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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1463992
This article is part of the Research Topic Utilization of Neuroscience Core Concepts to Guide Programs, Curricula, Courses, and Assessment in Diverse Institutional Contexts View all 3 articles

A case study of actual versus desired inclusion of community-derived core concepts into neuroscience courses in different disciplines at a large university

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States
  • 2 San Diego State University, San Diego, California, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Neuroscience is an inherently interdisciplinary and rapidly evolving field. While many universities have neuroscience or related majors, they are highly heterogeneous, and it is unclear how their content aligns with a recent proposal of what ideas make up the field of neuroscience. It is therefore important to document and assess the alignment of neuroscience curricula with core concepts in the field. Recently, a large effort by some members of the neuroscience education community described eight core concepts for undergraduate neuroscience curricula. In this paper, we focus primarily on courses in biology, cognitive science, and psychology at a large university, surveying the recent and current course instructors of these courses to ask them 1) to what extent these community-derived core concepts are incorporated into their classes and 2) to what extent these concepts should be incorporated into their classes. In addition, we map core concepts onto course syllabi. We identify core concepts that are not addressed in these courses and consider barriers to instructors' ability to align course content with core concepts, both within and across disciplines. In this effort, we provide an example for how departments can evaluate their alignment of major requirements with the neuroscience core concepts.

    Keywords: Neuroscience education, undergraduate education, Core concepts, Curriculum reform, neurobiology education, neuroscience curricula, Curricular alignment

    Received: 12 Jul 2024; Accepted: 02 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Maita, Owens and Juavinett. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ashley Juavinett, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, 92093, California, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.