Little systematic attention or research effort has been focused on understanding the origins of student resistance to pedagogical change in biology classrooms or the options for preventing and addressing such resistance. This article aims to gather research evidence from a variety of fields to support innovations in undergraduate biology education. We attempt to provide an overview of the types of student resistance one might encounter in a classroom, as well as share hypotheses from other disciplines about the potential origins of student resistance. In addition, we offer examples of classroom strategies that have been proposed as potentially useful for either preventing student resistance from happening altogether or addressing student resistance after it occurs, some of which align well with findings from research on the origins of student resistance. Finally, we explore how ready the field of student resistance may be for research study, particularly in undergraduate biology education.