Reflections on Undergraduate Science Experiences: A Push to Science Teaching

Abstract

Emerging from a sharing stories of leaving science majors fields and choosing to teach instead of pursuing post-grad science opportunities, this chapter uses autoethnography to reflect on the common themes we experienced that helped us make sense of this transition from science to science education. Autoethnography allowed us to reflect and highlight key events and common themes to explain our desire to stay within science, but not practice science through science vocations. Having completed undergraduate science degree programs while belonging to traditionally underrepresented groups in science, our experiences provide insight and alternative perspectives as to underrepresentation in science professions. We identified discrimination, both within science classes, and within other university classes, as a factor in questioning and reaffirmation our views of self as scientists. Additionally, our experience was of lacking visible pathways to enact social agency in science in ways to solve problems, like the discrimination felt, and instead we were pulled to education as a direct means to addressing social issues. Our experiences with mentoring paradoxically helped us find this path, and persist within science, but did not help in ways to keep us in science professions. We end the chapter raising questions concerning the framing of success in science, based on our experiences.