The vast majority of instructors indicated that their institutions have no requirements for teaching either evolution or alternatives to evolution.
It was also noted that the majority of instructors indicated that they spent less than 5% of lecture and discussion time, if any, addressing ethical and social issues in class [ 15].
Both instructors used language that was consistent with a constructivist perspective of learning; the biology instructor often referred to students "constructing their own knowledge", and several times the engineering instructor indicated that he aimed to help students "develop knowledge structures".
The case includes evidence from a gun instructor indicating that Pistorius was familiar with South African laws that make it illegal to open fire on an intruder unless the shooter is in reasonable fear for his or her life.
However, comments from the Microbial Genetics (BSCI 412) instructor indicated that he did not assume prior knowledge for most of the topics that were reported to be instructed in the General Microbiology (see Table 4, Questions 4, 7, and 10).
Past surveys of STEM instructors indicate a number of specific barriers that hinder their use of active learning strategies (Shadle et al. 2017; Lund and Stains 2015 Dancy and Henderson 2012; Finelli, Daly, & Richardson 2014; Froyd, Borrego, Cutler, Henderson, & Prince 2013; Henderson and Dancy 2009; Prince, Borrego, Henderson, Cutler, & Froyd 2013).
Mentors, for their part, are trained as researchers, not writing or grammar instructors, and indicate that they find it burdensome and difficult to teach about writing and provide feedback on documents (Pagel et al., 2002; Kranov, 2009; Aitchison et al., 2012; Cameron et al., 2013).
Instructors indicate which courses may satisfy particular requirements.
A third subcategory of Instructor Talk that may influence student participation is Indicating That It Is Okay to Be Wrong or Disagree.
Table 3 depicts which instructors indicated use of each strategy.
