Engineering students' epistemic cognition in a research environment

Undergraduate research experiences provide students the opportunity to solve complex, open-ended problems in their fields. As such, it is expected that these opportunities influence students' development of problem-solving skills and beliefs about how knowledge is constructed in their fields. This exploratory study utilized a qualitative approach to understand how students acquire, understand, and justify knowledge (epistemic cognition) within an undergraduate research experience in biomedical engineering. We interviewed six undergraduate biomedical engineering students with diverse research experiences. Transcripts were analyzed using an iterative process that employed emergent and a priori coding using previous work in epistemic cognition as a lens. Our analysis revealed that many of the processes students use when selecting a research topic and making research decisions aligned with processes that are commonly used in the field of biomedical engineering, representing students' integration into the community of practice and adoption of the community's epistemic processes. Our results suggest that students' time in research, personal goals, research group culture, and the nature of the research project impact the processes students use to make research decisions. Four emerging researcher profiles (novice, passive, developing, and contributing researcher), based on students' time in research, autonomy in the lab, and use of research heuristics emerged from our data. The results of this work can inform the development of authentic problem-solving environments, such as research experiences and inquiry activities that aim for students to develop the epistemic practices of a specific community.