  The past 10-15 years have seen numerous calls for curricular reform in
undergraduate biology education, most of which focus on changes to curriculum
or pedagogy. Data collected from students in a large introductory undergraduate
biology course indicate that student expectations about the nature of the
knowledge they were learning influence how they interacted with reform efforts
in that class. Given that student expectations influence the ways in whichthey
participate in course activities, this paper (the first in a series that looks
at student expectations in biology) argues that curriculum reform initiatives
should consider student expectations in order to increase the chance for
effective implementation.
