Characterizing the content and mechanisms of instructor messages that communicate instructor beliefs about ability to undergraduates

Background: Instructors’ beliefs about their students’ abilities (called “lay theories”) can impact students’ academic and psychological outcomes. Lay theories include mindset (beliefs about the improvability of intelligence), universality (beliefs about the distribution of potential for achieving high ability), and brilliance (belief about whether talent is required for success). Instructors’ beliefs shape the classroom climate, which influences students’ experiences and outcomes. However, the cues that students use to perceive their instructors’ beliefs are not well characterized. Previous work has identified the content of messages that communicate instructor mindset beliefs. We build on this to explore the messages that communicate universality and brilliance beliefs as well as mechanisms of communication. Our exploratory qualitative study (1) characterizes the content and mechanism of instructor messages that inform students’ perceptions of their instructors’ beliefs and (2) compares how different beliefs are communicated. We interviewed 24 STEM undergraduates about their perceptions of their instructors’ beliefs and the reasons they held those perceptions. We then used dialogic consensus to identify patterns of message content and mechanism. Results: We identified four types of message content that communicate instructors’ beliefs: affordances for student success, goal orientations, distribution of student achievement, and attributions for student performance. These messages are communicated through three mechanisms: statements, actions, and course structure and policies. Students sometimes make assumptions about instructors’ beliefs based on the student context, instructors’ identities as educators, instructors’ academic backgrounds, and assuming their instructors share their own personal beliefs. Students use all four message contents and all three communication mechanisms to infer all three lay theories. However, there are some trends of types of messages that more strongly communicate certain beliefs. Goal orientation messages more often communicate mindset whereas distribution of success messages more often communicate universality and brilliance messages. Course policies and structure more strongly communicate mindset whereas the action of displaying favoritism was more strongly associated with universality and brilliance beliefs.Conclusions: Our results reinforce prior findings that mindset, universality, and brilliance are distinct constructs that impact student outcomes through different mechanisms and imply that creating a holistically supportive classroom climate may require using diverse communication strategies.