Human rights issues can be topics of conflict, resistance, and indifference; thus, these issues are seldom broached in traditional college STEM courses. In this article, I share process, content, and sources used to introduce college students to the biology of the singularity of race and the biology of sexual identity. One or two class meetings on…

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how much the science education community has yet to understand about myriad variables that impact accurately informed socioscientific issue decision-making. Toward that end, this study investigated 415 university biology students' COVID-19 behaviours and opinions regarding how COVID-19 mandates might be associated…

While science has profound social impacts, we often teach biology as removed from societally debated issues. Here, we address this gap in biology education through the implementation of novel materials that promote ideological awareness (IA). Using mixed-method analyses, we explore students' perceptions of the relationship between science and…

Like all SSI, the COVID-19 pandemic requires decisions that are contentious, involve scientific thinking, and vary across social groups. This investigation determined how perceptions about COVID-19 science and sociocultural membership associate with 557 university biology students': (1) COVID-19 behaviors after stay-at-home orders and (2) support…

Conceptual understanding and reasoning of nonscience major students enrolled in a course on biotechnology were evaluated before and after instruction. The instrument for analysis of student understanding was the Biotechnology Instrument for Knowledge Elicitation (BIKE). The BIKE targets 11 key concepts, as determined by experts in the field. A…

This article describes the development of a model for an optional, research-based course that bridges two existing, traditionally separate, introductory science courses. This research course provided freedom for students to design and implement new experiments on the basis of technical foundations built from enrollment in separate introductory…

Science educators often teach topics that are largely resolved in the scientific community yet remain controversial in broader society. In such cases, students may perceive the teacher as biased. We present two exercises that foster more objective learning about the scientific underpinnings of socially controversial topics. The first exercise…

Reports on the attitude variations between students who had direct experiences with another living thing and those who did not. All students who had direct experiences with another living thing showed a higher mean value in all the attitude categories that showed more concern for another species. Confirms the importance of students having direct…

The effectiveness of an issues-based approach to nonmajors biology was investigated. The integration of online critical-thinking exercises and in-class discussions of science-related issues did not improve exam scores. However, students did indicate that the discussions enhanced their appreciation of science and stimulated them to think more…