Increasingly, curricular materials for undergraduate life science courses are designed to highlight scientists with identities and backgrounds that counter historical and stereotypical representation in science. In this essay, we characterize the wide variation in the development and implementation of these curricular materials featuring counterstereotypical scientists. Applying the Social Ecological Model of Behavior Change as a framework, we examine both personal and social elements of the benefits and costs related to designing and implementing curricula featuring counterstereotypical scientists from the perspective of three groups: students, instructors, and the featured scientists. The benefits of these materials for students are well documented, and we consider how these materials may likewise benefit instructors and the featured scientists themselves. However, we emphasize that, if not developed and implemented with attention to the diversity of personal, social, and contextual factors, such well-intentioned efforts may be ineffective or impact groups in inadvertent ways. Finally, we offer recommendations for highlighting counterstereotypical scientists in curricula. We call for additional research to effectively develop and implement materials featuring counterstereotypical scientists in ways that maximize benefits and limit possible costs to students, instructors, and the featured scientists.

Student self-efficacy, their confidence to successfully perform a task, is positively related to course performance. Students with high self-efficacy for a task are more motivated toward that task. Yet few studies have measured students’ self-efficacy and motivation levels after exams are returned in introductory biology classes or studied how these levels relate to final course grades. To address these questions, we used structural equation modeling to examine how introductory biology students’ (n = 123) self-efficacy and motivation scores at the beginning of the semester and after the first two course assessments related to their final course grades. Both self-efficacy and intrinsic goal orientation—motivated by a desire to learn or gain new skills—decreased after the first assessment grades were returned to the students. We found positive relationships between self-efficacy and motivation, and between self-efficacy and final course grades, across all timepoints. Motivation scores were not associated with final course grades, but the relationship between self-efficacy levels and final grades was significant and became stronger at each timepoint. These results suggest the importance of supporting self-efficacy development after early assessments, a time when students are particularly vulnerable to declines in confidence and motivation.