The biogenetic law is a theory of development and evolution proposed by Ernst Haeckel in Germany in the 1860s. It is one of several recapitulation theories, which posit that the stages of development for an animal embryo are the same as other animals' adult stages or forms. Commonly stated as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, the biogenetic law theorizes that the stages an animal embryo undergoes during development are a chronological replay of that species' past evolutionary forms. The biogenetic law states that each embryo's developmental stage represents an adult form of an evolutionary ancestor. According to the law, by studying the stages of embryological development, one is, in effect, studying the history and diversification of life on Earth. The biogenetic law implied that researchers could study evolutionary relationships between taxa by comparing the developmental stages of embryos for organisms from those taxa. Furthermore, the evidence from embryology supported the theory that all of species on Earth share a common ancestor.

Increasingly, college courses have transitioned from traditional lecture to student-centered active learning, creating more opportunities for students to interact with each other in class. Recent studies have indicated that these increased interactions in active learning can create situations where students’ identities are more salient, which could result in novel challenges for students with marginalized identities. Christianity has been shown to be a marginalized identity in the context of undergraduate biology courses, but it is unknown whether Christian students experience challenges in their interactions with other students in class. The social psychology framework of concealable stigmatized identity (CSI) was used to explore the experiences of Christian students during peer interactions in undergraduate biology courses. Thirty students were interviewed, and most felt their religious identity was salient during peer interactions in biology. Students also reported that they have more opportunities to reveal their religious identity in courses that incorporate peer discussion than in courses that do not. Students claimed that revealing their religious identity to their peers could be beneficial because they could find other religious students in their courses, grow closer with their peers, and combat stereotypes about religious individuals in science. Though most students anticipated stigma, which caused some students to choose not to reveal their religious identities, comparatively few had experienced stigma during peer interactions in their college biology courses, and even fewer had experienced stigma from peers who knew they were religious. These findings indicate that it be may important to teach students how to be culturally competent to reduce Christian students’ anticipated and experienced stigma in active learning courses.

This thesis contains three chapters, all of which involve using culturally inclusive education to explore the experiences of religious undergraduate biology students. The first chapter is an essay entitled "Toward Culturally Inclusive Undergraduate Biology Education," which describes a literature review performed with the aim of characterizing the landscape of cultural competence and related terms for biology educators and biology education researchers. This chapter highlights the use of 16 different terms related to cultural competence and presents these terms, their definitions, and highlights their similarities and differences. This chapter also identifies gaps in the cultural competence literature, and presents a set of recommendations to support better culturally inclusive interventions in undergraduate science education. The second chapter, entitled "Different Evolution Acceptance Instruments Lead to Different Research Findings," describes a study in which the source of 30 years of conflicting research on the relationship between evolution acceptance and evolution understanding was determined. The results of this study showed that different instruments used to measure evolution acceptance sometimes lead to different research results and conclusions. The final chapter, entitled "Believing That Evolution is Atheistic is Associated with Poor Evolution Education Outcomes Among Religious College Students," describes a study characterizing definitions of evolution that religious undergraduate biology students may hold, and examines the impact that those definitions of evolution have on multiple outcome variables. In this study, we found that among the most religious students, those who thought evolution is atheistic were less accepting of evolution, less comfortable learning evolution, and perceived greater conflict between their personal religious beliefs and evolution than those who thought evolution is agnostic.