The need for inclusive and equitable approaches to teaching and learning is a persistent theme in recent literature. In spite of relatively widespread agreement about this objective, inclusion remains elusive, and opinions about how best to achieve it proliferate. To provide a landscape view of the field and offer recommendations for research and practice, this article provides a focussed review of literature connected to inclusive teaching and learning published since 2010. Drawing from a framework advanced by Hockings (2010), we synthesize key findings from recent scholarship and argue for the value of a whole-of-institution approach that considers the activities and interactions of educational actors operating at different institutional levels. We also extend this argument to consider the need for greater attention to factors that move beyond the individual institution and to advocate for further international research in particular.

Students entering tertiary studies possess a diverse range of prior experiences in their academic preparation for tertiary chemistry so academics need tools to enable them to respond to issues in diversity in conceptual models possessed by entering students. Concept inventories can be used to provide formative feedback to help students identify concepts that they need to address to improve construction of subsequent understanding enabling their learning.Modular, formative learning activities that can be administered inside or outside of class in first year chemistry courses have been developed. These activities address key missing and mis-conceptions possessed by incoming student. Engagement in these learning activities by students and academics will help shift the culture of diagnostic and formative assessment within the tertiary context and address issues around the secondary/tertiary transition. This diagnostic/intervention framework is currently being trialed across five Australian tertiary institutions encompassing a large heterogeneous sample of students.

The technological innovations and changing learning environments are influencing student engagement more than ever before. These changing learning environments are affecting the constructs of student behavioural engagement in the online environment and require scrutiny to determine how to facilitate better student learning outcomes. Specifically, the recent literature is lacking in providing insights into how students engage and interact with online content in the self-regulated environment, considering the absence of direct teacher support. This paper investigates how instructional design, informed by the factors relating to behavioural engagement, can influence the student-content interaction process within the fabric of inquiry-based learning activities. Two online learning modules on introductory science topics were developed to facilitate students’ independent study in an asynchronous online environment. The study revealed that students showed high commitment to engage and complete the tasks that required less manipulative, pro-active effort during the learning process. The findings also revealed that instructional guidance significantly improved the behavioural engagement for student groups with prior learning experience and technology skills. This study highlights several issues concerning student engagement in a self-directed online learning environment and offers possible suggestions for improvement. The findings might contribute to informing the practice of teachers and educators in developing online science modules applicable to inquiry-based learning.

Concept inventories have repeatedly demonstrated that students have innate beliefs about how the world works, that these beliefs play a dominant role in how students approach introductory courses, and that instruction which ignores these misconceptions does almost nothing to change beliefs. We explored students’ concepts about free energy and flow within metabolic pathways by in‐depth interviews with students in introductory chemistry classes before and after the topic of free energy was discussed and with students in biochemistry courses. The results indicate that students already come to introductory chemistry with misconceptions in place; there was little difference among responses for the three cohorts. The concepts that students found most difficult were 1) the difference between standard and actual free energy change, and 2) the lack of connection between catalysts and free energy change. Students were also unclear on the definition of standard conditions and had little understanding of how conditions in a living cell differ from standard chemical conditions. Our results suggest that biochemists might work with faculty teaching introductory chemistry to infuse some knowledge about living systems, and that those teaching biochemistry might put greater emphasis on thermodynamics early in the curriculum.