Championing the Involvement of Practitioners in the Biochemistry Educational Research Process: A Phenomenological View of the Early Stages of Collaborative Action Research

The disparity between post-secondary STEM instruction and the practices suggested in education and cognitive research is not a novel issue. Despite evidence-based practices being available to practitioners, traditional lecture-based instruction continues to dominate higher STEM education. In this study, we discussed practitioner involvement in biochemistry education research as a potential means to address the gap between research and practice. We used phenomenology as a lens through which to view faculty experiences of participating in a team-based curricular redesign. We administered a concept inventory to examine undergraduate students’ understanding of key concepts and to identify misconceptions. We captured faculty perspectives and reflections on student data through semi-structured interviews, finding that faculty dissatisfaction with traditional practices were rooted in experiences from early on in their teaching careers. Their students demonstrated a lack of conceptual understanding, similar to findings of other studies in undergraduate biochemistry, and key misconceptions the student population held were identified. When examining students’ conceptual understanding data, the faculty gained new insights into where students struggle in the course that they would not have gained without participation in this project. This reinforced their desire to implement curricular change. These findings add to the available data on students’ conceptual understanding in biochemistry and suggest that shared assessments like concept inventories can unify instructors as they engage in team-based curricular reform.