Content area
Abstract
This interpretive study describes and analyzes how current reforms in undergraduate biology education come to life and consequence in the classroom. The reforms call for fewer "dull" lectures and more "active learning," but few studies have described and analyzed the actions of students and professors in either traditional or reform classrooms or the assumptions upon which the reforms or standard practices are based. I focus on the participation structures in large, introductory courses to document the complex, contingent relationships between curricular forms and participant actions. Students are not simply "passive" during lectures or "active" during small-group activities, and professors do not methodologically implement a "relevant," "inquiry-based" curriculum. Rather, all are engaged in continuous negotiations over their reciprocal prerogatives and obligations in shifting participation structures. An analysis of ongoing negotiations demonstrates how participants work to maintain a classroom "treaty of avoidance"—an implicit agreement that reduces threats posed by the institutional context, while simultaneously undermining educational purposes. Understanding curriculum as a process of negotiation rather than as a technical-rational tool that can "fix" undergraduate education is a conceptual shift upon which better curriculum development and implementation depend.
