Teaching Accurate Sex-related Biology: Approaches for More Socially Just Instruction

Current undergraduate biology education does not usually reflect what is known about the diversity of sex, reproduction, and sexual behavior across the diversity of life, nor does it commonly address the human-specific diversity of gender identity and sexual, romantic, and related orientations. Instead, research indicates many courses rely on oversimplifications and overgeneralizations of sex-related content, aligned with socially dominant narratives and norms. While these simplifications may seem like good starting points to facilitate learning, they can lead to multiple kinds of harm. These include creating confusion for students learning biology, limiting the questions biologists ask and how they interpret data, perpetuating scientific inaccuracies, and fostering public disbelief in more complex and accurate representations of sexual diversity. Moreover, for the increasing number of students whose lives do not align with these narratives, including those with queer genders and orientations, such oversimplifications in their courses can cause personal, interpersonal, and professional harm. In college, queer students are less likely to persist in STEM than their cisgender and heterosexual peers. In society, the broader impact of such oversimplifications gives credence to erroneous claims of "biological truth" being used to justify discriminatory laws and policies. Multiple groups of biology instructors, including some authors of this paper, have published recommendations for how to teach sex-related content in biology contexts more accurately and inclusively. However, putting these recommendations into practice can be challenging and there are few published examples of implementation. In this article we, a group of biology instructors and science education researchers who led a SICB 2026 education workshop on this topic, share how we have put these recommendations into practice in our own classrooms. We provide example activities, frameworks, and resources for readers to build from in their own teaching. Given that oversimplified biology is being invoked to strengthen harmful and discriminatory narratives in society, biologists have a heightened responsibility to teach contemporary and accurate sex-related content in their courses.