A Guide to Inclusive Curriculum and Educational Practice

1. Introduction 

This guide has been developed through a strategic project called “Curriculum Enhancement”. This project is part of the enabling plan for the Queen Mary University of London's Strategy 2030. The Curriculum Enhancement project ran during 2021 and 2022 and was composed of three workstreams. The workstreams were Assessment and Feedback, Graduate Attributes, and the Inclusive Curriculum. The work on Inclusive Curriculum has involved many discussions with a wide range of stakeholders on this complex and important topic.  We are grateful to all the contributors, please find the workstream membership in section 10. 

This guide is also available to download Inclusive Curriculum and Educational Practice guide  [PDF 1,098KB] 

2. Principles of Inclusive Practice

Inclusion is about the right of all students to gain access to the same learning opportunities at university, and that all students should be provided with the support they need to enable them to achieve and to be valued for who they are.

Drawing on Queen Mary University of London's Strategy 2030, to “be inclusive and maintain our proud tradition of nurturing and supporting talented students and staff regardless of their background and circumstance”, curriculum, and teaching and assessment practices must be “progressive, inclusive” and be “always devised with the student at the centre” (Queen Mary University of London, 2020).

To develop the inclusive pedagogic practices needed to achieve these goals, educators should start by recognising that they “have the opportunity to begin creating and nurturing environments where multiple forms of knowledge, identities, locations, and ways of knowing hold credence” (Osei-Kofi et al., 2008; Apert et al., 2017). This is a shift away from an understanding of inclusivity that centres around student deficits and refocuses the conversation on individual students’ abilities and needs, and critically evaluates educational and institutional practices to identify those that may alienate certain students. To continue to devise a curriculum that centres the student as a partner in knowledge construction, inclusive pedagogy embraces a wide range of differences and is attuned to the impact of pedagogical initiatives on individual learners.

3. What is Inclusive Educational Practice?

Ensuring an inclusive educational practice requires taking several factors into account, including the planning process, the learning environment (be it in-person, online, or blended), what materials will be used, and the methods of instruction.

Salazar et al. (2010) developed a framework for inclusive excellence with five dimensions.

A diagram illustrating the five dimensions of Salazar et al. (2010) framework for inclusive excellence.

At Queen Mary, we considered the education environment and developed eight principles to support an inclusive curriculum. An inclusive curriculum would:

3.1 Empower all students to thrive in diverse environments 

We aim to develop graduates with a global outlook who will flourish in diverse multilingual communities locally and around the world (and who can make a difference to those communities).

Our graduates should recognise and respect their own, and each other's, individual worth.

We offer our students of all backgrounds, cultures and identities a wide range of critical cultural and intercultural encounters both within programmes and in broader community engagement.

3.2 Co-create with students to enrich the learning environment 

Students and staff work in partnership on curriculum development and/or co-curricular areas to create "a collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways" (Cook-Sather et al., 2014, pp. 6–7).

Co-creating involves shared decision-making and commitment, encourages respectful interactions between students and staff and fosters student engagement. We think students can really help staff to think about what an inclusive learning environment looks like.

3.3 Diversify the curriculum and broaden intellectual horizons so that students can see themselves reflected and reach beyond themselves 

We encourage students to think about their own experiences and how these intersect with the intellectual material they encounter (Rendon et al, 2004).

We aim to acknowledge and address structural inequalities by including diverse voices, perspectives and identities so that our curriculum is exciting, challenging and relevant.

Our graduates should be open-minded, confident about engaging with contrary perspectives, and responsive to feedback.

3.4 Enable student engagement and success through inclusive pedagogy 

Traditionally, when discussing an inclusive curriculum or diversifying the curriculum, there seems to be an emphasis on content; making "what is taught" more diverse and inclusive. Inclusive pedagogy relates to "how we teach", therefore, focusing the inclusion lens onto the teaching approach, regardless of the content.

3.5 Develop students' confidence to participate in disciplinary discourse and community 

We want our students to be able to engage in, and contribute to, disciplinary conversations and communities.

Language is a critical tool for developing thinking and understanding in the disciplines. Learning a discipline or subject means learning a disciplinary language and ways of thinking supported by it. None of us are native speakers of Science and Engineering language, or any other discipline, even if it is expressed through the medium of languages in which we may or may not be fluent. Therefore, a powerful way of dismantling barriers to academic inclusion is to focus on decoding disciplinary language and making it accessible.

We build students' confidence and enable them to foster connections by including them in disciplinary communities of practice and specialities. 

3.6 Reflect on our language to promote an inclusive learning environment 

We aim to be welcoming and to communicate with accuracy, care and respect throughout the learning environment. Using appropriate language can help to reduce fear, othering and feelings of exclusion.

We recognise that language is constantly changing and evolving and that sometimes we inadvertently make mistakes or misinterpret what others say to us.

3.7 Value student feedback 

We welcome feedback and engagement from students about their learning experiences. We recognise that "engaged student learning is positively linked with learning gain and achievement" (Healey et al., 2014: 7).

We encourage students to tell us what they think so that we can reflect on what works and what doesn’t and act together on what we want to improve (Larrivee, 2000).

3.8 Encourage all students through inclusive advising and mentoring 

Effective and inclusive advising plays a key role in supporting our students with a range of different backgrounds and experiences to succeed. We recognise that not all students come to Queen Mary fully equipped to take on academic study. Inclusive advising can support all students "to attain academic success and achieve desired qualifications" (Smith, 2005: 45).

Peer mentoring fosters a sense of belonging in new students, eases the transition into university and supports student engagement by means of "collective sharing of knowledge through facilitated group discussion" (Spedding et al., 2017: 145).

4. What is Inclusive Curriculum Design?

Inclusive curriculum design aims to support the learning of all students. This includes measures that may be put in place to support students with specific learning needs, or those in protected characteristic groups. But rather than treating these students any differently from their peers, inclusive curriculum design seeks to make positive changes to the curriculum for the benefit of all students. For example, if an educator is providing slides in advance of session or written notes for students with a specific learning difficulty, then they might consider also providing these for all students.

Drawn from the Advance HE inclusive curriculum support materials, you could use these prompts as a starting point for reviewing the inclusivity of your curriculum design.  Below the prompts are suggestions of practical changes you could make to curriculum design to enhance inclusivity.

For more information on inclusive instructional design, including subject-specific please visit the AdvanceHE resource webpage. 

4.1 Inclusive Curriculum: Could the following impact on students on your programme/module? 

1. Assumptions about students’ prior knowledge.
2. Timetabling.
3. The use or non-use of technology.
4. Staff knowledge and awareness of cultural differences.
5. The variety, or lack of variety of delivery and assessment techniques.
6. The choice and use of field trips/excursions/practicals.
7. The choice of texts, case studies, examples.

4.2 Examples of interventions to make the curricula more inclusive:

1. Provide opportunities for students to work with diverse and mixed groups.
2. Develop programme/module content that covers contributions by people from different genders, sexual orientations, racial and cultural identities, and geographic and socio-economic communities.
3. Develop programme/module content that covers multiple perspectives and theoretical standpoints.
4. Provide opportunities for the sharing of the diverse experiences, voices, and learning of students.
5. Write student learning outcomes that reflect engagement with equality and diversity.
6. Explore own identity beliefs, cultural assumptions, and unconscious biases as part of class preparation.
7. Address own potential biases about module-related material during class.
8. Be mindful of own personal educational preferences and their influence on module construction.

5. What is Inclusive Assessment Design? 

Inclusive assessment refers to the ‘design and use of fair and effective assessment methods and practices that enable all students to demonstrate to their full potential what they know, understand and can do’ (Hockings, 2010, p.34). It is based on the principle that all students should have a way of demonstrating that they have achieved the learning outcomes of their module or programme and does not make assumptions about the needs of certain students; instead, it considers the strengths and weaknesses of all students (NUS, 2011).

Inclusive assessment (Miller, 2016) involves applying sound assessment design principles and making assessment practices fair and appropriate for all learners using:

• a variety of valid assessment types and approaches.
• explicit preparation and explanation of assessment formats, marking schemes and assessment criteria.
• choice of assessment method.
• balanced timing (across semesters rather than all at the end).
• non-discriminatory language and diverse examples.

Assessment and feedback toolkits have been created to help you design a new piece of assessment or review an existing assessment design. In line with the Queen Mary Assessment Strategy 2020 and Queen Mary Values (Inclusive, Proud, Ambitious, Collegial, Ethical), these aim to support educators to design innovative, inclusive, and authentic assessment which is practical for learning.

6. What is Critical Reflection on the Curriculum? 

• calls on educators to make “judgements about whether professional activity is equitable, just, and respectful of persons or not”. It is used to place personal and professional actions within “wider social-historical and politico-cultural contexts” (Hatton & Smith,1995).
• is used to unpack the “mental habits, biases, and presuppositions that tend to close off new ways of perceiving and interpreting our experiences”. Without critical reflection we risk staying “trapped in unexamined judgments, interpretations, assumptions, and expectations” (Larrivee, 2000).
• is the first step to designing inclusive learning environments which are adaptive rather than adapted. All individuals have the capacity to use a range of different ways to process information and that these cognitive styles can be developed (Evans & Waring, 2015).
• on the curriculum, educational, and assessment practices, is not a one-time project that responds to a particular call to action. As the needs of our learners are ever evolving, so too should our development as educators when it comes to critically evaluating our practice with regards to inclusion.

Care is taken within this approach to ensure:

• authenticity in design of curriculum including assessment,
• agency - encouraging practitioners to critically reflect on their own practice, self-understanding and acknowledging individual perspectives of education,
• inclusivity and accessibility - build on learners’ previous personal educational histories; and
• modelling of good practice – using and modelling appropriate pedagogical tools to explore specific dimensions of practice to make learning more explicit.

Contact Us

To explore this topic further, or to request bespoke resources or training for your department, group or programme from the Queen Mary Academy, please contact us qmacademy@qmul.ac.uk