National efforts to improve equitable teaching practices have led to an increase in research on the barriers to student participation and performance, as well as solutions for overcoming these barriers. This report summarizes the conclusions of a meeting exploring our understanding of how these practices differ among institutions and geographic locations.

Findings presented here demonstrate that institutional context plays an important role in the mechanisms underlying performance gaps in undergraduate biology and may affect how social psychological interventions impact performance across different learning environments.

A national survey of biology instructors shows that instructors view the primary goal of science education as “understanding the world,” yet instructors hesitate to incorporate societally relevant content. This study addresses how an ideological awareness curriculum may bridge this gap and how instructor values and hesitancies affect teaching practices.

We investigated patterns of gender-based gaps in biology and chemistry through meta-analysis, reviewing data collected in 169 undergraduate biology courses. While we did not detect a significant gender gap in performance across all studies and unpublished data, we identified several factors that moderated performance differences.