Two decades later, the Vision and Change document, based on input from over 500 biologists and science education specialists dedicated to вЂњtransformingвЂќ college science education, warned that textbooks can in fact be detrimental to the educational experience, stating that вЂњFaculty need to look beyond existing textbooks for course resources since strict adherence to texts can impede reform. Textbooks should also describe the nature of experimentationвЂќ (33, p. Textbooks should explicitly convey to students that the information presented is the result of experimentation and that understanding is constantly being refined and is subject to change as new experiments are conducted. In the 1990 National Research Council publication вЂњFulfilling the Promise: Biology Education in the NationвЂ™s SchoolsвЂќ, one of seven вЂњkey needsвЂќ for textbook revision was: вЂњRepresentation of biology as an experimental subject. Improvement of the textbooks used in biology courses has been on the agenda of science reformers for decades. Because many instructors of such courses rely heavily on the organization and content of their textbooks, textbooks likely also play a role. It is likely that introductory courses that are taught without engaging students in creative thinking contribute to their disengagement from biology. Few students taught in traditional ways develop a robust understanding of the nature of science ( 41, 32). In traditional Biology classrooms, undergraduates rarely participate in cognitive activities typical of working scientists, such as debating ideas, models or interpretations ( 11, 40). A common theme emerging from these analyses is that students taught science in traditional ways neither achieve deep understanding of content ( 11), nor develop an overall sense of вЂњhow science worksвЂќ ( 8, 50). Many reforms have centered on changes in classroom practice because, while research science methods have changed dramatically in the last three decades, science teaching methods have not kept pace ( 3, 5, 38, 20, 34, 17, 43). Decades of reports written by science education reformers urge increased emphasis on scientific thinking and the processes by which scientific understanding is constructed ( 3, 33вЂ“ 37). 5) and integrated throughout an undergraduate Biology program. The recent Vision and Change document suggests that вЂњthe scientific process should be introduced to students early in their studiesвЂќ (4, p. Science educators have noted that college students learn optimally when they вЂњconstruct meanings rather than just receiving themвЂќ ( 15). The National Science Education Standards (NSES) Guiding Principles for Teaching of Science states that вЂњeducation should reflect the way science is done,вЂќ and the NSES Science Teaching Guiding Principle 2 asserts: вЂњstudents learn best by active participation in the learning processвЂќ ( 54). Students in such courses do not appear to be experiencing science teaching as recommended in numerous reports from blue-ribbon education panels ( 20, 33вЂ“ 35). Commonly cited reasons include: feeling overwhelmed by information, thinking that the field is not as interesting as it initially appeared, and being stressed by the intense competition with classmates for grades ( 52, 53, 14). Many academically prepared students who initially have a high interest in the sciences switch to non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) majors after taking an introductory course. We suggest that by increasing significantly the illustration of scientific investigations, textbooks could support undergraduatesвЂ™ early interest in biology, stimulate the development of design and analytical skills, and inspire some students to participate in investigations of their own. Devoting such a small percentage of figures to the processes by which discoveries are made discourages an emphasis on scientific thinking. On average, multistep scientific investigations were presented in fewer than 5% of the hundreds of figures in each book. To investigate this possibility, we examined figures in six Introductory Biology textbooks published in 2008. Our hypothesis was that introductory biology books devote relatively few figures to illustration of the design and interpretation of experiments or field studies, thereby de-emphasizing the scientific process. Introductory courses that fail to engage students or spark their curiosity by emphasizing the open-ended and creative nature of biological investigation and discovery could contribute to student detachment from the field. Attrition of undergraduates from Biology majors is a long-standing problem.

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