The widening participation agenda and equality legislation have contributed to an increasingly diverse student population in higher education. To reflect on this and explore strategies to build and improve on work in this area the HEA held a summit meeting on Inclusive Learning and Teaching.
This reflective paper outlines the commitment and initiatives undertaken by Liverpool John Moores University as an outcome of this summit.
LJMU aims to raise awareness of an inclusive approach to teaching and learning; to enable staff to act on their awareness in order to develop and deliver ‘inclusive’ programmes and to develop a toolkit to help staff with curriculum design throughout the University beyond the scope of the project.
They are working with the Faculty of Health and Applied Social Science staff in order to raise awareness to develop inclusive teaching and learning and to develop processes that will help other staff across the University with equality and diversity. There is a planned programme of awareness raising activities – workshops focus groups with staff and students and discussions with programme teams. The focus groups aim to develop an understanding of the current student experience and to identify effective practice.
They will be piloting a new approach to induction for diversity and equality a discursive approach to an equality impact assessment for programme design enhancing our disability strategy and collecting more data on the enrolment form in order to anlyse all areas of equality and diversity.
The discursive approach should help raise awareness in itself and provide a non-threatening approach to equality impact assessment. Staff are able to consider data in a supportive environment and discuss whether any changes in practice would be useful and to share ideas and suggestions with other.
It is core to the LJMU mission and LTA strategy that progress is made in developing inclusive teaching and learning in order to enhance the student experience and student success and to promote our reputation as a friendly student-centred University that is able to add value to students.
