Examining Equitable, Student-Centered STEM Undergraduate Instruction Across Three U.S. Institutions

Student- and equity-centered instructional practices benefit student learning, motivation, and belonging; however, STEM higher education instructors may not be using them. In this concurrent mixed-methods descriptive study, we examined how STEM instructors (N = 21) across three U.S. higher education institutions understood and enacted student-centered and equitable instruction, and how students from their classrooms (N = 365) experienced learning—and the differences between students’ and instructors’ perceptions. Our qualitative analysis uncovered the instructional practices that students perceived instructors used the most, benefited their learning, and increased their belonging in the course/field. The results reveal students perceived common practices to have little benefit to their learning and belonging (e.g., lectures) while other practices had an outsized impact (e.g., active learning; practice, revision, and feedback). Quantitative results demonstrate that equitable practices were the least understood and used or experienced by instructors and students, respectively. Moreover, we found that instructors tended to underestimate their students’ experiences of student-centered and equitable practices. However, we found that aspects of students’ social identities (e.g., gender) and the proportion of students who were male or White may have influenced how students experienced instructional strategies. We discuss how information generated from this study can be used to improve undergraduate STEM education.