What the Biochemistry Education Research Literature Can Tell University‐Level Biochemistry Instructors

So far, no reviews have been published that examine the literature on biochemistry education research. Our work builds on research articles that looked at biochemistry education in general, with a special focus on upper‐level educational settings. In particular, research studies investigating biochemistry education in classrooms and laboratories were analyzed. Biochemistry is an interdisciplinary field and interconnects many traditional fields of research. Therefore, our literature review looked beyond typical biochemistry courses and included courses that integrate biochemistry with curriculum areas such as health sciences, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology and, to some extent, molecular biology. This provides a holistic approach that will serve as a basis upon which progress in biochemistry education can be built. NVivo qualitative analysis software was used to establish outline‐categories within the review. The findings in the analysis were enriched by open‐coding and memoing techniques. Big themes arising from the literature analyzed thus far are: teaching (classroom and laboratory practices), learning difficulties, and assessment in biochemistry (tools used and measures taken). The studies found were predominantly situated in lecture settings, with a focus on revealing difficulties and suggestions on improving teaching. No research on revealing difficulties in laboratory setting was identified up to now. The lack of laboratory research studies is analogous to what we would find in chemistry and physics education literature. When looking at biochemical topics, research studies focused on in our work also suggest that there is a rich pool of references centering around structure and function (an ASBMB Foundational Concept). This leaves the topic distribution of studies unbalanced overall. To place our results in perspective, we will elaborate on fundamental gaps in the literature as well as directions for new research in line with the recommendations of the National Research Council's Committee on the Status, Contributions, and Future Directions of Discipline‐Based Education Research (DBER). The goal of this review is to provide a source of information for educators that are interested to work in the field of biochemistry education research, especially those who want to direct the research field to increase educational studies at the university level.