Sector context
What does it mean to create learning and teaching environments that support our students to thrive, and what can institutions do to put this into practice at scale? These are considerations that are crucial to key institutional priorities such as student wellbeing, retention and outcomes. But these questions may seem daunting - meaning the institutions struggle to navigate them.
Advance HE’s new Inclusive Learning and Teaching Framework, part of our Essential Frameworks for Enhancing Student Success series, is evidence-based and designed to help institutions to navigate these challenges, to create learning and teaching environments that are high quality and suitable for a wide range of students, and that treat them like they matter.
Rules to follow?
Static rules, processes and policies are designed to standardise approaches and provide consistency at scale. These may be seen as tools to ensure fairness and that everyone is treated the same way. But often they are used to dismiss inclusive possibilities, rather than being seen as barriers to inclusion in themselves. This reinforces cultures of learning and teaching that only work for a subset of students, leaving the rest to struggle in an unsuitable environment, raise concerns that may be dismissed out of hand, or leave.
It is not only in the creation of these rules, but also in how they are used, that are important components of an inclusive culture. For example, who do we design rules for? Who do we enforce them for, and who do we make exceptions for? What do we do in situations where following a policy or process will result in an outcome that negatively impacts a student simply because their context wasn’t imagined when the policy was designed?
Making space for the unknown
The Inclusive Learning and Teaching Framework is designed to support educators and institutions to proactively look out for the ways in which various habitual environments suit some students more than others. Because it isn’t possible to predict every student context in advance, we centre the practice of making space for the unknown. In the framework, this is represented by a blank segment in each dial.
The development of a conceptual understanding of inclusive learning and teaching is fundamental for meaningful work in this area. The framework takes a compassionate approach, encouraging critical reflection around our assumptions of what is truly “non-negotiable” within learning and teaching in order to enable openness to inclusive choices and non-judgemental facilitation (Spaeth, 2024). This is informed by a range of theories, including relational pedagogies (Gravett, Taylor & Fairchild, 2021), compassionate pedagogies (Waddington, 2016), universal design for learning (CAST, 1984), backward design (Wiggins & McTigue, 1998), constructive alignment (Biggs, 1999), and conceptions of the “ideal” (Wong & Chiu, 2019) and “implied” student (Ulriksen, 2009).
Putting things into practice
In this framework, we encourage institutions to prioritise creating conditions for change – to think about what it means to have an inclusive culture, to have approaches to learning and teaching that scaffold high quality learning and teaching, and that create conducive environments to learning and teaching. An overarching component of this is to build in adaptation from the start, meaning that staff are empowered to make necessary changes without having to navigate processes that act as barriers to inclusion.
Inclusive learning and teaching is as an approach that centres critical reflection, not only in relation to key issues within disciplines, but also around the ways in which we experience learning, our approaches to learning and teaching and the structural elements of our institutions. By welcoming this critical reflection from students and staff, and using it to shape our practices, we can achieve several outcomes: creating agile institutions which serve the needs of staff and students; empowering staff to make contextual choices; and supporting students to continually develop the skills to know what an optimum level of challenge is for them, and what will enable them to thrive.
With this in place, staff will be equipped to make everyday decisions that can respond to student need. There may be practical considerations to take into account, but supporting student self-actualisation means not questioning the legitimacy of their needs. Instead, institutions can support staff to question the legitimacy of institutional structures, building towards adaptations that create better, more inclusive environments.
Dr Elliott Spaeth is a member of Advance HE's Knowledge and Innovation team, and is available for consultancy with your organisation. Find out more.
Thanks go to Professor Stella Jones-Devitt, Staffordshire University, the co-author of the framework. The framework has been developed from the findings of the forthcoming literature review led by Stella and Alan Donnelly, Sheffield Hallam University. Their contribution through summits and the review has emphasised the importance of this critical area for student success.