Chapter 13

Apprenticeship in microbiology

Based on participant observation of work in a big US university’s molecular biology department, I discuss how students are guided towards becoming competent scientists. On joining a closely knit community of research and practice, the student has to adapt to an overwhelming environment of techniques, parlance, habits and social mores, while absorbing a massive scientific and practical input. In the apprentice system’s,‘learning by doing’, the mentor-mentee relation and the students’ interactions between themselves and with their studied objects (here, highly contagious bacteria) are more important than verbal teaching; but they also add pressure to the learning process. By adapting to this environment (which includes many smaller adaptive interactions), the apprentices create a solid foundation for their future teaching, research, and practice.