Developing Inclusive Learning and Teaching

University of Sunderland

Developing inclusive learning and teaching

Judith A. Kuit, Peter Smith, Judith Hills and Gail Sanders

Abstract of work being undertaken

The key activities which we intend to undertake within the timeframe of the programme are provided below.

We have undertaken a suite of activities to develop an inclusive learning and teaching culture including:

• Implementation of a new Academic Strategy and associated committee structure which has inclusivity at its heart.
• Launch of a University wide staff development activity based upon material purchased from Leeds Metropolitan University on Cultural Inclusivity and Hands-on Internationalisation. These booklets were provided to all our academic staff during Autumn 2009, alongside discussion and training sessions.
• Pilot staff development activities within one Faculty.
• A University Teaching and Learning conference to take place in July 2010.
• A regional conference on Diversity in the curriculum to take place in March 2010.

Institutional context and history/rationale for initiative

At the very beginning of the project at the first meeting held at the HE Academy in York the term inclusive was discussed. The term was interpreted by each project team in terms of what was relevant and individual to each institution.

Our team reflected on this and considered what it meant to us because inclusive has a very broad interpretation in the context of the University of Sunderland.

The University has long been acknowledged has being at the forefront of supporting a widening participation agenda but inclusivity to the University means more than just widening participation. Although we have a large number of widening participation students we also have a large number of international students who are culturally diverse. We have many students who declare a disability, or who are part-time or work-based or off-campus or distance students. The term inclusive could, and does, relate to any of these categories and still be pertinent to us. At the same time we didn’t wish to separate out any individual group of students and class them as being different. As a result we decided that in our terms being inclusive was about including everyone regardless of who or what they are so inclusive for one means inclusive for all. This definition is reinforced by the University’s Academic Strategy: Enhancing the Student Experience. This was first developed in 2008 and has re-affirmed our institutional commitment to listen to, and hear, the student voice and to provide all students with the best possible inclusive learning experience. It is a student-centric strategy which impacts on all areas of student life not just academic issues.

Some of the objectives from the Academic Strategy are particularly relevant in this context:

• Promote equality of opportunity, irrespective of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, faith and socio-economic profile.
• Engender a culture which values our diverse student community.
• Listen to the student voice and engage with students in a supportive manner.

The strategy is reflected in the University’s policies, structures and modus operandi and impacts across the whole of the University. For example:

• Student experience committees in the centre and in each Faculty.
• Associate Dean in each Faculty with responsibility for the student experience. Staff-student liaison committees in all areas.
• Students are included on all academic committees.
• Equality and Diversity Policy.
• International Level 0 programme/English for Academic Purposes for overseas students.
• MA in Special Needs teaching.
• Involvement in other HE Academy projects on Disabled students.

There is also a strong commitment from academic and service staff to support and promote inclusivity. For example:

• Inclusive assessment practices (Irons and Newton, 2008).
• Setting up cross-cultural peer assisted learning sets (Cathcart et al, 2006), inclusivity and music (CETL: Music and Inclusivity Hills).
• Establishing a pre-entry scheme to induct new widening participation students into university life.
• SLANG Sunderland language and news group for international students which supports international students working in the local community (Devlin).
• Comenius project, which aims to enhance the teaching and learning of Roma pupils (Gregson).
• Asylum seekers project.
• FDTL5 project Engaging Students With Assessment Feedback: What Works? (With Oxford Brookes University)
• ELLI: The Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory in HE project (with Northumbria University).
• Development of a work-based learning framework for part-time students.

Although the University has made this commitment at the institutional level, work remains to embed inclusive learning and teaching approaches across our Faculties. This project will pilot initiatives which will take this agenda forward.

Strategy

As we reflected on our strategy for developing the inclusivity initiatives, we were mindful that they had to be both do-able in the context of the project life-span but also sustainable beyond the life-time of the project. We also acknowledged that there may be staffing issues in terms of the work commitments of the team outside of the project because this was an additional task for us and it was unusual for us to work together on one project as a team. This proved to be a strong determinant of the approach we adopted and this was critical to the success of the project because at the end of the project every member of the team has a different university role to that at the start of the project.

We decided that we would pilot an approach in one Faculty in the University and provide support and staff development to the staff in the various departments which make up the Faculty. The choice of Faculty was made easy by the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media being a core member of the project team. This Faculty represents a quarter of the academic activity of the University and this made the pilot more valid.

In addition to this we had intended to develop case studies and exemplars of good practice on inclusivity which we hoped to disseminate across the University. However, at about this time, we were contacted by Leeds Metropolitan University who had produced a number of teaching and learning booklets designed to be used by their own staff but were also available for purchase under licence for other universities to use and to customise. Two of these were particularly relevant to the project, Hands-on Internationalisation and Cultural Inclusivity. We decided that as we lacked the time to develop our own exemplars and these were readily available we should purchase the licence to use these booklets and customise them to own use and provide to all members of academic staff.

Activities completed or currently in progress

A workshop on developing an inclusive curriculum was undertaken in September 2009 at the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media conference which was attended by all Faculty staff. This was followed up by staff development sessions on inclusivity being offered to teams within the Faculty during 2009/10. These follow up sessions were not deemed as mandatory as we had no desire to impose them but have been requested after discussions with subject-based team leaders. To date the areas of Arts and of Design within the Faculty have had the staff development workshops.

These workshops concentrated on the idea of an ideal practitioner and an ideal student and as such are transferable to any subject area. Staff were asked firstly to identify the particular characteristics of a practitioner in their specific subject area. This was followed by identifying the particular characteristics of an ideal successful graduate in that subject. Staff then considered what their students typically looked like and asked to reflect on how they could transform a typical student to an ideal graduate. These characteristics were backed up by evidence from research undertaken by their subject-centre on student characteristics. This simple approach stimulated great discussion and reflection on the issue of developing an inclusive curriculum to produce ideal graduates.

The two Leeds Metropolitan University booklets have been copied and in October 2009 an individual copy of each were given to every member of academic staff in the University. They are also routinely given to all new staff and to part-time visiting lecturers.

Key successes or achievements

When the project first began, we predicted that if our initiatives were successful then we would see an increase in applications, recruitment, retention, completion and employment of diverse learners. This year we have seen such an increase in student numbers but attributing the increase to this project would be unreliable and it is clearly too soon to demonstrate any effect on future employability but we would hope that our Alumini would be able to advise us with this in future. We would hope that the qualitative comments which will arise in future iterations of the NSS will also provide some evidence of impact of the project.

One of the unpredicted outcomes of the project has been that the University will be hosting in the Spring of 2010, a regional teaching and learning conference with the theme of diversity. This conference which has been developed, organised and supported by the educational developers (including members of the project team) from the five regional universities: Durham; Newcastle; Northumbria; Sunderland; Teesside. Several of the staff from Sunderland are making presentations on their activities in promoting diversity at this conference and will be able to disseminate their findings across the region.

Challenges that have been overcome

It was apparent at the beginning of this project that there was no additional resource provided by the University or by the HE Academy to undertake this project and that although the work was an important part of the University’s Academic Strategy it still required considerable effort for the work to be undertaken in addition to existing commitments.

Some of the changes in the academic roles of the team members alluded to earlier were predictable especially with one colleague whose secondment would end during the lifetime of the project so our planning of activities had to be carefully considered if it was to be do-able. Fortunately we had a small amount of budget left because of staffing changes and the affordances provided by being able to use the booklets written by another university freed up valuable time to concentrate on the staff development.

The perpetual challenge with staff development is that staff desire development which is meaningful to them in the context of their subject. This tends to lead to poor attendance at centrally provided generic staff development sessions which they perceive as being irrelevant. This is a persistent challenge to staff development providers in many areas. The way in which we addressed this was to use the generic staff development material but with subject-specific examples. In this way staff can see how their colleagues in other universities or in this case the subject-centres, have approached the same problem in the context of the subject.

Another way in which to make the staff development session more meaningful to the staff, was to use the actual qualitative responses relating to their students from the National Student Survey.

Future plans

Evaluation of the effectiveness of the staff development workshops will be undertaken during 2010 so that they may be incorporated into the core staff development programme of 2010/11. The outcomes of the evaluation will also be used to inform the staff development at times of new programme approval and the review of existing programmes.

The University has a HE Academy accredited postgraduate programme of study in teaching and learning in HE which is mandatory for all new inexperienced members of academic staff. The outcomes of this project will inform the teaching on this programme from 2010/11.

Reflecting back

Reflecting back on the project, there is probably not much that we would have done differently because our expectations were both modest and pragmatic. The nature of the University and the type of students that we attract means that Sunderland has very inclusive practices already. We try to ensure the best possible learning experience for all of our students and endeavour to provide learning opportunities for all. The work of the project added some extra value to the existing good practice within the University but the activities involved would probably have taken place without the project.

Lessons for other institutions

The key enablers of the work were:

• Senior staff support for the work of the project.
• Audiences targeted with subject-specific staff development.
• Real responses from the NSS personalised the staff development.
• An Academic Strategy which was linked to practice.
• Links between the strategy and the committee and management structure.