The Black Lives Matter movement and protests in Summer 2020 after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade, have prompted many educators and researchers to reflect upon racism in the spaces we occupy. As copies of “How to be an anti-racist” by Ibram X. Kendi flew off the shelves in bookstores, we at the Research for Inclusive STEM Education (RISE) center found ourselves wondering what an anti-racist biology curriculum might look like and what steps we could take to re-imagine the curriculum. In response, we organized a workshop in Fall 2020 where graduate students, instructors, faculty, instructional developers, and other staff members came together to begin to address this question. Here, we share some of the ideas that emerged from those discussions in the hopes that we can continue the dialogue on these critical issues.
The ways in which racism exists in biology curricula and classrooms is also about what is being left out of our lectures and classroom discussions. Conversations about how scientific disciplines have historically been complicit in white supremacy and colonialism are lacking in most undergraduate biology classrooms. The foundational methods for research, especially statistics, were developed to look for racial differences, yet this is often not addressed. Refusal or inability to acknowledge this history by instead painting science as a truly objective exercise upholds white supremacist ideas of the superiority of western civilization and science. Feminist science studies scholars have written extensively about the fallacy of the idea of objectivity or neutrality in science. Because science is essentially a social enterprise done by humans whose perspectives are shaped by their lived experiences, complete objectivity is impossible. Moreover, the focus on “purely objective” approaches in a society where whiteness is the norm affords white perspectives the screen of objectivity and presents all other perspectives as subjective and therefore not as valuable. It also can force a narrative of what “professionalism” in science is, thereby asking individuals to conform or assimilate to one specific narrative of “white culture” for the sake of acceptance or advancement.
Another way in which racism exists in biology classrooms is in our course practices and policies. Imparting expectations from our own lived experience upon others and assuming that all students have similar educational backgrounds to us can be damaging to students who may have different experiences shaped by race, ethnicity, class, and other dimensions of power/oppression systems in our society. Use of just one kind of teaching (e.g. lecture only) or one assessment method (e.g. high stakes exams only) can exacerbate racial inequities in our classroom and ultimately in who is retained in science, and enforces the flawed concept of unidirectional instruction and knowledge. Assessment practices such as curving of grades promotes a more competitive instead of collaborative environment, disadvantaging students that come from cultures that place more value on teamwork and iteration.
Finally, it is important to ask who is allowed to be in our classrooms and our universities? Does the community in our department reflect the university as a whole or the broader community that surrounds the university? Currently, the ASU School of Life Sciences has much less BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) representation compared to the population in the Phoenix metropolitan area in the student, staff, or faculty populations, exacerbating feelings of underrepresentation and unwelcomeness for students. How can we encourage our BIPOC students to aspire to be scientists and leaders when there are no faculty members that look like them or that students feel can relate to them?
An anti-racist biology curriculum should incorporate indigenous knowledge and the work done by indigenous scholars across the world instead of presenting western science as the only way of knowing. Science should be presented as a collaborative social endeavor and not the works of isolated “geniuses”. Students should see a wide diversity among scientists included in the curriculum.
In an ideal world, instructors will be able to use culturally relevant pedagogy in their classrooms (Ladson-Billings 1995). Culturally relevant pedagogy is committed to collective empowerment and has three main components: academic success, development or maintenance of cultural competence, and development of critical consciousness that allows them to critique the status quo of the social order. Helping students succeed academically involves providing students multiple ways to demonstrate their learning, instead of just high stakes, timed multiple-choice exams. And to develop cultural competence, it is important to value the funds of knowledge (i.e. collections of knowledge based in cultural practices) that students bring into the classroom so that all students will feel empowered to speak about their experiences in any and all biology classrooms. Students will develop critical consciousness when they are educated and actively encouraged to learn how to recognize and address racial biases within their own lives and learn to advocate and support their peers.
Course structure and course policies need to be carefully examined from an equity lens to make sure they do not disproportionately negatively affect BIPOC students.
Lastly, in an ideal world, the composition of graduate students, staff, and faculty in the biology department reflects the composition of students in the biology department and, more broadly, of people in the place (i.e. city or state) the department or university occupies.
What are some ways in which racism exists in biology curricula and classrooms?
In order to dismantle racism in institutional structures, we first need to examine the ways in which racism currently exists in our curricula and our undergraduate classrooms. There are some fairly obvious examples, such as the overwhelming number of white men scientists that students are introduced to early in the biology curriculum (e.g. in textbooks or in lectures that provide a historical account of who discovered something). There are also some more subtle ways in which people are represented, including the language used in our exam questions and case studies (e.g. what names are used for “patients” vs “doctors”); in other words, who is depicted as knowledgeable or “the expert” and who is not.The ways in which racism exists in biology curricula and classrooms is also about what is being left out of our lectures and classroom discussions. Conversations about how scientific disciplines have historically been complicit in white supremacy and colonialism are lacking in most undergraduate biology classrooms. The foundational methods for research, especially statistics, were developed to look for racial differences, yet this is often not addressed. Refusal or inability to acknowledge this history by instead painting science as a truly objective exercise upholds white supremacist ideas of the superiority of western civilization and science. Feminist science studies scholars have written extensively about the fallacy of the idea of objectivity or neutrality in science. Because science is essentially a social enterprise done by humans whose perspectives are shaped by their lived experiences, complete objectivity is impossible. Moreover, the focus on “purely objective” approaches in a society where whiteness is the norm affords white perspectives the screen of objectivity and presents all other perspectives as subjective and therefore not as valuable. It also can force a narrative of what “professionalism” in science is, thereby asking individuals to conform or assimilate to one specific narrative of “white culture” for the sake of acceptance or advancement.
Another way in which racism exists in biology classrooms is in our course practices and policies. Imparting expectations from our own lived experience upon others and assuming that all students have similar educational backgrounds to us can be damaging to students who may have different experiences shaped by race, ethnicity, class, and other dimensions of power/oppression systems in our society. Use of just one kind of teaching (e.g. lecture only) or one assessment method (e.g. high stakes exams only) can exacerbate racial inequities in our classroom and ultimately in who is retained in science, and enforces the flawed concept of unidirectional instruction and knowledge. Assessment practices such as curving of grades promotes a more competitive instead of collaborative environment, disadvantaging students that come from cultures that place more value on teamwork and iteration.
Finally, it is important to ask who is allowed to be in our classrooms and our universities? Does the community in our department reflect the university as a whole or the broader community that surrounds the university? Currently, the ASU School of Life Sciences has much less BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) representation compared to the population in the Phoenix metropolitan area in the student, staff, or faculty populations, exacerbating feelings of underrepresentation and unwelcomeness for students. How can we encourage our BIPOC students to aspire to be scientists and leaders when there are no faculty members that look like them or that students feel can relate to them?
What an anti-racist biology curriculum would look like in an ideal world?
In an ideal world, instructors will be able to use culturally relevant pedagogy in their classrooms (Ladson-Billings 1995). Culturally relevant pedagogy is committed to collective empowerment and has three main components: academic success, development or maintenance of cultural competence, and development of critical consciousness that allows them to critique the status quo of the social order. Helping students succeed academically involves providing students multiple ways to demonstrate their learning, instead of just high stakes, timed multiple-choice exams. And to develop cultural competence, it is important to value the funds of knowledge (i.e. collections of knowledge based in cultural practices) that students bring into the classroom so that all students will feel empowered to speak about their experiences in any and all biology classrooms. Students will develop critical consciousness when they are educated and actively encouraged to learn how to recognize and address racial biases within their own lives and learn to advocate and support their peers.
Course structure and course policies need to be carefully examined from an equity lens to make sure they do not disproportionately negatively affect BIPOC students.
Lastly, in an ideal world, the composition of graduate students, staff, and faculty in the biology department reflects the composition of students in the biology department and, more broadly, of people in the place (i.e. city or state) the department or university occupies.
What are some actionable next steps we can take to materialize the re-imagined curriculum?
First and foremost, educators need to commit to the work of lifelong learning that anti-racism requires. Undoing centuries of institutional racism that is woven into the fabric of our society and unlearning our biases and assumptions demands our time and effort. It requires us to reflect on our own positionality in society and how the privileges associated with our identities shape our perspectives. Next, we need to start working on the incorporation of indigenous knowledge into our courses. It will take sustained effort to develop a truly multicultural science curriculum, but we can start by openly acknowledging to students that western science is only one of many ways of knowing the world and the dominance of western science is linked to the history of western colonialism and imperialism. We can also highlight the diversity of scientists doing research using resources such as Scientist Spotlights (https://scientistspotlights.org/). Additionally, we can teach using student-centered active learning, and vary the instructional and assessment methods we use in the classroom. Building departmental support for instructional design and pedagogy is critical in these efforts. As instructors, it is important for us to get to know our students and the funds of knowledge they bring into the classroom and letting our students get to know us. We can also start examining our course policies to ask who might benefit most and who might be harmed or excluded by our current policies and practices.
Finally, for those of us that are in positions of power regarding student admission and faculty hiring, as well as tenure and promotion practices, we can start by examining and revamping these processes to include requirements for the direct advancement of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. A recent article by Schell et al. (2020) highlights the necessity of promoting black excellence within the ecological and evolutionary disciplines, and calls for “radical revisions to evaluation metrics also need to hold non-Black colleagues accountable for anti-racist work. Integration of outreach and engagement efforts should be tantamount to publication record on a CV.”
Re-imagining our biology curriculum and enacting change is challenging, but must be done. As Angela Davis said, “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
Schell, C. J., Guy, C., Shelton, D. S., Campbell-Staton, S. C., Sealey, B. A., Lee, D. N., & Harris, N. C. (2020). Recreating Wakanda by promoting Black excellence in ecology and evolution. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4(10), 1285-1287. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1266-7
Post Authors: K. Supriya, Erika Nadile, Anthony Basile, Joshua Caulkins, Katie C. Surrey, Emily Webb
K. Supriya is a postdoctoral researcher in Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research Lab at ASU and facilitated the workshop on developing an anti-racist curriculum that led to this article.
Erika Nadile is a second-year PhD student in Sara Brownell's Biology Education Research Lab at ASU interested in improving equity and inclusion in the undergraduate biology classroom and helped coordinate all of the “Rising up for racial justice” programming in Fall 2020.
Anthony Basile is a fourth-year evolutionary biology PhD candidate who studies evolutionary medicine and nutrition science.
Joshua Caulkins is Assistant Director for Undergraduate Programs and the Director of the BioSpine Initiative within the School of Life Sciences at ASU.
Katie C. Surrey is a PhD student on the 4E track of the Biology and Society Program program at ASU. Her research focuses on conservation issues surrounding human-wildlife interactions, and the intersections between human and animal behavior.
Emily Webb is a PhD Candidate at Arizona State University studying bird physiology as well as biology education.
Re-imagining our biology curriculum and enacting change is challenging, but must be done. As Angela Davis said, “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
Citations
Ladson‐Billings, G. (1995). But that's just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 34(3), 159-165. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00405849509543675Schell, C. J., Guy, C., Shelton, D. S., Campbell-Staton, S. C., Sealey, B. A., Lee, D. N., & Harris, N. C. (2020). Recreating Wakanda by promoting Black excellence in ecology and evolution. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4(10), 1285-1287. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1266-7
Post Authors: K. Supriya, Erika Nadile, Anthony Basile, Joshua Caulkins, Katie C. Surrey, Emily Webb
K. Supriya is a postdoctoral researcher in Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research Lab at ASU and facilitated the workshop on developing an anti-racist curriculum that led to this article.
Erika Nadile is a second-year PhD student in Sara Brownell's Biology Education Research Lab at ASU interested in improving equity and inclusion in the undergraduate biology classroom and helped coordinate all of the “Rising up for racial justice” programming in Fall 2020.
Anthony Basile is a fourth-year evolutionary biology PhD candidate who studies evolutionary medicine and nutrition science.
Joshua Caulkins is Assistant Director for Undergraduate Programs and the Director of the BioSpine Initiative within the School of Life Sciences at ASU.
Katie C. Surrey is a PhD student on the 4E track of the Biology and Society Program program at ASU. Her research focuses on conservation issues surrounding human-wildlife interactions, and the intersections between human and animal behavior.
Emily Webb is a PhD Candidate at Arizona State University studying bird physiology as well as biology education.
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