Inclusive pedagogy makes learning easier for everyone. By creating accessible materials, utilizing Open Educational Resources, and using transparent assignments and course design, all students have a path to success that recognizes their individuality and empowers them to embrace the learning process.
UW’s Center for Teaching and Learning. summarizes Inclusive Pedagogy well:
Inclusive teaching refers to pedagogical practices that support meaningful and accessible learning for students of all races, ethnicities, genders, socio-economic classes, sexualities, disability/ability statuses, religions, nationalities, ages, and military status. Teaching inclusively means leveraging the diverse strengths students and instructors bring to the learning environment, as well as recognizing how systems of power and privilege may play out in the classroom.
Inclusive pedagogy is an intentional way of designing curricula and teaching with an equity lens, to create a learning environment that supports diverse students in their learning. Inclusive pedagogy uses asset based instructional design principles and policies that position social identities as strengths to connect with the course material and communities.
Inherent in the work of designing Inclusive Pedagogy is understanding that the social identities of both students and teachers have a direct impact on the learning experience.
Self-awareness and deep inquiry are inherent in the work of designing and implementing inclusive pedagogy. This work requires on-going reflection and focus on course learning outcomes.
There is no doubt that the use of technology can empower students and teachers. Although technology has eliminated many barriers, there are still a large number of students who struggle with having access to it or identifying themselves with the material or methodology presented.
The consultants will help you format your course content so it is accessible and available in a variety of formats, and so that students with disabilities can also access the materials (ex: close captioning, <alt text>, use of headers).
They will also guide you on how to find Open Educational Resources that will significantly decrease costs to your students. Last, but not least, they will help you make your Canvas a welcoming learning space with materials and activities that represent your students culturally and socially.
Inclusive Pedagogy is supported by research:
The following excerpt, with links to research related to inclusive pedagogy, is from the Georgetown University's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship page on the Inclusive Pedagogy Toolkit:
Inclusive pedagogy—creating a space that works for all students—makes intuitive sense. It’s also supported by a growing body of research. First, a sense of belonging to an academic community has been shown to be an important predictor of academic success (Moallem, 2013), and that, meanwhile, many students—particularly those from groups marginalized because of things like race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.—do feel excluded from learning spaces (see, for example, Tanner, 2013). This experience of exclusion can hamper academic performance (APA, Racism, bias, and discrimination) in a process that can spiral out of control, through a “negative recursive cycle...where psychological threat and poor performance feed off one another, leading to ever-worsening performance” (Cohen et al., 2006). Beyond the purely academic, a sense of alienation or exclusion can even lead to negative health effects (Blascovich et al., 2001, Eisenberger et al., 2003).
For more information, the Georgetown Teaching Commons page on Inclusive Pedagogy is a great jumping off point.
Developing Inclusive Pedagogy and classroom processes through an equity lens requires an on-going process of deep inquiry.
Think about the students at RTC and ask yourself questions that can help you create an equitable learning environment where all students have opportunities to achieve course and program learning outcomes ~ in course content, accessible materials, assessments, policies/procedures, etc.
The following sample questions are from Cornell University’s Inclusive Teaching Strategies:
Understanding social justice is a foundation to do the work of Inclusive Pedagogy. Faculty, instructional designers and administrators must engage in a process of deep inquiry regarding dilemmas of access and equity in education. Understanding institutional inequities and how that have been and continue to be propagated gives one a foundation with which to understand inequities that need to be addressed in education.
We would like to honor the equity work that people have been doing at RTC with Guided Pathways: Racial Equity Resource Bank Tool