Abstract
The need to make higher education curricula gender-inclusive is increasingly pressing as student cohorts diversify. We adopted a student-staff partnership approach to design, integrate, and evaluate a module that taught first-year science students the difference between biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation in the context of genetics concepts at an Australian university. This module aimed to break the binary in misconceptions of both sex and gender, emphasising that both exist on separate spectra. Data triangulation was used to evaluate students’ attitudes towards the module and their learning of module concepts. Students’ attitudes were positive overall, and evaluation of students’ learning indicated that the majority of students understood and retained key concepts, while also identifying common misconceptions. Perhaps the most important finding was that students who identified as belonging to a minority group had significantly more positive attitudes towards the module than non-minority students. This finding supports previous research that has found inclusive curricula have greater benefit for students from minority backgrounds, indicating the importance of making such curriculum enhancements. Our results speak to both the co-creation process and students’ learning outcomes, providing valuable insights for practitioners both within science and beyond.
Highlights
Felten et al (2013, 63) argued: “Inclusive engagement has tremendous potential to enhance student and faculty learning, to deepen scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) initiatives, and to help redress the exclusionary practices that too often occur in higher education.” This is the aspiration to which our study responds, in the process, and the output of our initiative, which integrated diverse conceptions of gender and sex into undergraduate science curricula
We undertook this process with the aim of redressing exclusionary curricula that wrongly perpetuate outdated notions of binarised sex and gender in biology classrooms—a problem brought to our attention initially by our student partner in this initiative who described
In 2019, a total of ~27,000 undergraduate students were enrolled at University of Technology Sydney (UTS), ~13 percent (3,600) of whom were enrolled within the faculty of science
Summary
Felten et al (2013, 63) argued: “Inclusive engagement has tremendous potential to enhance student and faculty learning, to deepen scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) initiatives, and to help redress the exclusionary practices that too often occur in higher education.” This is the aspiration to which our study responds, in the process, and the output of our initiative, which integrated diverse conceptions of gender and sex into undergraduate science curricula. Felten et al (2013, 63) argued: “Inclusive engagement has tremendous potential to enhance student and faculty learning, to deepen scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) initiatives, and to help redress the exclusionary practices that too often occur in higher education.”. This is the aspiration to which our study responds, in the process, and the output of our initiative, which integrated diverse conceptions of gender and sex into undergraduate science curricula. LGBTQ+ people should never be expected to advocate alone, for their own rights, while struggling with institutionalised discrimination and social ostracism. It will be easier for them to go on and advocate for themselves in the future
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