The illusion of inclusion: structural and methodological gaps in biology education research

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.