For many students, textbooks serve to communicate imperative information about a specific topic. This is further emphasized by the visuals in these textbooks, which are meant to communicate information to students in an effort to clarify ideas and encourage interest. In many cases, textbooks are generally not representative of student population, which could affect student development in coursework. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the representation of BIPOC individuals in chemistry textbooks and analyze the possible effects of BIPOC student success in STEM courses. This research is expected to supplement published research studies through the analyzation of both open educational resources and publisher content. Chemistry textbooks were analyzed using different codes to classify visuals or portions of text by their different forms of representation. Through this research, it was determined that BIPOC historical figures in the textbooks were not representative of the population at the time the texts were written. A thorough review of these results further shows that the lack of BIPOC representation could have a negative impact on student success in STEM courses.

Investigating BIPOC representation in general chemistry textbooks

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.