Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Observational Astronomy: Insights From an Ethnography of Undergraduate Research Experiences

A robust body of literature supports the value of undergraduate research experiences (UREs) for improving undergraduates' understanding of science, increasing their confidence to conduct research, and encouraging their graduate school aspirations, among other benefits. However, most of this work is survey‐ and interview‐based and very few studies have directly examined students' experiences with UREs from an ethnographic perspective including observational methodology. In this article, I report findings from an ethnographic study of undergraduates' long‐term involvement with research in two different university‐based astronomy research groups. I focus on undergraduates' emic, or insider, understandings of the process of socialization they undergo as they move from peripheral to more central forms of participation in the research community of practice. Undergraduates identified four main stages of socialization: getting connected, starting out, improving one's skills, and doing “science.” I examine the behaviors and dispositions associated with each of these stages in detail, documenting undergraduates' trajectory from “getting thrown in the deep end” of group meetings to generating publishable findings. Almost without exception, the undergraduate participants reported uniformly positive experiences within the research groups and a high sense of belonging; they credited the UREs with giving them the knowledge and cultural capital required to gain acceptance to, and succeed in, graduate school. Given the profound impact of longer‐term UREs on undergraduate researchers, it is imperative to consider how to extend their benefits to a larger and more diverse student population.