Background Prior research reported that motivational beliefs that individuals attach to specific tasks predict continuing interest and persistence in the task. A motivational approach may be particularly useful for understanding undergraduate students’ engagement with research in their first and second years in college. The current study utilizes the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation to qualitatively explore how much and in what ways early year undergraduate researchers value their research experience and what kinds of costs they associate with it. Results The results revealed that intrinsic value had the highest expression in participants’ motivation to engage in research. The second most expressed value type was the utility value of undergraduate research with regards to obtaining the desired outcomes, and attainment value played the least important role in participants’ motivation to engage in research. Findings also indicated that some of the participants associated a cost(s) to their research experience. The highest mentioned perceived cost was opportunity cost, where participants commented on losing other valued alternatives when engaging in research. Participants commented on the time, effort, or amount of work needed to engage in research, and a few participants commented on the emotional cost associated with their research experience in terms of the fear of failure. Conclusion As perceived cost is the least studied in the expectancy-value framework, this study contributes to cost values within college students, particularly about early year undergraduate researchers. The findings of this study can form the basis for future work on exploring ways to increase the values and decrease the costs students experience in their undergraduate research experiences.

Background: This auto-ethnographic study describes research conducted in a science teacher education program at a state university in Turkey, where I had taught the 'laboratory applications' course for the four previous years. While the students learned the basic skills needed to implement a laboratory course, I detected some deficiencies in their understanding of scientific practices. Consequently, I decided to adopt a different approach. In the fall of 2013 to 2014, I participated in a project aimed at improving pre-service science teachers' understanding of scientific practices (SPs) using a model known as the Benzene Ring Heuristic (Erduran and Dagher 2014).Results: This project helped me to re-design my course, emphasizing the integration of SPs into lesson planning and teaching. As I taught the re-designed course, I gathered data from various sources, including pre-and post-interviews, audiotape recordings of lessons, students' lesson plans and reflections, and my own and my colleague's reflections after teaching.

This study investigated undergraduate researchers’ perspectives on mentoring structures and the support provided to them in their first and sophomore years. Participants reported receiving different types of support from faculty and postgraduates depending on their mentoring structures and the amount of research experience they gained.

No abstract