The role of instructional policies and instructors’ demographics on students' perceptions of instructor universality beliefs in STEM

Students’ perceptions of their STEM instructors’ beliefs about students’ ability have been linked to engagement and academic performance, yet the factors shaping these perceptions remain poorly understood. STEM is often characterized by selective narratives about who can succeed, making students’ perceptions of instructors’ beliefs about ability particularly relevant to persistence and participation. Drawing on lay theories of intelligence, instructor universality beliefs refer to perceptions that an instructor believes many students are capable of achieving excellence in STEM rather than only a select few. This exploratory study examined how students’ perceptions of instructors’ universality beliefs varied with syllabus-defined instructional policies and instructor demographic characteristics. Student perceptions were measured using an adapted survey of instructor universality beliefs (n = 505). Instructional policies were operationalized through course syllabi, which were coded as institutional artifacts of instructional practice across 20 STEM instructors and 34 courses at a demographically diverse metropolitan university in the southern United States. Initial analyses indicated that more student-centered evaluation and assessment policies were associated with more positive student perceptions of instructors’ universality beliefs. However, these relationships explained only a modest proportion of variance and were attenuated after accounting for instructor demographic characteristics and student course grades. Instructor race was consistently associated with students’ perceptions of universal beliefs, with students reporting lower perceptions of universal beliefs among instructors categorized as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color than among White instructors. Women instructors were also perceived as endorsing fewer non-universal beliefs than men, although gender effects were less consistent across models. These findings should be interpreted with caution, given the limited sample of instructors and the study's exploratory nature. Overall, the results suggest that students’ perceptions of who can succeed in STEM are associated with factors beyond formal instructional policies alone and warrant further investigation using larger, multi-institutional samples.