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ABSTRACT This integrative literature review analyzes the corpus of biology education research published in the main biology education journals of major professional societies. The goal of this analysis is to determine which approaches (including groups of focus, research methods, and settings/perspectives) from social science fields (i.e., psychology, sociology, and anthropology) are utilized in published peer-reviewed biology education research relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Scoping how social science approaches are used in this area is important to understanding whether biology education research could benefit from complementary approaches that might advance praxis. This analysis found that research informing the biology education community draws heavily from psychological perspectives that are overwhelmingly not disaggregated (78% of articles identifying a group lumped the participant together), are by far more quantitative (58% used survey, 26% grades, 20% school data) than qualitative (17% used interview, 10% observation), and did not adopt structural approaches (72%). The addition of missing contributions from social science is critical to advancing interventions to broaden STEM participation, given that merging paradigms can offer more robust, multi-level explanations for observed phenomena. This has important implications for education, biology education, biology education research, social science, and research in related STEM fields. 

ABSTRACT Visual representations in molecular biology tend to follow a set of shared conventions for using certain shapes and symbols to convey information about the size and structure of nucleotides, genes, and chromosomes. Understanding how and why biologists use these conventions to represent DNA is a key part of visual literacy in molecular biology. Visual literacy, which is the ability to read and interpret visual representations, encompasses a set of skills that are necessary for biologists to effectively use models to communicate about molecular structures that cannot be directly observed. To gauge students’ visual literacy skills, we conducted semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students who had completed at least a year of biology courses. We asked students to draw and interpret figures of nucleotides, genes, and chromosomes, and we analyzed their drawings for adherence to conventions for representing scale and abstraction. We found that 77% of students made errors in representing scale, and 86% of students made errors in representing abstraction. We also observed that about half of the students in our sample used the conventional shapes and symbols to represent DNA in unconventional ways. These unconventional sketches may signal an incomplete understanding of the structure and function of DNA. Our findings indicate that students may need additional instructional support to interpret the conventions in common representations of DNA. We highlight opportunities for instructors to scaffold visual literacy skills into their teaching to help students better understand visual conventions for representing scale and abstraction in molecular biology. 

ABSTRACT The 2011 reportVision and Change: A Call to Action(V&C) resulted from a national effort to rethink biology curriculum.V&Coutlines core concepts and core competencies for biology undergraduates and promotes evidence-based pedagogy, undergraduate research, and inclusive practices. However, it is unclear how much biology educators know aboutV&Cand what motivates educators’ development of their teaching philosophy and practices. We leveraged the Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring (PALM) Network, a group that introduced evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) to instructors through mentoring, journal clubs, and a community of practice, to investigate how muchV&Chas influenced educator knowledge and motivation. Through focus groups, 16 mentors and 22 fellows were asked about their motivations to join PALM, familiarity withV&C, how they learned aboutV&C, and how PALM and/orV&Cshaped the development of their teaching philosophies and strategies. We found that the teaching philosophies and practices of these educators align strongly withV&Cprinciples.V&Cprovided expectancy (established value), while PALM contributed to greater instructor self-efficacy in EBIPs, overall resulting in reformed teaching philosophies and practices. This model highlights the importance of mentorship and community to successfully drive biology education reform.