Policies in several regions of the world have made considerable progress in recent years in the formulation of principles and guidelines for action aimed at institutionalizing diversity and inclusion in higher education. This is the case in Europe (European Commission, 2022; European Higher Education Area [EHEA], 2020). Real progress, however, is slow, and this pace may be due not only to institutional or, more generally, contextual variables, but also to individual characteristics that deserve some attention. Thus, for example, personal variables of teachers have been identified that predict their teaching practices with an inclusive approach. Such is the case with personality, ideological attitudes, and beliefs and attitudes about diversity (Álvarez-Castillo et al., 2023). Particularly, with regard to beliefs about diversity, it has been observed that plural approaches exist in university institutions, both in the analysis of leaders' discourses and policy documents (García-Cano et al., 2021; Hendin, 2023; White-Lewis, 2022) and in the beliefs of teaching and research staff (Márquez & Melero-Aguilar, 2022), but there is no evidence of a deep critical commitment (i.e., an approach that considers diversity in terms of unequal power relations and which directs measures to institutional transformation).

The lack of in-depth commitment to diversity does not mean that certain groups of leaders and teachers do not adopt this type of critical approach that links difference to inequality and involvement with change. This has been manifested, for example, in the heads and members, belonging to ethnic minorities, of the staff of services and diversity committees, both in North America (Griffin et al., 2019) and in the United Kingdom (Ahmet, 2021; Bhopal, 2023), or also in ethnic minority faculty from British (Bhopal, 2020; 2022) and North American universities (Bhopal, 2022). The identification in these qualitative studies of a transformative commitment in minority member groups raises the question of whether beliefs, attitudes and behaviors about diversity are linked to the social identity of professional actors. The present quantitative study was designed to clarify this doubt, with the aim of verifying whether the social identity of teaching staff works as a predictor for inclusion in university teaching.

In the case of having developed a social identity linked to vulnerable or disadvantaged groups, Tajfel's classic Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) would predict that university teachers are characterized by beliefs, attitudes and behaviors aimed at favoring their groups and, thus, increasing their self-esteem. From this approach, it is expected, therefore, that teachers who feel they belong to minority groups are more likely to develop beliefs, attitudes and teaching practices with an inclusive approach than teachers who have not internalized this type of social identity. This prediction is made in a normative context – that of higher education – that favors, at least from its policies, the preservation of diverse identities.

DESIGN. The study was cross-sectional, survey-based, and aimed at confirming the predictive relationships between social identity and diversity beliefs, attitudes and behaviours by means of linear regression. SAMPLE. The sample consisted of 972 university lecturers from eight Spanish public university institutions who agreed to respond to a survey. The sample composition was relatively gender-balanced, with 47.7% of men and 51.4% of women, and a mean age of 46.56 (SD = 10.95). The average length of employment in the institution was 14.76 years (SD = 11.38). INSTRUMENTS. The instruments and the data collection procedure were approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Córdoba. The battery of questions consisted of two sections: a) Socio-demographic information (sex, age, years of service) and social identity (checklist for self-identifying as a member of a minority group linked to ethnicity, migratory origin, sexual orientation, religion, disability, chronic illness, income, language); and b) Scale of Beliefs, Attitudes, and Practices of Attention to Diversity for University Teachers (Ramos-Santana et al., 2021), a 19-item questionnaire that measures five factors: (1) Institutional Diversity: attitudes of teachers about the value that their universities should attach to diversity, as well as the practices they would have to implement in this regard; (2) Research and Teaching Focused on Diversity: teaching practices addressing diversity in the areas of research, educational planning, and innovation; (3) Diversity Teaching and Learning Practices: methods, resources, and activities that teachers use to address diversity in the classroom context; (4) Teachers’ Perception of Institutional Commitment to Diversity: Teachers’ beliefs about the commitment of their institutions and leaders to diversity; and (5) Conception of Diversity: meaning attributed to the concept of diversity by teachers. PROCEDURE. An invitation was sent to the teaching staff of the eight Spanish public universities in a mass e-mail that included a link to the survey designed with LimeSurvey. Before administering the self-report instruments, informed consent was obtained. DATA ANALYSIS. Once the data were transferred to SPSS (v28), preparatory, descriptive and correlational analyses were performed on the variables. Subsequently, the hypothesis was tested by means of linear regression.

Regression analysis showed a positive predictive effect of social identity on factor 2 (Research and Teaching Focused on Diversity) and a negative effect on factor 4 (Teachers' Perception of Institutional Commitment to Diversity). In other words, the identification with minority groups anticipated a greater involvement in research and teaching innovation projects on diversity and in the design of teaching objectives with a diversity dimension, as well as the attribution of a lower commitment to diversity to the university leaders. However, the slight size of the effects, as well as the absence of effects on the remaining three dependent factors (including teaching practice in the interactive classroom environment) raises doubts about the relevance of social identity in inclusive beliefs, attitudes and practices and, therefore, in the predictive power of Social Identity Theory in this kind of context (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). In addition, gender and years of service acted as moderators. In particular, the effect of social identity on the factor of inclusive practices could only be verified in the case of women and in those with medium and medium-advanced seniority in their professional careers. Various types of interpretations could be provided for the result of the low relevance of social identity in inclusion, such as the potential negative influence of the sense of belonging when ingroups are devalued or threatened, as predicted by theories of intergroup conflict and intergroup relations (see review in Spears, 2021). Thus, teachers could distance themselves from both the institution and their own groups, at least when they are not characterized by a strong social identity. Added to this potential psychosocial effect is the impact of some institutional dynamics, which do not create truly effective opportunities for inclusion (Bhopal, 2023; Griffin et al., 2019).

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