Persistent gaps in student retention from different ethnic groups, and a diversifying undergraduate student body has demanded from practitioners a different pedagogy. Following a Freirean model, inclusive teaching is predicated on the development of an authentic, substantive, dialoguing relationship between instructor and student. It is within this space of trust that unfettered learning occurs. Practitioners trained in the filtration model sometimes struggle to adjust their mindsets and practice to more explicitly incorporate the psychology of an engaging, inclusive classroom. At large, research institutions, high enrollment STEM courses can be places where exclusive climates fester, especially if historically disenfranchised identities are numerical minorities. Here, we present the results of five years of exploring the impacts of a section of a biology course, whose instructions was transformed to be inclusive. We explored both the effects on academic performance at the end of the course, as well as student performances in future STEM classrooms. Our exploration addresses the question of potential impacts of inclusive instruction. Using a linear regression model, we explored the role that ethnicity, first generation status, high school GPA, gender, and SAT score has on final course grades. We also compared the performances of students who enrolled in sections of introductory biology that used inclusive practices to those who didn’t in the biology courses all students took at the 200 and 300 levels.
Results/Conclusions
High school GPA and SAT score were the strongest predictors of academic performance for all sections of biology including the inclusively structured section. However, in the inclusively structured section, these two variables were 50% less likely to be predictive of final grade when compared to the other conventionally taught sections. This reduced likelihood was the case in spite of the fact that students enrolling in the inclusively designed course on average has lower high school GPAs. Students who took biology in the inclusively designed section of biology I and II averaged a B+ in their upper division courses while students who didn’t averaged a C in those same courses. The results here speak volumes for the power of inclusively designed courses to be a force of equity, both during the semester in question, but also for the persistence and future academic success of all students in the discipline.