Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) - acknowledging, accepting and embracing differences between people - is widely promoted in higher education. Often centred on students, DEI applies equally to teachers, institutions and content.
DEI is emphasised in training, recruitment and access, and increasingly now in curricula, although biomedical science teaching still lags humanities. DEI may be perceived as lacking relevance to biomedical science. Biomedical science educators may find it difficult to meaningfully incorporate DEI due to lack of curricular ‘space’ or inertia/pushback from students, colleagues or the institution.
This presentation will demonstrate how DEI can be incorporated into anatomy teaching. The ‘normal’ human body is not a single form, as most structures existing in a variety of forms or variants. Crowded curricula coupled with a plethora of variants typically restricts teaching to the ‘most common’, erroneously implying that these are the norm, and the ‘less common’ are abnormal. Importantly, exclusion makes people invisible within curricula, and invisibility is perpetuated, even unconsciously, to future patients and research. Therefore, biomedical science must teach the diverse human body for better healthcare. Additionally, teaching structural diversity allows all students and teachers to ‘belong’ in a curriculum, resulting in better educational outcomes. Acknowledging openly that exclusion sometimes arose historically, within certain cultural contexts, can help address injustices and create more consciously inclusive teaching and research environments.
Indiscriminately adding structural diversity to crowded curricula however will overwhelm students and teachers. Using differences as ‘examples’ separate from rather than part of normal anatomy, also perpetuates that ‘most common’ is synonymous with normal. Therefore, biological diversity must be meaningfully included. This presentation will offer examples from reproductive anatomy and histology teaching, and strategies for seamless integration. Participants will also use the BEST Network Slice Virtual Microscopy tool to explore resources that can support DEI in biomedical science teaching.