PONE-D-24-22006

“It let me merge my love of teaching with research”: A qualitative investigation of the career pathways of biology education researchers

PLOS ONE

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*The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to concerns of potential participant identification. Data are available on request to the corresponding author only. We are not allowed to send the interview transcripts and survey results to a third party due to limitations with our institutional review board approval (Auburn IRB protocol no. 21-354 EX 2108).

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*We have thoroughly reviewed our reference list to ensure it is complete and correct. We have not cited any papers that have been retracted. To respond to some reviewer comments, we have added references. We disclose that clearly in our response to reviewers. Additionally, to meet PLOS One’s formatting requirements, we reformatted our references using the Vancouver citation style.

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1:

Summary

This study surveyed and interviewed discipline-based education researchers about their career trajectories. The values and interests, role of mentorship, and factors influencing their career trajectories provide valuable insight into DBER careers. The research team used the Social Influence Model and Social Cognitive Career Theory to develop a survey and interview questions to guide their work. The work draws from two frameworks and uses them to advance knowledge of the career influences of DBER scholars. The values and interests identified and contextual factors help support current and future DBER scholars.

The survey instrument was revised based on expert feedback, and the research team focused on establishing trustworthiness throughout. Thus, the researchers carefully interpreted survey data and invited members for follow up interviews. The methods used by the research team not only ensured the privacy and consent of participants, but also were designed helped elicit honest responses.

*We appreciate the reviewer’s thoughtful summary of our work, and we address all of their comments and suggestions below.

Lines 230-234: Did patterns or themes emerge from the research described by survey responses and their open-ended career trajectory responses?

*To address this comment, we added clarifying text to better explain how we assessed participant responses. It was not part of our research design to analyze the data for patterns or themes. For example, we did not use thematic analysis. Rather, it was our design to see how the constructs from the Social Cognitive Career Theory and the Social Influence Model (i.e., values, interests, and contextual factors) played out in these participants' career paths and decision-making. With this in mind, we focused on coding the data, which represent small units of information that represent values, interests, or contextual factors. Upon reading the reviewer’s comment we re-read our paper and noticed we used the word themes in our figure to talk about the values, interests, and contextual factors, and we now call these “constructs” both in the figure and in the text, so the word theme does not appear in our paper. Additionally this reviewer comment made us realize we needed to more accurately describe our coding process. This involved removing the Hsieh & Shannon (2005) citation and replacing it with Saldana’s (2015) description of first and second cycle qualitative coding. We now describe how we used in vivo coding for our first cycle of coding and focused coding for our second cycle coding, both for the survey analysis and the interview analysis (Lines 306-397).

Lines 450-478: In addition to the Gibbs and Griffin 2013 results, are there more recent survey findings from the NIH and National Academies? It would be useful to contrast the 2013 results with opinions during/after the pandemic.

*After reviewing the literature to respond to this comment, we found several relevant data sources, but none were exactly what we thought the reviewer was asking for nor did many of them address the code “making a difference” — aside from McGee & Bentley (2017) — which is where we discussed the Gibbs and Griffin (2013) study. With this in mind, we added text and the one relevant reference we found (McGee & Bentley, 2017) (Lines 504-510; 1320-1321). Additionally, we added text and references in the considerations section concerning the impacts of COVID on STEM undergraduate and graduate students and that we do not yet know how these have or have not (likely have) impacted their career paths (Lines 1111 - 1121; 1419-1424).

New References added:

Driessen, E., Beatty, A., Stokes, A., Wood, S., & Ballen, C. (2020). Learning principles of evolution during a crisis: An exploratory analysis of student barriers one week and one month into the COVID‐19 pandemic. Ecology and evolution, 10(22), 12431-12436.

McGee, E., & Bentley, L. (2017). The equity ethic: Black and Latinx college students reengineering their STEM careers toward justice. American Journal of Education, 124(1), 1-36.

Sifri, R. J., McLoughlin, E. A., Fors, B. P., & Salehi, S. (2022). Differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on female graduate students and postdocs in the chemical sciences. Journal of chemical education, 99(10), 3461-3470.

Line 1115: This could be an opportunity to change the role of professional societies and networks (SABER, PULSE, ASCB) to share educational research training and career paths with their members to reflect and improve.

*We totally agree! We added this thought to our considerations section as suggested (Lines 1146 - 1154).

Reviewer #2:

This is very important research in an under-researched area. Understanding the values, personal interests, and contextual factors that influence career paths in biology education research can help improve the field.

The authors must address the following:

The study design was not stated.

**To address this comment, we added text to the manuscript to identify our study design more clearly (Lines 132 - 134). Our study is an exploratory qualitative study in which we used qualitative methods (i.e., interviews and open-ended survey questions) to learn about the career motivations of people who pursued biology education research (i.e., biology education research faculty).

It is unclear if this is a mixed methods study; the authors mention open-ended surveys and follow-up interviews.

*To address this comment, we added text to the manuscript to identify our study design more clearly (Lines 132 - 134). Now it is clear that this is not a mixed-methods study. As stated above, our study is an exploratory qualitative study in which we used qualitative methods (i.e., interviews and open-ended survey questions) to learn about the career motivations of people who pursued biology education research (i.e., biology education research faculty).

While the recruitment methods are mentioned, the sampling technique is not clear.

*We add our sampling methods to the text, as well as the Whitehead and White

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