Common Terms
Inclusivity in the context of higher education, teaching and learning (T&L) can be described as the practices used to promote equal opportunities to every student and reduce barriers to learning and participation. Inclusion means that every student is valued irrespective of their background, life experiences, personal and protected characteristics. The characteristics of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation are all protected by the Equality Act of 2010.
An inclusive learning environment is one where students and staff see themselves represented, and feel safe to share their thoughts and ideas or to raise issues or concerns. It is one in which different individual needs are recognised, and in which barriers to effective work and study are removed.
Ableism is a form of discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities. Often an unconscious social construct that people with disabilities are inferior and require fixing, or ‘helping’. Ableist language, systems, environments, and processes start from a place of defining people by their disability, and not as a person first.
Accessibility involves designing and adopting systems to optimise access. In education this involves reducing and overcoming, where reasonable, the barriers to accessibility that might occur in:
- Digital content
- T&L activities and spaces.
- Assessment and feedback.
Accessibility is about designing out barriers to engagement and participation.
Allyship means being willing to act with and advocate for others in pursuit of ending oppression and creating equality. It means: transferring the benefits of your privilege to those who lack it; amplifying voices of the oppressed before your own; acknowledging that even though you feel pain, the conversation is not about you; standing up, even when you feel scared; owning your mistakes and de-centring yourself; and understanding that your education is up to you and no one else.
Diversity refers to the range of identities that exist in a group of people. It is the things that make each of us unique, including (but not limited to) our culture, experiences, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, social class, physical ability or attributes, religious beliefs or ethical values system: all of the things that make us who we are.
Equality is fair and lawful treatment of students and staff. It means bringing about fairness through provision of equal learning opportunities for all students, irrespective of their backgrounds, beliefs, values and attitudes, and any protected characteristics. The Equality Act (2010) seeks to protect students from discrimination and harassment based on protected characteristics.
Equity is the promotion of equality of opportunity between different groups. In education, this involves taking appropriate and reasonable measures that are responsive to the individual needs of each student to enable them to engage fully in their studies.
Decolonising the curriculum (DtC) is about ensuring the higher education curriculum is socially just. As an ongoing journey, to decolonise universities is to question the dominant narratives within academic disciplines and to interrogate accepted teaching and learning practices. What can this look like in practice? Decolonising your classroom might involve ensuring module content is diverse and representative of Global South and ethnic minority perspectives, issues and scholarship; enhancing student choice in assessment; and including more opportunities for students to share their thoughts and critique hierarchies and established discourses.
Intersectionality, coined by coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, is a prism to understand interconnections between different social categories and personal characteristics that make each of us unique, but can also create overlapping forms of discrimination or place an individual in a disadvantageous situation.
Acknowledging intersectionality helps us to understand the social position(s) that all students present. It transcends simple categories and enables us to recognise and work with the combination of factors that shape student identity, their experiences and perception of higher education.
Unconscious or implicit bias: Unconscious or implicit bias refers to a bias in ourselves that we are unaware of, and which happens outside of our control. It is a bias that happens automatically and is triggered by our brain making quick judgments and assessments of people and situations, influenced by our own background, cultural environment and personal experiences.
Bias can influence many aspects of teaching and learning, including curriculum design, course content, style of teaching delivery, and assessment and feedback practices. It can lead to prejudiced thinking, use of labels, or use of stereotypical language. We all need to recognise and acknowledge our biases and find ways to mitigate their impact on our behaviour and decisions.