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The Peacock In The Room: Confronting The Hidden Curriculum Of Androcentrism And Gender Bias In Undergraduate Biology Education., Sarah Hamilton Spaulding

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation exposes one manifestation of the hidden curriculum of gender bias in the biological academe and explores the impacts of implicit essentialist perspectives on biology curricula and student understanding of an important evolutionary concept. Chapter one introduces the concept of gender essentialism and its relationship to the hidden curriculum of gender bias. I conclude the introductory chapter by reviewing tenets from queer curriculum theory and suggesting that applications of the theory may provide educators with the pedagogical tools required to counter implicit essentialist perspectives. Chapter two describes a textbook image analysis informed by previous textbook analyses to examine the …