Unveiling Concealable Stigmatized Identities in Class: The Impact of an Instructor Revealing Her LGBTQ+ Identity to Students in a Large-Enrollment Biology Course

INTRODUCTION

Academic science has been identified as an unwelcoming space for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+¹) community (Cech and Pham, 2017; Cech and Waidzunas, 2021; Vaccaro et al., 2021), and LGBTQ+ undergraduates are less likely to graduate with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) degrees compared with their straight and cisgender peers (Hughes, 2018; Maloy et al., 2022). Additionally, undergraduates in the sciences report knowing few LGBTQ+ academics (Vacarro, 2012; Cooper and Brownell, 2016; Linley et al., 2016; Barres et al., 2017; Garvey et al., 2017). Revealing one’s LGBTQ+ identity can be complicated, namely because it is considered to be a concealable stigmatized identity (CSI); individuals often have to “come out” in order for others to know that they identify this way, and sharing the identity can result in loss of status and discrimination (Link and Phelan, 2001; Quinn, 2006; Arena and Jones, 2017). Despite not knowing many LGBTQ+ academics, undergraduates highlight that science faculty or instructors who have the same CSI as them could positively affect them, primarily by providing a role model of a successful scientist with the identity (Cooper and Brownell, 2016; Cooper et al., 2020c; Barnes et al., 2021a). In this exploratory study, we examine students’ perceived impact of an instructor who identifies as gay revealing her identity to undergraduate biology students in less than 3 seconds. We assess how the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity affects not only the perceptions of LGBTQ+ students, but those of all students in the course.

The Experience of LGBTQ+ Individuals in STEM

STEM fields have been described as hetero- and cisnormative and are perceived to be generally unwelcoming to LGBTQ+ individuals (Bilimoria and Stewart, 2009; Cech and Waidzunas, 2011; Atherton et al., 2016; Fidas and Cooper, 2018). Specifically, the prevalence of binary thinking in STEM, or classifications with only two options (e.g., male/female, positive/negative; Faulkner, 2007), delegitimizes individuals who identify as gender nonbinary and perpetuates a heteronormative culture (Cech and Waidzunas, 2021). Additionally, the “depoliticization” of STEM, or the removal of social or political issues from day-to-day STEM work in order to retain the perception that science is objective, can contribute to the sterile environment of STEM disciplines that deems personal information unnecessary and encourages LGBTQ+ individuals to keep their identities private (Bilimoria and Stewart, 2009; Cech, 2013; Cech and Waidzunas, 2021; Mattheis et al., 2020). Indeed, LGBTQ+ employees in STEM fields, including research scientists, postdoctoral scholars, and academic faculty, report needing to conceal their LGBTQ+ identities at work (Atherton et al., 2016) and to be less obviously gay in order to navigate their work environments, including dressing in a more conservative and gender-normative way and not bringing partners to departmental events (Bilimoria and Stewart, 2009; Mattheis et al., 2020). Moreover, LGBTQ+ STEM professionals report more negative and hostile workplaces and perceive fewer opportunities to develop their skills compared with non-LGBTQ+ colleagues (Cech and Pham, 2017; Cech and Waidzunas, 2021), which can result in them considering leaving their jobs (Dyer et al., 2019). Whether individuals perceived their STEM workplaces to be safe is associated with how open LGBTQ+ individuals are with colleagues and, in academia, students (Yoder and Mattheis, 2016), highlighting the importance of LGBTQ+ individuals feeling protected at work.

Academic STEM environments in particular present unique challenges for LGBTQ+ faculty and students. Faculty have reported hesitancy in revealing their LGBQ identities, because some of their colleagues’ attitudes toward them have become more negative after learning of their identities (Patridge et al., 2014) and out of concern that students may discriminate against them or that they could lose their jobs (Cooper et al., 2019). Undergraduate students also perceive a stigma surrounding the LGBTQ+ identity in academic STEM. LGBTQ+ undergraduates have described biology as an unwelcoming place for their identities (Cooper and Brownell, 2016), and undergraduate and graduate students have reported facing greater sex-based and gender-based discrimination in the larger STEM community compared with social science and humanities disciplines, which they found more welcoming and accepting (Linley et al., 2018). Undergraduate students have also described the prevalence of “dude culture” in STEM as a factor that treats their LGBTQIA+ identities as inferior (Miller et al., 2020) and reported lower sense of belonging than their straight peers (Yang et al., 2021). Together, these studies highlight that academic STEM can be uniquely difficult to navigate for LGBTQ+ individuals.

The generally unwelcoming nature of academic STEM has presumably resulted in higher attrition of LGBTQ+ students. A national longitudinal study found that LGB students were 7% less likely than their peers who identify as straight to be retained in STEM majors (Hughes, 2018), and a similar pattern has been found for transgender students (Maloy et al., 2022). Further, in interviews with queer individuals in STEM, two transgender graduate students who transitioned during graduate programs in the same state had very different experiences: one experienced an unwelcoming departmental climate, while the other received support, and each student attributed their departmental climate to their future plans to leave the field and to pursue a career in STEM, respectively (Mattheis et al., 2020). As such, making academic STEM more inclusive for LGBTQ+ individuals may be a key step in retaining LGBTQ+ individuals (Cooper et al., 2020a). Increasing retention of LGBTQ+ individuals in STEM is important in undoing the systemic exclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals from science and fostering research teams with more diverse views and experiences, which in turn can improve the quality of the work they are able to produce and increase the objectivity of that work by counteracting stereotypes or biases that individual researchers may have (Harding, 1992; Intemann, 2009).

Making STEM More Inclusive through Instructor LGBTQ+ Representation

Notably, there are increasing efforts to transform academic STEM into a more welcoming space for LGBTQ+ individuals. For example, the American Physical Society published an LGBT climate report in 2016 that included a set of recommendations to make academic physics more inclusive (Atherton et al., 2016). More recently, LGBTQ+ engineers and allies published a set of recommendations to make academic chemical engineering more inclusive for LGBTQ+ individuals (Butterfield et al., 2018), and a group of LGBTQ+ biologists and allies published a specific set of recommendations for academic biology (Cooper et al., 2020a). All of these documents highlight the importance of increased representation of LGBTQ+ individuals in academic STEM, namely because representation in a field has been shown to help develop a sense of belonging among underrepresented individuals (Rosenthal et al., 2013; Linley et al., 2016; Harmsen, 2018; Rainey et al., 2018). In STEM, instructors have been identified as particularly influential potential role models for students (Rask and Bailey, 2002; Cotner et al., 2011). Studies have found that women having a STEM instructor of the same gender can positively affect engagement (Crombie et al., 2003; Solanki and Xu, 2018), self-efficacy (Cotner et al., 2011; Stout et al., 2011), and sense of belonging (Harmsen, 2018), while persons excluded because of their ethnicity or race (PEERs; Asai, 2020) who have instructors with the same race/ethnicity show improved persistence in the major (Rask and Bailey, 2002) and self-efficacy (Shin et al., 2016).

Studies examining the impact of instructors sharing identities with their students have focused on identities that tend to be more visible, such as gender and race/ethnicity.² However, less is known about the impact of instructors sharing CSIs, including the LGBTQ+ identity, with students. CSIs are identities that can be hidden, but when revealed, can result in loss of status or discrimination for that individual (Link and Phelan, 2001; Quinn, 2006). As such, the decision to reveal a CSI, particularly in the context of an undergraduate science classroom, is complex.

Prior studies of LGBTQ+ individuals revealing their identities have primarily focused on the impact on the instructors. For example, in interviews, lesbian and queer women professors in the humanities, nursing, and athletic therapy reported that coming out to their students allowed them to live more authentically (Nielsen and Alderson, 2014), which was echoed by LGBQ instructors who chose to reveal their identities in college biology classrooms (Cooper et al., 2019). While some instructors have identified potential benefits of coming out, LGBTQ+ instructors also noted that there are risks to coming out to students; they could be disrespected, criticized, or experience professional repercussions for sharing this identity (Cooper et al., 2019). Studies have also examined how students perceive an instructor who comes out and have resulted in varied findings. For example, a study conducted nearly 20 years ago in an introductory college communication course determined that students found the instructor less credible, perceived that they learned less, and were more likely to make negative comments on the course evaluation when the instructor came out as gay during the lecture compared with when the instructor did not come out (Russ et al., 2002). There have since been two replication studies of the 2002 study that presented conflicting results (Boren and McPherson, 2018; De Souza, 2018). One study, conducted in 2018 at the same university as the original study by Russ and colleagues (2002), found that introductory psychology students consistently rated the instructor more virtuous, honest, pleasant, unselfish, reliable, and qualified when he did not come out than when he did come out and although the instructor received more negative comments on the evaluation when students perceived him as gay, students wrote a similar proportion of positive comments in both conditions (De Souza, 2018). However, another replication study in 2018 at a different institution found that students in a basic communication course did not rate the instructor as being less credible when he came out than when he did not and perceived that they learned to the same extent in both conditions (Boren and McPherson, 2018). One additional study examined the student evaluations of three LGBTQ+ university humanities faculty and found no difference between sections where the instructors revealed their LGBTQ+ identities and other sections of the same course where they kept their LGBTQ+ identities concealed (Jennings, 2010). In sum, the effect that coming out can have on instructors in the present day may be highly variable, likely dependent on other social identities and geographic context (Duran, 2019; Whitehead, 2019), but additional research is needed.

Few studies have examined the impact of an instructor coming out in class on students’ experiences in the course. However, two studies have shown that LGBQ instructors perceive that revealing this identity may have a positive impact on students, particularly LGBTQ+ students. Lesbian and queer women professors reported that coming out to their students helped them relate to their students, demonstrate their support for social justice issues, and model authenticity for their students (Nielsen and Alderson, 2014). Additionally, LGBQ life sciences instructors reported that revealing their identities may positively impact students, because they could serve as an example of a member of the LGBQ community to all students, a mentor to LGBQ students specifically, a known supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, and they could increase the extent to which students relate to them and students’ comfort in class (Cooper et al., 2019). However, instructors’ predictions of how revealing their LGBTQ+ identities in class affects students have not been empirically studied by asking the students themselves.

In addition to the positive impact that an LGBTQ+ instructor may have on LGBTQ+ students, coming out may also have a disproportionately positive impact on students with other marginalized identities, including marginalized gender, religious, racial/ethnic, and mental health identities. Previous studies suggest that individuals with marginalized identities feel greater empathy toward one another (Wade and Brittan-Powell, 2001; Spanierman et al., 2012; Cooper et al., 2020c), which may result in students with marginalized identities feeling connected to the instructor and more comfortable in the course following disclosure of the instructor’s CSI (even if they have a different stigmatized identity). An instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity may also challenge the chilly environment that women often describe experiencing in STEM disciplines (Seymour and Hewitt, 1997; Seymour and Hunter, 2019; Christe, 2013). However, talking about LGBTQ+ status in the workplace can be perceived as unprofessional for LGBTQ+ individuals due to the emphasis on “sex” (McKenna-Buchanan et al., 2015; Fidas and Cooper, 2018), even though it is perceived as appropriate for those who are straight and cisgender to share information about their romantic partners (Russ et al., 2002; Cooper and Brownell, 2016). Further, students who are evangelical Christians (Woodford et al., 2012; Worthen et al., 2017; Wilcox, 2020), Muslims (Abraham, 2010; Habib, 2010; Human Rights Campaign, 2021), and those who are politically conservative (Woodford et al., 2012; Worthen et al., 2017) historically tend to hold opposing LGBTQ+ views,³ although this assumption is not true of everyone who identifies this way (Barnes et al., 2021a). Considering the stigma associated with the LGBTQ+ identity, it is important to examine the impact of an instructor revealing this identity on all students, not just LGBTQ+ students.

Current Study

Given the extant research, we predict that an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity will be associated with disproportionately positive effects on LGBTQ+ undergraduates and may also be associated with positive effects on students with other marginalized identities in STEM. However, revealing one’s LGBTQ+ identity may be perceived as inappropriate by students (Russ et al., 2002; Anderson and Kanner, 2011) and may be associated with negative effects on students associated with groups that have opposing LGBTQ+ views.

In this study, we examined how students perceive they are impacted by an instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity in the context of a large-enrollment upper-level biology course at a research-intensive institution in Arizona.

Our specific research questions were:

1. To what extent do students remember an instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity in less than 3 seconds at the beginning of the semester?

2. To what extent do students perceive that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity impacted their experiences in the course negatively, positively, or not at all?

3. To what extent do students perceive that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity increased their willingness to approach the instructor for mentorship or guidance, feelings of connectedness to the instructor, confidence in their ability to pursue a career in science, sense of belonging in the course, and sense of belonging in the scientific community?

4. In general, how appropriate do students think it is for an instructor to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity and why do they perceive it as appropriate or inappropriate?

For each question, we also examined to what extent students’ identities, including LGBTQ+ status, gender, religion, race/ethnicity, and history of anxiety and/or depression, predicted their responses. Although previous work indicates that LGBTQ+ students predict that they would benefit from knowing an LGBTQ+ instructor, this has not been systematically assessed in the context of a specific course. The current study serves as an exploratory study to begin to unpack the potential impact on all students in the course of an instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity to serve as a foundation for future studies that could quantify these impacts to understand potential causality.

METHODS

This study was approved by the Arizona State University Institutional Review Board (protocol no. 00011085).

Study Context

To investigate the extent to which an instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity in class impacts students, we conducted a study in the context of a large-enrollment upper-level biology course at a large public research-intensive (R1) institution in Arizona during two semesters.

Because stigma is contextually determined (Barreto et al., 2006; Newheiser et al., 2017), considering the location and institution where the study took place is pertinent to this research. Arizona ranks low relative to other states in their overall policy of equality for LGBTQ+ people (Movement Advancement Project, 2021). However, the metropolitan areas surrounding the campus where this study was conducted earned perfect scores on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s annual Municipality Equality Index and are considered among the best places in Arizona for LGBT families (MacDonald-Evoy, 2017; Woods, 2021). The institution is neither listed on Princeton Review’s top 20 list of LGBTQ-friendly colleges nor on their top 20 list of LGBTQ-unfriendly colleges (Princeton Review, 2021a,b). Together, this suggests that the institution is neither particularly friendly nor hostile to LGBTQ+ individuals and is in a geographic region that is tolerant of but not entirely welcoming to LGBTQ+ people.

We chose to collect data over two semesters to increase our sample size and to ensure that students’ perceptions of the instructor were not unique to a specific course offering. At this institution, the biology course was taught to 288 students in person during Fall 2019 and to 307 students asynchronously online in Fall 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides the change in modality, the content of the course and learning materials provided to students were the same in both semesters. The course was co-taught by two instructors; one instructor, who identifies as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, taught the first 8 weeks of the course, and then the other instructor, who does not identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, taught the remaining 8 weeks. At the beginning of each term, the first instructor revealed her LGBTQ+ identity to her students using a single PowerPoint slide. On the slide, she shared personal information about herself, including her interests, hobbies, favorite movie, and that she is “a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community” (Figure 1). Revealing her LGBTQ+ identity took no more than 3 seconds, and she did not mention her LGBTQ+ identity to the class at any other point during the term.

At the midpoint of each semester, just after the LGBTQ+ instructor stopped teaching, students were invited to participate in a survey about their experiences in their biology course in exchange for a small number of extra-credit points. Students were told that the survey would ask them about their experiences in the course, that their responses were confidential, and that that the instructor of the course would never see their specific answers. In Fall 2019, 221 students (77%) completed the survey, and in Fall 2020, 254 students (83%) completed the survey.

Survey

We developed a survey with closed-ended and open-ended questions to assess student outcomes that prior research suggested may be affected by the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity to the class. Specifically, we were interested in the effects of the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity on students’ willingness to approach the instructor (Stout et al., 2011; Nielsen and Alderson, 2014; Cooper and Brownell, 2016; Cooper et al., 2019), the extent to which students felt connected to the instructor (Stout et al., 2011; Nielsen and Alderson, 2014; Cooper and Brownell, 2016; Cooper et al., 2019), students’ confidence to pursue a science career (Cotner et al., 2011; Stout et al., 2011; Cooper and Brownell, 2016; Cooper et al., 2019), and their sense of belonging in the course and science community (Stout et al., 2011; Cooper and Brownell, 2016; Cooper et al., 2019; Nielsen and Alderson, 2014; Linley et al., 2016). We were also interested in students’ perceptions of whether or not an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity in the context of a class was appropriate (Nielsen and Alderson, 2014; Cooper and Brownell, 2016; Cooper et al., 2019; Arena and Jones, 2017). The questions assessing these constructs in the survey are described in sections Student Outcomes Hypothesized to Be Influenced by the Instructor Revealing Her LGBTQ+ Identity and Appropriateness of an Instructor Revealing Their LGBTQ+ Identity.

To establish cognitive validity of the survey questions, we conducted individual think-aloud interviews with a total of seven undergraduate students to ensure that the students understood what each question was asking (Trenor et al., 2011). Four of these undergraduates had experienced an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity during a course, and all were enrolled in upper-level life sciences courses and were majoring in the life sciences. The survey was iteratively revised after each think-aloud interview until we perceived that no question needed to be revised. One survey item that was not on the Fall 2019 version of the survey was added to the Fall 2020 version to assess the overall impact students perceived that the instructor coming out had on their general experience in the course. A copy of the analyzed survey questions can be found in the Supplemental Material.

Memory of Instructor Revealing Her LGBTQ+ Identity.

The first survey question prompted students: “On a slide at the beginning of the semester, your instructor revealed that she is a member of the LGBTQ+ community. To what extent do you remember this?” Students selected from (1) do not remember at all, (2) remember somewhat clearly, and (3) remember very clearly. Student responses to all questions were only included in the analyses if they indicated that they either somewhat clearly or very clearly remembered the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity, except for the question about the appropriateness of an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity, as this was not specific to the instructor of the course revealing her LGBTQ+ identity. This question about whether students remembered the instructor revealing her identity was included on both the 2019 and 2020 surveys.

Overall Impact of Instructor Revealing Her LGBTQ+ Identity on Students.

To investigate the impact on students’ overall experiences in the course, students indicated the impact that their instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had on their experience in the course from (1) very negative impact to (7) very positive impact, with the option of selecting (4) no impact. Students were then asked to explain why having their instructor reveal her LGBTQ+ identity had a positive, negative, or no impact on their experience in the course. These questions were only included on the 2020 survey.

Student Outcomes Hypothesized to Be Influenced by the Instructor Revealing Her LGBTQ+ Identity.

To assess the impact of the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity on students’ willingness to approach the instructor for mentorship or guidance, feeling connected to the instructor, confidence in their ability to pursue a career in science, sense of belonging in the course, and sense of belonging in the scientific community, we developed a single item to measure each of the constructs, because no items or scales had been previously developed to assess such outcomes in this unique context. The purpose of this study was to understand the student-perceived impact of the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity on these affective measures of their course experience. Therefore, we asked students to consider whether they perceived an increase in each of the outcomes due to the instructor disclosing her LGBTQ+ identity. Students indicated the extent to which they agreed with the following five statements using a Likert scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (6) strongly agree: “My instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity in this course increased my likelihood of approaching her for mentorship or guidance,” “My instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity in this course increased my confidence in my ability to pursue a career in science,” “My instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity in this course made me feel more connected to her,” “My instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity in this course increased my sense of belonging in this course,” and “My instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity in this course increased my sense of belonging in the science community.” These questions were included on both the 2019 and 2020 surveys.

Appropriateness of an Instructor Revealing Their LGBTQ+ Identity.

To assess students’ perceptions of how appropriate it is to reveal one’s LGBTQ+ identity in class, students indicated the extent to which they agreed with the following statement using a Likert scale from (1) strongly disagree to (6) strongly agree: “I think it is completely appropriate for STEM instructors to reveal that they are a member of the LGBTQ+ community.” Students were then asked to explain why they thought it was appropriate or inappropriate for STEM instructors to reveal that they are members of the LGBTQ+ community in a course. These questions were included on both the 2019 and 2020 surveys.

Demographics.

At the end of the survey, we collected student demographic information, including LGBTQ+ status, gender, religious identity, race/ethnicity, if they currently have or previously had anxiety or an anxiety disorder, and if they currently have or previously had depression or a depressive disorder. These questions were included on both the 2019 and 2020 surveys.

Analyses

Regression Analyses Performed.

To address our research questions, we used logistic and ordinal regression modeling in R (R Core Team, 2021) using the stats and MASS (Venables and Ripley, 2002) packages, respectively. In each of our models described in the following four sections, we included LGBTQ+ status⁴ (yes/no), gender⁵ (man/woman), religious identity⁶ (Christian, Muslim, other, not religious), race/ethnicity (white, Asian,⁷ PEER⁸), and history of anxiety and/or depression⁹ (yes/no). These predictor variables have been previously found to affect students’ perceptions of their instructors and experiences in biology learning environments (Eddy et al., 2014; Cooper and Brownell, 2016; Cooper et al., 2020c,d; Grunspan et al., 2016; England et al., 2017; Theobald et al., 2017; Meaders et al., 2019, 2020); further justification for including these predictor variables in the regression models is provided in the Supplemental Material. In our models, we also controlled for semester of enrollment (Fall 2019/Fall 2020) to account for any differences in students’ responses due to the change in modality and year. Considering the racial disparities in discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals (Whitfield et al., 2014), investigating the intersectionality of systems of oppression faced by individuals who are LGBTQ+ is important. However, all regression analyses in this study are additive and do not consider interactions between gender identity and LGBTQ+ status and/or racial identity and LGBTQ+ status due to the low number of individuals with each of these identities in this study. This approach was used in all analyses, but differences are highlighted in the following sections for each research question.

For all logistic regressions, we checked the adequacy of the model fit by plotting the residuals against the fitted linear predictors and fitting a LOWESS smoothed curve to the data; the LOWESS curves were all approximately horizontal, indicating the logistic regression models are adequate (Kutner et al., 2003; Fox and Weisberg, 2018). For all ordinal regressions, proportional odds assumptions were checked and met. For all models, we checked for multicollinearity among the predictors by examining the variance inflation factor (VIF) values using the car package in R (Fox and Weisberg, 2018). The VIF values indicated there was no issue with multicollinearity.

To What Extent Do Students Recall the Instructor Revealing Her LGBTQ+ Identity?

We calculated the percent of students who remembered or did not remember the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity during class. We grouped students who selected “remember very clearly” and “remember somewhat clearly” into one group of students who remembered. We used logistic regression to determine whether there were demographic differences in who remembered (yes or no). Model: remember (yes or no) ∼ LGBTQ+ status + gender + religion + race/ethnicity + anxiety/depression + semester.

To What Extent Did the Instructor Revealing Her LGBTQ+ Identity Impact Students’ Experiences in the Course Negatively, Positively, or Not at All and Why?

We calculated the percent of students who reported that the instructor had a positive impact on their experience in class, had no impact on their experience in class, and had a negative impact on their experience in class. To assess the extent to which student identities predicted the impact that students perceived the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had on their experience in the course, we used logistic regression (positive impact or nonpositive impact). Due to the small number of students who selected negative impact (n = 7), we combined students who selected negative impact with those who selected no impact. Additionally, this question was only included on the 2020 version of the survey, so we did not include semester of enrollment in the regression. Model: impact (positive or nonpositive) ∼ LGBTQ+ status + gender + religion + race/ethnicity + anxiety/depression.

We then examined students’ respective open-ended responses explaining why they felt that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had a positive, negative, or no impact on their experience in the course. One researcher (C.A.B.) reviewed all student responses of why the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had either a positive impact or no impact on the students’ experiences in the course. There were too few students (n = 2) who provided open-ended responses about why the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had a negative impact on them to go through a formal coding process. The researcher (C.A.B.) used open-coding methods to develop a codebook describing each theme that emerged from students’ responses of why the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had a positive impact or no impact on their experience in the course. The researcher (C.A.B.) used constant comparative methods to develop the codebook (Glesne and Peshkin, 1992). Responses were continuously compared to ensure that each theme adequately represented each quote and that quotes were not sufficiently different to warrant creating a new theme. A second researcher used the final rubric to review and code a randomly selected set of 15% of each response set (positive impact or no impact). The researchers compared their codes and their Cohen’s κ interrater score was at an acceptable level for why there was a positive impact (κ = 0.89) or no impact (κ = 1.00; Landis and Koch, 1997). One researcher (C.A.B.) then coded all remaining responses. Each theme is mutually exclusive; an excerpt of text could only be coded as one theme, but students’ full responses could include multiple themes. In rare cases (n = 3), a student’s response to the open-ended question contradicted their response to the closed-ended question. For example, a student who reported that the instructor coming out negatively affected them wrote about why the instructor coming out positively affected them. Any students whose responses to the open-ended question contradicted the response from the preceding closed-ended question were excluded from analyses regarding the impact of the instructor revealing her LGTBQ+ identity. A copy of the final coding rubrics are provided in Supplemental Tables S1 and S2.

To What Extent Did the Instructor Coming Out Impact Specific Outcomes?

We calculated the percent of students who agreed that the instructor coming out positively affected each of the five outcomes: 1) willingness to approach the instructor for mentorship, 2) feelings of connectedness with the instructor, 3) confidence in their ability to pursue a career in science, 4) sense of belonging in the course, and 5) sense of belonging within the scientific community.

To assess the extent to which student identities predicted whether they agreed that the instructor coming out affected each of the five primary outcomes of interest, we conducted five ordinal regressions. For each regression, we regressed student identities on each of the five outcome variables (measured on a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 6; example model: outcome ∼ LGBTQ+ status + gender + religion + race/ethnicity + anxiety/depression + semester).

To What Extent Do Students Perceive That It Is Appropriate for an Instructor to Reveal Their LGBTQ+ Identity and Why?

We calculated the percent of students who agreed that it was appropriate for STEM instructors to reveal their LGBTQ+ identities.

One researcher (C.A.B.) reviewed all student responses to why an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity was appropriate or inappropriate and used the same process as described earlier to create codebooks for each set of responses. The Cohen’s κ interrater scores were at an acceptable level for the responses for why it is appropriate (κ = 0.87) or inappropriate (κ = 0.91; Landis and Koch, 1997). Any students whose responses to the open-ended question contradicted the response from the preceding closed-ended question were excluded from analyses involving appropriateness (n = 9). Although students’ full responses could include multiple themes, each excerpt of text could only be coded as one theme. A copy of the final coding rubrics is provided in Supplemental Tables S3 and S4.

To assess the extent to which student identities predicted how appropriate they perceived an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity to be, we conducted an ordinal regression. The outcome variable was the student response to the survey item about the appropriateness of a STEM instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity (measured on a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 6; model: appropriateness ∼ LGBTQ+ status + gender + religion + race/ethnicity + anxiety/depression + semester).

Interpretation of Analyses

Whether the result of a statistical test is significant or not is continuous rather than dichotomous based on the p value (Wasserstein et al., 2019). However, we report the results based on the standard of p ≤ 0.05 for simplicity. We acknowledge that p values greater than 0.05 can be scientifically meaningful, depending on the coefficient of the variable, so we report out all results of statistical tests in the Supplemental Material for the reader’s further interpretation. Results of logistic regressions are described using language such as “LGBTQ+ students had 2.3× higher odds of selecting a particular response compared with non-LGBTQ+ students.” The number (e.g., 2.3) is the natural exponential of the estimated coefficient for the predictor variable (e.g., LGBTQ+ vs. non-LGBTQ+) in the logistic regression model to predict whether the student selected a particular response. This number is called the “odds ratio” and is a standardized effect size statistic in logistic regressions (Deeks, 1998; Agresti and Franklin, 2018). Further, we refer to the percent of students who agreed with a particular item on the survey, which was calculated based on the total number of students who selected somewhat agree, agree, or strongly agree (4–6 on the Likert scale) out of the total number of students who answered the question. With the exception of the question assessing the overall impact of the instructor coming out, the Likert-style questions were on scales from 1 to 6 and did not have a neutral option.

Positionality

All four of the authors identify as LGBTQ+ cisgender women. Given the focus of the study and analyses on students’ perceptions of their instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity, it is important to acknowledge that our own LGBTQ+ identities may have affected the interpretation of results and likely made them more thorough (Day, 2012; Jacobson and Mustafa, 2019). Although students knew that their instructor identified as LGBTQ+, they did not know that the research team responsible for administering the survey or analyzing and interpreting the data also identified as members of the LGBTQ+ community.

RESULTS

Finding 1: Most Students Recall the Instructor Revealing Her LGBTQ+ Identity

Student demographics for all 475 students who completed the survey are reported in Table 1; a breakdown of student demographics by semester of enrollment is available in Supplemental Table S5.

Just over 90% (90.5%) of students who completed the survey reported that they remembered the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity, even though it was only done once in less than 3 seconds. We predicted that different demographic groups of students would remember the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity disproportionately, but student LGBTQ+ identity, gender, religion, race/ethnicity, history of anxiety and/or depression, and semester of enrollment were not significantly associated with remembering the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity. The extent to which different groups of students remembered the instructor revealing her identity and the full result of the binary logistic regression are included in Supplemental Tables S6 and S7.

Finding 2: Most Students Perceive That the Instructor Revealing Her LGBTQ+ Identity Had a Positive Impact on Their Overall Experience in the Course

Nearly two-thirds of students (65.6%) who remembered the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity reported that it had a positive impact on their overall experience in the course. Nearly one-third of students (31.3%) perceived that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had no impact on their overall experience in the course. Only seven students (3.1%) who remembered their instructor coming out reported that their instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had a negative impact on their overall experience in the course.

Comparing whether students reported that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had a positive impact or neutral to negative impact on their experience, we found that LGBTQ+ status, gender, and history of anxiety and/or depression were significantly associated with students’ responses. Students who identify as LGBTQ+ had 15.8× higher odds of reporting a positive impact than non-LGBTQ+ students (p = 0.01). However, most non-LGBTQ+ students (61.4%) reported a positive impact on their overall course experience, so the positive impact was not limited to LGBTQ+ students. Women had 2.5× higher odds of reporting a positive impact than men (p = 0.03), while 55.7% of men reported a positive impact. Students with a history of anxiety and/or depression had 2.7× higher odds of reporting a positive impact than students without a history of anxiety and/or depression (p = 0.01), although a substantial proportion of those students without a history of anxiety and/or depression (46.3%) also reported a positive impact. Religion and race/ethnicity were not associated with a significant effect on the impact of the reveal on students’ overall course experience. The full result of the regression is reported in Table 2.

When examining open-ended responses as to why students reported that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had a positive impact on their experience in the course, students commonly reported that it increased their feelings of connectedness and relatability toward the instructor (45.6%) and helped to foster an inclusive and welcoming environment in the course (25.7%). Students also cited the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity as a means of normalizing LGBTQ+ identities in the course (18.4%). Additionally, students (13.2%) noted the instructor’s impact on the representation of LGBTQ+ individuals in science, often highlighting that none of their previous instructors have revealed a similar identity.

The most common reason (60.9%) students cited for the instructor coming out having no impact on their course experience was that their view of the instructor’s ability to teach or their capacity to learn was not impacted. Students also cited that LGBTQ+ identities are normal and not a reason to judge an instructor (21.9%). Table 3 includes themes that were included in at least 5% of student responses, theme descriptions, and example student quotes; quotes are designated as from an LGBTQ+ student or a non-LGBTQ+ student to provide greater context of the students’ background, because whether the student also identifies as LGBTQ+ often influenced students’ rationale for the positive impact.

Of the seven students who reported that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity negatively impacted their experience in the course, only two provided open-ended explanations. One student said, “There was a short period of time where I felt slightly uncomfortable thinking of my instructor in that regard.” The other student said, “It was information that distracted from the course material.”

Finding 3: Instructor Revealing LGBTQ+ Identity Is Associated with Multiple Student Benefits

The majority of all students agreed that they perceived that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity increased their willingness to approach her for mentorship (71.0%), their feelings of connectedness with the instructor (77.2%), their confidence in their ability to pursue a career in science (53.3%), their sense of belonging in the course (63.7%), and their sense of belonging within the scientific community (57.1%). Student responses to each of the five outcomes are summarized in Figure 2 and disaggregated by demographic groups in Supplemental Figure S1.

Student identities were significantly associated with the extent to which students perceived the instructor coming out had a positive impact on each outcome. LGBTQ+ status was significantly associated with the extent to which students agreed with the statements that the instructor coming out increased their 1) willingness to approach the instructor for mentorship, 2) feelings of connectedness with the instructor, 3) confidence in their ability to pursue a career in science, 4) sense of belonging in the course, and 5) sense of belonging within the scientific community. That is, LGBTQ+ students were more likely to strongly agree with each statement than their non-LGTBQ+ peers when controlling for gender, religion, race/ethnicity, history of anxiety and/or depression, and semester of enrollment. Student gender was significantly associated with students’ responses for three of the five outcomes. Women were more likely to agree with the statements of increased confidence in their ability to pursue a scientific career, sense of belonging in the course, and sense of belonging in the scientific community than men. Religion was associated with students’ responses for four of these outcomes. Christian students were less likely to agree with the statements that the instructor coming out increased their feelings of connection with the instructor, confidence in pursuing a science career, sense of belonging in the course, and sense of belonging in the scientific community compared with their peers who do not identify as religious, while Muslim students were more likely to agree with the statements regarding increased willingness to approach the instructor, confidence to pursue a career in science, sense of belonging in the course, and sense of belonging in the scientific community due to the instructor coming out during class compared with their peers who do not identify as religious. Semester of enrollment was associated with all outcomes with students in the 2020 online semester more likely to agree with all five of the statements compared with students in the 2019 in-person semester. Race/ethnicity and history of anxiety and/or depression were not significantly associated any of the outcome variables (Supplemental Table S8). The effect sizes for all predictors, including LGBTQ+ status (yes), gender (woman), religion (Christian, Muslim, other religion), race/ethnicity (Asian, PEER), and history of anxiety/depression (yes), are presented in Figure 3.

Although LGBTQ+ students and women expressed higher levels of agreement than non-LGBTQ+ students and men that they perceived that the instructor coming out increased particular outcomes, we were curious whether non-LGBTQ+ students and men perceived that they were positively impacted by their instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity. Similarly, although Christian students were less likely to strongly agree with the statements that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity increased these outcomes, we were still interested in the extent to which they agreed that the gesture did increase these outcomes. More than half of the non-LGBTQ+ students agreed with the statement that their instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity increased their willingness to approach her for mentorship (67.0%), feelings of connectedness (73.2%), sense of belonging in the course (57.2%), and sense of belonging in the scientific community (50.9%; Figure 4a, n = 328). The majority of men agreed with the statement that their instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity increased their willingness to approach their instructor for mentorship (58.9%), feelings of connectedness (71.9%), and sense of belonging in the course (52.0%; Figure 4b, n = 129). Most Christian students agreed with the statement that their instructor coming out increased their willingness to approach the instructor for mentorship (61.9%), feelings of connectedness (65.7%), and sense of belonging in the course (52.6%; Figure 4c, n = 134).

Finding 4: Students Overwhelmingly Agree That It Is Appropriate for an Instructor to Reveal Their LGBTQ+ Identity

Over 96% of students agreed that they thought that it is appropriate for an instructor to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity (Figure 5a). Nearly all LGBTQ+ students (97.1%) agreed that it was appropriate for a STEM instructor to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity, while nearly 95% of their non-LGBTQ+ peers agreed.

LGBTQ+ status and religion were significantly associated with students’ perception that it is appropriate for a STEM instructor to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity. LGBTQ+ students had 4.0× higher odds (p < 0.001) of agreeing more strongly that it is appropriate for an instructor to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity than non-LGBTQ+ students. Nonreligious students had 2.2× higher odds (p = 0.002) of reporting higher levels of agreement on the measure of appropriateness than Christian students, although 93.1% of Christian students still thought that it was appropriate for a STEM instructor to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity. Muslim students had 1.4× higher odds (p < 0.001) and students in 2020 had 1.1× higher odds (p < 0.001) of reporting higher levels of agreement that it would be appropriate for an instructor to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity compared with not religious students and students in 2019, respectively. Gender, race/ethnicity, and history of anxiety and/or depression did not have a significant effect on the perceived level of appropriateness (Supplemental Table S9). The effect sizes for all predictors, including LGBTQ+ (yes), gender (woman), religion (Christian, Muslim, other religion), race/ethnicity (Asian, PEER), and history of anxiety/depression (yes), are presented in Figure 5b. Additionally, very few students reported knowing other LGBTQ+ instructors in STEM and non-STEM disciplines (Supplemental Table S10).

Students cited a variety of reasons that it would be appropriate for a STEM instructor to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity (Table 4). Students largely perceived that it would normalize LGBTQ+ identities and benefit LGBTQ+ students in particular (28.9%). Many students (27.5%) also noted an increase in their ability to connect with and relate to an instructor who revealed their LGBTQ+ identity and that it helps to promote the community values of trust and inclusion in the classroom (13.2%). Finally, 9.3% of students noted that it would be appropriate for instructors to share other details about their lives and sharing an LGBTQ+ identity is not different from other personal details.

Fewer than 10% of students reported that a STEM instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity would be inappropriate. The primary reason cited was that their instructor’s sexuality is not relevant to course material (65.0%; Table 4). Students also expressed discomfort or concern on behalf of other students who may feel uncomfortable if an instructor chose to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity (25.0%). Table 4 includes themes that were included in at least 5% of responses for why it is appropriate and 10% of responses for why it is not appropriate, descriptions of those themes, and example student quotes. Each quote is attributed to an LGBTQ+ student or a non-LGBTQ+ student, because whether the student also identifies as LGBTQ+ often influenced students’ rationale for why they perceived an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identify as appropriate or not.

DISCUSSION

An instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity in less than 3 seconds at the beginning of a course was impactful enough for nearly 91% of students to report remembering this event 8 weeks later. One common concern of LGBTQ+ instructors is that revealing their LGBTQ+ identities in class will take up class time that could be spent teaching biology (Cooper et al., 2019). However, this is not necessarily the case; introducing this information in the context of an introductory “Who I Am” slide at the beginning of the semester provides instructors with a natural opportunity to reveal their LGBTQ+ identities quickly and in a way that does not seem out of context in the course. There are a number of reasons why this information may be memorable for students. For LGBTQ+ students, the emotion of learning about a shared CSI with their instructor may make the experience memorable (Erk et al., 2003; Talarico et al., 2009). For non-LGBTQ+ students, this intervention may be an example of expectancy violations theory, because they are not accustomed to instructors revealing their LGBTQ+ identities to students (Burgoon, 2015). Further, instances that violate culturally based expectations (i.e., an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity) have been shown to be especially memorable (Porubanova et al., 2014). Indeed, many students in this study mentioned that an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity is rare; the instructor of this course doing so likely challenged students’ expectations and thus made the moment more memorable despite its short duration.

Our findings suggest that nearly all students perceive that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity during class had a widespread positive impact on them, regardless of whether they identified as members of the LGBTQ+ community. LGBTQ+ students reported perceiving a more positive impact compared with their non-LGBTQ+ peers, which aligns with previous literature that suggests that LGBTQ+ students having instructor role models would be helpful to them (Cooper and Brownell, 2016; Linley et al., 2016). Additionally, women perceived a more positive impact compared with men. This may be due to straight women having more positive attitudes toward LGBT individuals than straight men (Woodford et al., 2012), and/or because having an instructor who was a woman sharing personal information could make the sometimes chilly STEM climate more welcoming for women (Seymour and Hewitt, 1997; Christe, 2013; Seymour and Hunter, 2019). Further, students with a history of anxiety and/or depression perceived a more positive impact compared with students with no history of anxiety or depression, which may be attributable to a sense of connection formed from students to the instructor based on the commonality of having a CSI and dealing with the challenges of experiencing stigma, bias, and discrimination (Quinn and Earnshaw, 2011; Cooper et al., 2020b). Prior research has shown that undergraduates with anxiety and depression hesitate to share these concerns with faculty (Cooper et al., 2020b,c; Mohammed et al., 2021); students report that they try to look for clues as to whether a faculty member would be receptive of a mental health concern, and being a member of the LGBTQ+ community may indicate that an individual is more understanding of an aspect of one’s identity that is stigmatized (Cooper et al., 2020b,c; Mohammed et al., 2021).

Additionally, we examined the association between the impact students perceived of the instructor coming out and five specific outcomes. These outcomes included students’ perceptions of changes in their 1) willingness to approach the instructor for mentorship, 2) feeling connected to the instructor, 3) confidence in their ability to pursue a career in science, 4) sense of belonging in the course, and 5) sense of belonging in the scientific community. LGBTQ+ students and women reported perceiving more positive impacts on many of these outcomes compared with non-LGBTQ+ students and men, while Christian students agreed less strongly than not religious students. Given that LGBTQ+ students have been historically marginalized in STEM (Hughes, 2018; Cech and Waidzunas, 2021), are less likely to persist in STEM (Hughes, 2018; Maloy et al., 2022), and report knowing few LGBTQ+ scientists (Cooper and Brownell, 2016), learning of a shared identity with their instructor was expected to have a notable impact on LGBTQ+ students (Shin et al., 2016; Rask and Bailey, 2002). For women, the chilly climate of STEM disciplines has been found to affect persistence in STEM majors and attitudes toward the field (Seymour and Hewitt, 1997; Seymour and Hunter, 2019; Christe, 2013; Simon et al., 2017; Jensen and Deemer, 2019), so learning of their instructor’s LGBTQ+ identity likely provided a counterexample to the unwelcoming climate of STEM and resulted in them perceiving a greater increase in their confidence in pursuing a career in science, sense of belonging in the course, and sense of belonging in the scientific community. Christian students were consistently associated with lower perceived effects than their not religious peers, potentially due to the traditionally opposing LGTBQ+ views held by Christians (Woodford et al., 2012; Worthen et al., 2017; Wilcox, 2020), although it is important to note that not all Christians hold these views (Barnes et al., 2021a). However, the majority of Christian students still reported that they perceived the instructor coming out positively impacted these outcomes. Researchers have argued that being a Christian can be a CSI in the context of academic STEM due to Christian graduate students in biology perceiving that the biology community holds strong negative stereotypes against Christians, which results in concealing their religious identity in order to avoid this anticipated stigma (Barnes et al., 2021a). As such, it is possible that some Christian students perceived positive impacts because they also identified with having an identity that is not always welcomed in science (Barnes et al., 2017, 2020; Barnes et al., 2021a). Interestingly, this trend was not consistent for Muslim students. In fact, Muslim students were more likely to agree that the instructor coming out increased their willingness to approach the instructor, confidence to pursue a career in science, and sense of belonging in both the course and the scientific community. While more research needs to be done to understand this difference, one possible explanation is that the Muslim identity is broadly stigmatized in the United States (Lipka, 2017; Ahmadi et al., 2018) and may also be stigmatized within the context of science (Barnes et al., 2021b).

Despite these demographic differences, it is important to note that the majority of all students agreed that they perceived that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity increased their willingness to approach her for mentorship, feeling connected to her, confidence in their ability to pursue a career in science, sense of belonging in the course, and sense of belonging to the scientific community. Importantly, irrespective of LGBTQ+ identity, students viewed the instructor’s decision to disclose her LGBTQ+ identity as positive because it humanized their instructor and helped students get to know her better (i.e., increased relatability). Most students (77.2%) agreed that they perceived that their instructor coming out increased how connected they felt to the instructor. Students feeling connected to the instructor can enhance the rapport instructors have with their students (Frisby and Housley Gaffney, 2015; Cooper et al., 2018, 2020d), which has been shown to positively influence student participation and learning in the classroom (Frisby and Martin, 2010). Additionally, instructor connectedness has been shown to be related to an increase in student satisfaction (Micari and Pazos, 2016), and the quality of the student–faculty relationship has been found to positively predict student confidence and academic achievement (Micari and Pazos, 2012). Further, for students to feel more connected to their STEM instructors is often considered a way to create a more supportive and warmer learning environment rather than the typical impersonal climate of STEM (Seymour and Hewitt, 1997; Seymour and Hunter, 2019; Christe, 2013). In a study of online students, video introductions were found to be helpful for establishing a sense of connection with the instructor (Martin et al., 2018), so the context of the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity in her self-introduction at the beginning of the semester may contribute to its lasting impact on students.

Finally, the majority (96.1%) of students perceived that it is appropriate for a STEM instructor to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity during a course. LGBTQ+ instructors have expressed concern that revealing their LGBTQ+ identities is not appropriate in the context of STEM or the classroom (Cech and Waidzunas, 2011; Cooper et al., 2019), and a study has previously shown that LGBTQ+ students were worried that their instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity may result in negative consequences for the instructor (Cooper and Brownell, 2016). The overwhelming student response that an instructor coming out during class is appropriate challenges these negative assumptions and suggests that current college students may have different perceptions of what is appropriate in the context of undergraduate college science courses. Our findings also provide evidence to counter another common reason instructors list for not revealing their LGBTQ+ identities to their students: that students will perceive them negatively because students have a negative opinion of LGBTQ+ people (Cooper et al., 2019). Students’ common perception that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity was both appropriate and had a positive impact on their overall course experience suggests that perhaps students’ views of LGBTQ+ individuals have shifted in parallel with the recent national move toward acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015; GLAAD, 2017; Goodman, 2018; Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020). However, we encourage caution in making generalizations, because our results could be unique to the context and location of this study, as well as this specific instructor.

Limitations and Future Directions

Because of the dearth of research in this area, we chose to conduct an exploratory study to see how a single LGBTQ+ instructor revealing her identity to students during class may affect students. The study design being exploratory in nature, rather than causal, limits the conclusions that can be made. Due to the structure of our survey questions, we were unable to discern whether a student disagreed with an item because they perceived a negative effect or no effect, so we were only able to assess changes the student perceived and attributed to the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity. Measuring constructs with single items limits how generalizable they are, but allowed us to assess a larger number of total outcomes in this exploratory study. The conclusions that we can draw from this study are limited to changes that the undergraduates perceived in these outcomes, as opposed to absolute values of these outcomes or direct measures of some of these outcomes. For example, we measured whether students perceived that they were more willing to approach the instructor for mentorship, but we did not measure changes in actual student behavior. Finally, we did not measure whether these changes were specifically caused by an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity by using a comparison condition in which the same instructor did not reveal this identity. In the future, we plan to build on this exploratory study by conducting a nationwide study of the impact of multiple LGBTQ+ instructors coming out to students in their college biology courses, which will include survey items that distinguish among positive effects, negative effects, and no effects by using a pre–post design to measure our outcomes of interest and comparing outcomes to classes where the same instructors do not reveal their LGBTQ+ identities.

Given the importance of context when studying the LGBTQ+ identity (Worthen et al., 2017), the geographic context of this research-intensive institution, which is located within an LGBTQ+-friendly municipality of a relatively LGBTQ+-unfriendly state in the United States, limits the generalizability of our findings (Rigel Hines, 2021). We also recognize that revealing an LGBTQ+ identity is a deeply personal decision and not an inherently positive experience for all individuals (Manning, 2015; Ryan et al., 2015). As such, we respect that the decision to come out is not the right one for all individuals. Additionally, because this was one study with one instructor, we were unable to control for how additional characteristics of the instructor, including her gender (cisgender woman), race (white), and personality might impact the students’ responses (Bennett, 1982; Glascock and Ruggiero, 2006; Joye and Wilson, 2015). To broaden the generalizability of this research, future studies could expand on these findings and evaluate the impact of instructors disclosing their LGBTQ+ identities on students across multiple courses, instructors, and institutions in different geographic regions.

We chose to approach our research questions quantitatively, as they build on prior qualitative studies conducted by our research teams (Cooper and Brownell, 2016; Cooper et al., 2019). However, one potential source of bias in the students’ responses to the survey is social desirability bias, defined as reporting perceived desirable outcomes to please the audience or to maintain a positive self-concept (Paulhus, 1984). Specifically, students may have felt inclined to say that they remembered the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity at the beginning of the survey or to respond positively throughout the survey because the instructor was also part of the research team (as indicated on the signature line of the consent form on the survey). However, we took steps to reduce social desirability bias by ensuring students that the survey was completely anonymous, that there were no right or wrong answers to any of the questions, and that their instructor would not see their specific responses to any of the survey questions. It is also possible that this study was affected by acquiescence bias, defined as the tendency of respondents to select positive response options (Moss, 2016). In an effort to address this potential for bias, we asked students to explain their reasoning as to why they perceived the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity had a particular effect on them. Our intent was that the requirement to explain their reasoning would reduce the chances that they would inadvertently select positive responses to questions (Kam and Meyer, 2015).

Further, the survey may have made students’ feelings about the instructor coming out stronger or more salient, given that they were reminded of the event. The impact students attributed to their instructor coming out during class may have instead been caused by the survey itself reminding students of the event. While this exploratory study was designed to probe student perceptions of ways the instructor coming out affected them, future work can empirically test the hypotheses that arose from this study by assessing student outcomes in a quasi-experimental design.

We aggregated students of all LGBTQ+ identities due to the small number of students who identified as a gender outside the binary man/woman, but there are likely differences in the experiences of LGBQ students and those who are gender minorities, because transgender, nonbinary, and intersex individuals face greater discrimination than other members of the LGBTQ+ community (Atherton et al., 2016; Harrison et al., 2012; Maloy et al., 2022). Aggregating students of various racial or ethnic identities as “Asian” or “PEER” may also obscure some patterns in the data. Further, all of our models were additive, and examining the interactions between gender identity and LGBTQ+ status or racial identity and LGBTQ+ status may have had different effects. Future studies with larger, more diverse samples would likely be able to address these potential limitations and can also probe the student-level factors that are associated with not remembering the instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ status during class.

Finally, across outcomes, we saw that students enrolled in Fall 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic perceived more positive impacts, which may be because these students experienced a greater benefit from feeling connected to their instructor and a sense of community in the course than they would have outside the context of the pandemic (Lederer et al., 2021; Shim and Lee, 2020; Conklin and Dikkers, 2021; Mooney and Becker, 2021). Repeating this study in additional online and in-person courses will help assess whether this type of intervention is particularly impactful in online courses.

FOOTNOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

REFERENCES