. There are more opportunities for somebody with a masters, and you know how few openings there are in universities, which is where a large proportion of PhDs will go. So, its not really encouraging. (C)
At the same time, activities taking place in one area cannot be separated from what goes on in related areas of human endeavor.
Geology is very subject to employment cycles. When this department started in the 60s, we were consciously trying to encourage students to enter into other kinds of careers, other than mineral-based careers oil and mines. Were in a slump now. Employment in geology is down. We were hoping that we could focus our training on people who would go into teaching, for example, or other things that werent directly involved with these cyclic industries. But its difcult to separate yourself from it because when those industries slump they affect everything in the employment eld. You nd people leaving employment with oil companies, mining companies, looking for jobs elsewhere. And this is such a large component of employment, that you cant escape it. You nd those people going out looking for jobs anywhere they can nd jobs. Some of them will go into teaching, so it affects the employment in teaching. (C)
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Not only do students leave the academic setting to enter industry, there are times when appropriately trained scientists leave industry to go back into an academic setting. Members ow back and forth among various communities with whom they share certain elements of their worldview. In some case, decisions are made on practical grounds that may reect other elements of a persons life, such as family or lifestyle considerations.
Years ago I had a PhD student here who obtained an NSERC [National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada] scholarship, and it paid him $11,000. He had no other duties but just to do his research, and thats a prestigious award in academic circles to get such a scholarship, but he was looking for work. And, he interviewed for a job in the government where he had been doing his thesis research. They were offering $38,000 for somebody with a masters degree, at the same time the university was offering $28,000 for a starting assistant professor. He had an $11,000 scholarship. Guess what he decided to do? (C)
The ways in which scientists inuence the career paths of their students reect a tension between providing future members for the scientic community, and recognizing the dynamics of the relationships that the scientic community engages in with other social groups (government, industry). Coupled with this is the realization that people are members of several groups simultaneously, and that the demands placed on individuals by members of one group may not be consistent with the demands placed on them by others. At the same time, the kinds of activities and processes that students engage in, in doing science, also prepare them to take their place as practitioners in a number of other social environments. As was pointed out earlier, Collins, Fuchs, and Hull have suggested that graduate students in the natural sciences might benet from some training in the social sciences and that the same kinds of skills that we might identify more particularly with success in the world of business might be of considerable benet to success in the scientic enterprise. This position recognizes, not only, the fact that many of the social processes that people engage in do, in fact, share common mechanisms, but it also draws attention to a notion of the transferability of skills that emerges from a more generic perspective on these activities.
Concluding Observations
The data presented here provide insight into the variety and complexity of social processes that come into play as new members of the scientic community are integrated into the group, and which constitute a very important aspect of the intersubjective accomplishment of science. In other words, these activities cannot be separated out and treated as somehow nonscientic or peripheral to the real activity of doing science. A substantial part of what many academic scientists do on a daily basis is to prepare the next generation of scientists, and the activities engaged in by these new members go a long way towards accomplishing the goals and
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objectives of the established members of the scientic community. This kind of reciprocal relationship is an integral component of how scientic practice is carried out in an academic setting, and thus it is important for us to bring it to the attention of those interested in the social study of science. What I have tried to do here is to explore one aspect of this relationship, by presenting scientists descriptions of the activities they engage in as part of a process that I have called managing students. From the material introduced earlier in this essay, it may seem that students become indoctrinated with an exceptionalist view of the scientic enterprise that emphasizes the (mistaken?) impression that science is a highly stable eld of human endeavor. Through a long period of apprenticeship and the establishment of complex relationships with their sponsors, new scientists, and members of the broader scientic community, invest a great deal of time and other resources in maintaining the community. What the evidence presented from the interviews seems to show is that underneath what might appear a calm and stable surface, incremental change is taking place constantly and has a signicant effect on how new members become integrated into the existing group and, by extension, into their discipline as a whole. Consistent with the ndings of Roth and Bowen, and of Delamont and Atkinson, it is clear that issues are resolved through negotiation, and much energy is expended in maintaining the processes of interaction and interpretation that, in fact, constitute the stability of the scientic enterprise. This latter point is critical to understanding my objective. A signicant amount of research has been carried out over the last 25 years to demonstrate the contingent and contextual nature of scientic knowledge and the ways in which scientic knowledge is constructed. However, rather than constituting a threat to the integrity of the scientic enterprise, and consistent with a symbolic interactionist perspective on science, I would suggest that the processes of interaction and interpretation, in fact, constitute the very integrity of science. Related to the evidence presented here, Delamont et al. (2000: 13451) are careful to point out that their work is subject to the criticism that the status of scientists accounts, as reliable and veriable data, is highly questionable, and the present project is equally susceptible to this same criticism. However, as they (2000: 13536) indicate: Narratives and other kinds of reports are a pervasive feature of social life, and are fundamental to everyday practical action. Thus, given the ubiquity of accounts and given that we often have little else to work with, such accounts at least provide a means for some initial and cautious forays into interesting areas of research. As Lorne Dawson (1995: 52) states in his analysis of alternate strategies for dealing with accounts, difculties notwithstanding, they provide a privileged, although fallible record for exploring the actions and beliefs of informants. I claim nothing more. Throughout the presentation of data, I have suggested a number of areas of interest that could form the basis for further research. These include an exploration of the activities related to the design and delivery of
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undergraduate courses in science, the ways that academic scientists differentiate between teaching and research, and the relationship between learning the specics of a discipline or particular subject area and the acquisition of more general problem-solving and research skills. As an important complement to the present project, it would be interesting to interview graduate students to explore the ways in which they would describe the processes that they engage in during their training. Similarly, any one of the processes illustrated here could be explored in much greater detail. Our understanding of higher education in the sciences is still very sketchy and, if we are ever to get a rm handle on what is taking place, we must be open to collecting and analyzing alternate insights, however partial and idiosyncratic, that can be obtained through a variety of research approaches and perspectives.
Notes
1. Perhaps one of the greatest accomplishments of social studies of science is the demonstration of the messiness and contingency of science, and yet this very point is the most common aspect of criticism from scientists and others; hence, the so-called science wars. 2. This might sound like a fundamental anthropological insight, and certainly Bourdieu (1988) has provided an excellent analysis of how this takes places in academic settings. For my part, however, I see formal education as only one part, albeit an important one, of the scientic enterprise, but one that parallels rather than taking precedence over the enculturation of young academic scientists into the world of science itself. 3. Symbolic interactionism emphasizes the intersubjective nature of social reality that emerges through processes of interaction and interpretation (Blumer, 1969). Through these processes, scientists attach meaning to the activities that they engage in, thus constructing for themselves a relatively stable environment within which they can carry out their daily work. As a consequence, the ideal method for exploring this milieu is through interaction with those engaged in constructing and maintaining it. 4. For an explanation of the generic social process scheme, see Prus (1987, 1996). For research applications of the scheme, see Prus (1989), Prus & Irini (1988), Prus & Sharper (1991), and Dietz et al. (1994). 5. The use of the term bbing results by Roth & Bowen (2001) is an example of this approach. 6. Of the 28 scientists interviewed, all were white and six were female. Transcript data from nine of these research subjects appear here, with individual respondents being identied by a letter following a quotation from them. The key to these letter designations is as follows. A male, early career, organic chemist, private and public funding B male, early career, physics (optics), private and public funding C male, late career, quaternary geology, public funding D female, early career, physical chemistry, public funding E male, early career, sedimentary geology, public funding F male, late career, physical chemistry, private and public funding G male, late career, chemical physics, private and public funding H male, late career, chemical physics, private and public funding I female, mid-career, parasitology, public funding All of the respondents had achieved tenure and therefore the designation early career means tenured in the last 25 years, mid-career means about 10 years post tenure, and late career means about 20 years post tenure.
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7. Many social studies of science, especially those identied as laboratory studies have tended to focus on very specic subcultures within science, and this approach makes sense when participant observation is the primary data gathering technique. As indicated, my objective here was to draw on data from a number of sites in order to identify commonalities (generic social process), rather than generalities, that might assist with creating a more comprehensive picture of what goes on in science. I am not suggesting that there are not differences among the sciences, or other disciplines for that matter. Rather, I am suggesting that we can understand a great deal of what goes on in all disciplines by abstracting out those processes that they share, thereby gaining a clearer picture of what takes place in academic science on a daily basis, and identifying those elements that are in fact peculiar or perhaps receive more emphasis in one discipline or another. For an examination of disciplinary differences in graduate training see Gumport (1993). 8. Two criticisms that can be leveled against qualitative interviews are that they are a poor substitute for participant observation and that the accounts provided by respondents can be highly manufactured and suspect. I will deal with this latter issue in the conclusion of my essay, but on the former point I offer this observation from Hammersley & Atkinson (1995): 141, who state that: The differences between participant observation and interviewing are not as great as is sometimes suggested. In both cases we must take account of context and the effects of the researcher. For more general coverage of interviewing in qualitative research, see Spradley (1979). 9. As Hammersley & Atkinson (1995: 129) indicate: There is a tendency among ethnographers to favor non-directive interviewing in which the interviewee is allowed to talk at length in his or her own terms, as opposed to more directive questioning. The aim here is to minimize, as far as possible, the inuence of the researcher on what is said, and thus to facilitate the open expression of the informants perspective on the world. 10. My emphasis in this literature review is on works in the social studies of science, rather than those that are more clearly identiable as works in the area of science education. The reason for this is that I think that publications in science studies have had a much broader impact, positive and negative, on scholarly opinion and on the scientists themselves. By way of substantiating my claim, I would point out for example that, according to the Science Citation Index, Traweek (1988) has received more than 230 citations, whereas two publications by Walford (1981, 1983) combined have received fewer than ten citations. 11. See Abbott (1988), Atkinson (1997), and Haas & Shafr (1987). 12. As Delamont et al. (2000) point out, there are similarities in the experiences of graduate students and supervisors in the social and the natural sciences, and certainly Haas & Shafr (1987) and Prus & Sharper (1991) have observed similar processes taking place in the training of other professionals. 13. See Hacking (1992). 14. Delamont & Atkinson (2001: 94) indicate that none of the graduate students they interviewed was responsible for identifying their initial research projects.
References
Abbott, Andrew (1988) The System of Professions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Atkinson, Paul (1997) The Clinical Experience (Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate). Becher, Tony (1993) Graduate Education in Britain: The View from the Ground, in Burton R. Clark (ed.), The Research Foundations of Graduate Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press): 11553. Blumer, Herbert (1969) Symbolic Interactionism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1988) Homo Academicus (Cambridge: Polity Press). Campbell, Robert A. (1988) An Inquiry into the Generic Social Processes of Science, PhD Thesis, University of Waterloo.
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Caffarella, Rosemary S. & Bruce G. Barnett (2000) Teaching Doctoral Students to Become Scholarly Writers: The Importance of Giving and Receiving Critiques, Studies in Higher Education 25(1): 3952. Collins, H.M. (1992) Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientic Practice, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Dawson, Lorne L. (1995) Accounting for Accounts: How Should Sociologists Treat Conversion Stories, International Journal of Comparative Religion and Philosophy 1: 5168. Delamont, Sara & Paul Atkinson (2001) Doctoring Uncertainty: Mastering Craft Knowledge, Social Studies of Science 31(1): 87107. Delamont, Sara, Paul Atkinson & Odette Parry (2000) The Doctoral Experience: Success and Failure in Graduate School (London: Falmer Press). Dietz, M.L., R.C. Prus & W. Shafr (1994) Doing Everyday Life: Ethnography as Human Lived Experience (Toronto: Copp Clark Longman). Fleck, Ludwik (1979) The Genesis and Development of a Scientic Fact (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Fuchs, Stephan (1993) Positivism is the Organizational Myth of Science, Perspectives on Science 1(1): 121. Galison, Peter & Bruce Hevly (1992) Big Science: The Growth of Large Scale Research (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Giere, Ronald (1988) Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Goffman, Erving (1961) Asylums (New York: Anchor). Gumport, Patricia J. (1993) Graduate Education and Research Imperatives: Views from American Campuses, in Burton R. Clark (ed.), The Research Foundations of Graduate Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 26193. Haas, Jack & William Shafr (1987) Becoming Doctors: The Adoption of a Cloak of Competence (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press). Hacking, Ian (1992) The Self-Vindication of the Laboratory Sciences, in A. Pickering (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press): 2464. Hammersley, Martyn & Paul Atkinson (1995) Ethnography: Principles in Practice, 2nd edn (London: Routledge). Hull, David (1988) Science as a Process (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Kuhn, Thomas (1970 [1962]) The Structure of Scientic Revolutions, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Merton, Robert K. (1973) The Sociology of Science (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Price, Derek J. de Solla (1986) Little Science, Big Science . . . and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press). Prus, Robert C. (1987) Generic Social Processes: Maximizing Conceptual Development in Ethnographic Research, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 16(3): 25091. Prus, Robert C. (1989) Making Sales: Inuence as Interpersonal Accomplishment (Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications). Prus, Robert C. (1996) Symbolic Interaction and Ethnographic Research: Intersubjectivity and the Study of Human Lived Experience (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Prus, Robert C. & Styllianos Irini (1988) Hookers, Rounders, and Desk Clerks: The Social Organization of the Hotel Community (Salem, WI: Shefeld). Prus, Robert C. & C.R.D. Sharper (1991) Road Hustler: Grifting, Magic, and the Thief Subculture, 2nd expanded edn (New York: Kaufman and Greenberg). Reskin, Barbara F. (1979) Academic Sponsorship and Scientists Careers, Sociology of Education 52(3): 12946. Roth, Wolff-Michael & G. Michael Bowen (1999) Digitizing Lizards: The Topology of Vision in Ecological Fieldwork, Social Studies of Science 29(5): 71964. Roth, Wolff-Michael & G. Michael Bowen (2001) Creative Solutions and Fibbing Results: Enculturation in Field Ecology, Social Studies of Science 31(4): 53356.
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Spradley, J.P. (1979) The Ethnographic Interview (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston). Traweek, Sharon (1988) Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Walford, Geoffrey (1981) Classication and Framing in Postgraduate Education Studies in Higher Education 6(2): 14758. Walford, Geoffrey (1983) Postgraduate Education and the Students Contribution to Research, British Journal of Sociology of Education 4(3): 24154.
Robert A. Campbell is Associate Principal in Academic Resources at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. His primary research interest is in the relationship between religion and science. He is co-author with William Stahl, Yvonne Petry, and Gary Diver of Webs of Reality: Social Perspectives on Science and Religion (Rutgers, 2002). Address: University of Toronto at Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada M1C 1A4; fax: +416 287 7507; email: rcampbell@utsc.utoronto.ca

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Campbell: Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists

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Campbell: Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists

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Campbell: Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists

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Campbell: Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists

Teaching and Training

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Campbell: Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists

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Campbell: Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists

Supervising Programs of Study

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Campbell: Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists

Selecting Projects for Students

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Inuencing Career Decisions

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Campbell: Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists

Social Studies of Science 33/6

Campbell: Preparing the Next Generation of Scientists

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