An unwillingness to consider empirical evidence that contradicts one’s desired conclusion, or science denial, is an enormous barrier to producing an informed citizenry. This essay explores literature on conceptual change and motivation to put forth fresh ideas on how curricula can foster science acceptance, or the willingness to engage in critical evaluation of evidence even when it holds potential to contradict one’s preferred conclusion. Drawing from motivated reasoning and self-determination theories, this essay builds a theoretical model of how negative emotions, thwarting of basic psychological needs, and the backfire effect interact to undermine critical evaluation of evidence, leading to science denial. The model guides the proposal of several design principles for creating instruction that is likely to foster science acceptance, and puts forth the evidence-laden narrative as an exemplar. This essay calls for instructional methods that facilitate motivation toward accuracy goals by fulfilling basic psychological needs as students engage in accuracy-oriented reasoning while evaluating evidence. The conclusion suggests further lines of research that might improve our understanding of science denial and how it can be confronted in the classroom.

In this article, we explore culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) to work toward alleviating persistent underrepresentation in STEM fields of oppressed minorities. We argue that biology instructors can practice agency, or the capacity to act in ways that undermine opportunity gaps that lead to underrepresentation, by developing themselves into culturally relevant pedagogues who are committed to underrepresented minority (URM) students' learning and career success, who demonstrate cultural competence, and who develop a sociopolitical consciousness regarding the culturally laden nature of their discipline. We then explore Gregor Mendel's story to demonstrate the culturally laden nature of the history of science as well as the nature of our current curricular canon. The article concludes with a postulated alternative method to genetics education in a general biology course that reflects the culturally laden nature of our genetics knowledge, as well as our current understanding of inheritance.

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Integrating the use of large datasets into our teaching provides critical and unique opportunities to build students' skills and conceptual knowledge. Here, we discuss the core components needed to develop effective activities based on large datasets, which align with the 5E learning cycle. Data-based activities should be structured around a relevant question, use authentic publicly accessible data, be scaffolded to include choice, and involve discussion of the results.It is important that the software that is used to manipulate, analyze and/or visualize the data is accessible for students. There are a range of strategies to reduce the barriers of working with large datasets through pre-organizing and pre-scripting code for analyses, using online cloud-based versions of software, and reducing opportunities for error in syntax. Resources exist for learning open-source software (e.g., Data Carpentry) as well as for support and professional development in teaching with large datasets (Project EDDIE).