Structured Instructional Intervention Introducing Neuroscience Core Concepts Enhances Evidence-Based Reasoning in Neuroscience

Effective undergraduate STEM education requires instructional strategies that promote deeper conceptual understanding and application. Disciplinary core concepts provide a tool by which instructors can build such instructional strategies. This study evaluated the impact of a structured instructional intervention on students’ performance in a neuroscience writing assignment, the Criminal Mind Op-Ed project. The intervention began with a pre- assignment video that introduced students to neuroscience core concepts (Chen, Phillips, Schaefer, Sonner. 2023. CBE-LSE) accompanied by a worksheet designed to improve students’ use of neuroscience evidence in persuasive written assignments. A total of 103 students in an upper division neuroscience course were assigned to control (no neuroscience core concepts pre-instruction) or intervention (neuroscience core concepts pre-instruction) groups. Student essays were assessed using detailed rubric across seven criteria, and results indicated a statistically significant improvement in the intervention group’s use of evidence. These findings suggest that even a brief, low-resource core concept intervention can enhance students’ ability to apply scientific evidence in argumentative writing. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2026 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.