Embedding Anti-Racism as a Socio-Scientific Issue in Higher-Education Biology: A Mixed-Methods Needs Analysis and Instructional Design Recommendations for Preservice Teacher Education in Indonesia

Abstract

Background: Socio-scientific issues (SSI) have been widely recommended as a context-based approach to strengthen scientific literacy, argumentation, and reflective judgment in biology learning. However, anti-racism remains underrepresented as an explicit SSI theme in many higher-education biology curricula, despite its social urgency in multicultural societies and the historical misuse of biological arguments to justify inequality. This study aimed to examine: (1) how biology educators conceptualize anti-racism as an SSI topic, (2) the extent to which anti-racism is embedded in course plans and instructional documents, and (3) what instructional resources and assessment supports are needed to enable systematic implementation in preservice biology teacher education.

Methods: An exploratory mixed-methods design was employed, integrating bibliometric mapping, curriculum/document analysis, and educator-oriented needs exploration through semi-structured interviews and a structured needs questionnaire.

Results: The analysis indicates that the strongest integration opportunities occur in human genetics and evolution, particularly through discussions of human genetic variation, clinal adaptation of skin pigmentation, common ancestry, and the misconception of biological race. Nevertheless, explicit alignment between these scientific concepts and anti-racist learning outcomes is rarely articulated in learning plans, and educators report limited support for facilitating sensitive ethical discussions and assessing students’ socio-scientific reasoning.

Conclusion: The study proposes a practical SSI–problem-based learning (SSI-PBL) framework and recommends a set of resources (case repositories, facilitation scripts, argumentation rubrics, and attitude measures) to guide preservice biology teacher education. These results provide design directions for developing inclusive biology learning that integrates scientific evidence with social justice-oriented civic competencies.