A Call for Data-Driven Networks to Address Equity in the Context of Undergraduate Biology

Abstract

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.

Meta-analysis of Gender Performance Gaps in Undergraduate Natural Science Courses

“…, 2013 ), group discussions ( Miller and Tanner, 2015 ), case studies ( Allen and Tanner, 2005 ; Miller and Tanner, 2015 ), and flipped classrooms ( Tucker, 2012 ; van Vliet et al. , 2015 ; Rahman and Lewis, 2020 ), among others, our results add urgency to the need to move beyond coarse categorizations of active learning to more fine-grained work, as it clearly matters to marginalized groups ( Thompson et al. , 2020 ).…”

“…It is used to describe a wide variety of different instructional practices that are infrequently detailed in scholarly publications (Driessen et al, 2020). Although some studies have assessed the effect of specific strategies, such as audience response questions (Caldwell, 2007;Smith et al, 2009;Knight et al, 2013), group discussions (Miller and Tanner, 2015), case studies (Allen and Tanner, 2005;Miller and Tanner, 2015), and flipped classrooms (Tucker, 2012;van Vliet et al, 2015;Rahman and Lewis, 2020), among others, our results add urgency to the need to move beyond coarse categorizations of active learning to more fine-grained work, as it clearly matters to marginalized groups (Thompson et al, 2020). Our research was limited by the publication or instructor descriptions of each course.…”

“…We note that class size was not calculated based on sample size in these cases; for aggregated data, class size was either missing, or we used average class size. Additionally, we collected course grades and descriptions of 80 individual courses from institutions across the United States in conjunction with the Equity and Diversity in Undergraduate STEM Research Coordination Network (i.e., unpublished data; Thompson et al, 2020). These data were collected during the course of normal academic classes, with the intention of using them in education research studies that focus on different aspects of equity.…”

Inclusive Instructional Practices: Course Design, Implementation, and Discourse

“…Detailed descriptions will power robust metareviews of active learning components that are inclusive. Fourth, there is a need to better understand the contextual factors that influence inclusiveness of instructional practices by testing them across disciplinary and institutional contexts (Kanim and Cid, 2020;Thompson et al, 2020). To achieve this requires expanding the pool of research subjects beyond students at selective, research-intensive universities, which have dominated contemporary DBER studies.…”

Context Matters: Social Psychological Factors That Underlie Academic Performance across Seven Institutions

“…Though important to our understanding of student learning, the majority of current research into student experiences in introductory biology takes place at large, predominantly White institutions, such as public, 4-year PhD- and master’s degree–granting research-intensive universities (hereafter, selective institutions; Schinske et al. , 2017 ; Thompson et al. , 2020 ).…”