Exploring Undergraduate Research Experiences for Latinx College Students From Farmworker Families
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Undergraduate research programs are beneficial to students beyond the practical research experience students gain. Participants in undergraduate research experiences have shown enhanced comprehension of the research process, increased confidence, and greater awareness of higher education opportunities (Russell et al., 2007). Through mentorship from faculty and peers, participating students can feel a stronger connection with a science community (Eagan et al., 2013). According to Stanford et al. (2017), participating in these programs increases students’ persistence and retention. The benefits afforded by undergraduate research programs are particularly important when considering the continued underrepresentation of minoritized students, including Latinx students who are underrepresented at every stage of the educational pipeline (Sólorzano et al., 2005). Research opportunities—in addition to culturally relevant programming, mentorship, professional development, and college funding—have been found to contribute to Latinx students’ understanding, confidence, and awareness of research in college (Russell et al., 2007). While programs such as the Migrant Education Program and the College Assistance Migrant Program exist to support students from migrant farmworker families through their K–12 education and as they transition to college (Mendez & Bauman, 2018; Núñez, 2009, 2017), these programs usually do not include a research component.
Applying the rightful presence framework (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2020), we suggest that undergraduate research programs should seek to expand their focus from simple access and inclusion of Latinx students from farmworker families to their rightful presence in these spaces. Originally developed for classroom instruction, the rightful presence framework proposes three tenets that can inform undergraduate research experiences, particularly those related to farm-worker research. These include the ideas that (a) political struggle (e.g., the food and farm-worker justice movement) is linked to learning and belonging in the research community; (b) intersections with injustice should be made visible, be oriented toward social change, and amplify learners’ experiences (e.g., lived experience with agricultural injustice can be connected with action research); and (c) disruption of the [End Page 111] traditional expert-learner power relationships (e.g., student-driven approaches) is essential for social transformation. In this study, we used the rightful presence framework to inform an exploration of the college and research experiences of Latinx students from farmworker families with the goal of strengthening the design of undergraduate research programs. This study was guided by the following research question: What insights do students from farmworker families have to inform the creation of undergraduate research programs?
METHOD
A qualitative interview study was designed to answer the research question. Participants were eight undergraduate students and two recent college graduates in North Carolina from families with farm work or agricultural processing experience. Four identified as male, six as female, and all identified as Hispanic, Latinx, or Mexican American. Students were identified through organizations that work with students from farmworker families and recruited via email and social media. Participants received a $20 gift card.
The first author interviewed participants by phone in English from March 25 to June 17, 2020, using a semi-structured interview guide (Amaresh et al., 2020). The interview guide explored experiences in college and with research (e.g., Could you describe your experience in college so far? Have you had any opportunities to conduct research in college?), provided a description of a hypothetical research program, followed by questions to elicit students’ perceived facilitators and barriers to research participation (e.g., What did you find difficult about starting or getting involved with research? What factors interest you the most about research?), and asked students to consider desired features of a hypothetical research program (e.g., What resources would you need in order to participate in a program like this?). All the interviews were recorded and transcribed using a smooth verbatim protocol. Interviews lasted an average of 23 minutes. The research team held weekly debriefing sessions to assess whether new information learned in that week’s interviews added to our understanding.
We imported the completed transcripts into QSR’s NVivo software (Version 12) for analysis. Two authors used inductive and deductive thematic coding to identify themes present...
