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 London South Bank University (LSBU) as an outcome of this summit.
This project aimed to gather evidence of existing good practice in inclusive curriculum design and delivery at London South Bank University. It aimed to disseminate this practice and to build upon it. An important output will be continued training and support for those designing and delivering programmes to ensure sustainability.
LSBU is engaged in a five-year initiative that will create a more inclusive curriculum. The Inclusive Curriculum and Accessibility Project funded by the University’s Learning & Teaching Innovation Scheme is a university-wide initiative that will work towards our vision statements for learning and teaching of:
- developing and sustaining confident and capable independent learners;
- an exemplary record for widening participation and student employment
The key driver for this work is the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) however the project moves beyond the ‘removal of barriers’ to put forward an inclusive approach to curriculum as advantageous to the learning community as a whole.
Using an appreciative enquiry approach existing good practice within the organisation will be identified disseminated and enhanced. This approach works with the positive freeing participants from the more common paradigm of identifying problems and addressing the negative (see links below for further information).
Key stakeholders; students academics and heads of department are being invited to share positive experiences of inclusive practice and asked to ‘imagine’ how this can be main even better. There will be representation from all faculties in each stakeholder group.
Individual interviews and focus groups are being used with responses recorded and transcribed. Narrative analysis will then be used to identify common themes and feed into the development of training that aims to achieve the ‘imagined’ better practice.
The process is underway with individual student interviews complete and staff focus groups planned.
