Guiding others through authentic scientific research outside of PhD programs has been practiced for decades in specialized secondary schools, undergraduate research programs, and independent settings. These practitioners work in the middle, between the classroom science teacher and the PhD advisor, guiding learners with aptitude or serious interest. Sport and music have dedicated professions for this middle position (the school-team coach and the school band director); research does not. This paper names that missing profession the Research Guide: the practitioner who develops another person's capacity to do research, from framing a question to communicating findings. Hundreds of thousands of middle and high school students already pursue authentic research each year, even more college undergraduates participate in research with a faculty member, and millions of adults engage in citizen science. In current practice, the programs that serve this middle group mostly default to a simplified version of the PhD apprenticeship model structured around one mentor with a few students at a time, without systematic training; they overwhelmingly frame research as the hypothetico-deductive cycle alone. The role calls for cognitive apprenticeship, a pedagogical approach in which an expert's tacit moves on open-ended problems are made visible and scaffolded, then faded as the learner develops, while the research outcomes themselves remain unpredictable. It spans multiple modes of inquiry (not only the hypothetico-deductive cycle) and demands a combination that no existing training program produces: pedagogy, research methodology, developmental assessment, risk and productive struggle management, domain flexibility, and community building. Together these demands warrant a dedicated profession: a named role, a training pathway, a career ladder, hiring standards, and institutional recognition.

翻译：在博士项目之外引导他人进行真实的科学研究，已在专业中学、本科生研究项目及独立环境中实践数十年。这些从业者处于课堂教学师与博士生导师之间的中间地带，指导具有天赋或浓厚兴趣的学习者。体育和音乐领域为这一中间位置设有专门职业（校队教练与校乐队指挥），而科学研究领域尚无。本文将该缺失的职业命名为"研究导师"：培养他人进行研究能力的实践者，涵盖从提出问题到交流成果的全过程。每年已有数十万初高中生开展真实研究，更多本科生参与导师制研究项目，数百万成人投身公民科学。在现行实践中，服务于这一中间群体的项目大多沿用简化的博士学徒模式，即以单导师指导少数学生为基本结构，缺乏系统培训；它们几乎将研究仅界定为假说-演绎循环。这一角色需要认知学徒制——一种教学法方法，使专家在开放式问题中的隐性操作显性化并搭建支架，随着学习者发展逐步撤离，而研究结果本身保持不可预测性。它涵盖多种探究模式（不仅限于假说-演绎循环），并需要现有培训项目无法培养的复合能力：教学法、研究方法论、发展性评估、风险与建设性挣扎管理、领域灵活性及社群构建。这些需求共同构成建立专门职业的必要条件：明确的角色名称、培训路径、职业阶梯、聘用标准与机构认可。