RCN-UBE Incubator: Creating a More inclusive Biology Curriculum

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To make biology education more inclusive for all students and improve biological literacy, this RCN will bring together an interdisciplinary team of scholars from across biology, biology education, and gender studies to address systemic gender inequities that may impact biology education. Multiple agencies interested in education are calling for the creation of a more inclusive biology. Yet, most of the work on inclusion has focused on pedagogical practice and not the biology curriculum itself. This is a lost opportunity, as research shows that the content that is taught can impact students’ learning. This network will be one of the first efforts in biology to expand education research into curriculum to increasing inclusionThis RCN-UBE incubator project will develop an inaugural interdisciplinary network of scholars from developmental biology, evolutionary biology, ecology, genetics, physiology, and gender studies focused on coordinating research and curriculum development on gender essentialism in biology. This effort will involve: 1) identifying topics in biology courses that potentially affect systemic gender inequities in biology education, 2) developing guidelines to help instructors create and assess the effectiveness of curricula teaching these topics; 3) collecting existing resources for developing curricula that impact systemic gender inequities in biology education; and 4) determining directions for future work. The network will be one of the first efforts in biology to expand education research in curriculum reform to increasing inclusion. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in "Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action" (http://visionandchange/finalreport).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.