We recognise the legal and regulatory duty of educators to maximise success by proactively identifying and removing barriers to learning, participation and engagement. We intentionally create positive, engaging and socially cohesive learning environments that ensure all students can feel a sense of personal value and belonging.
We strive to remove barriers to learning, celebrate diversity and create a sense of community and a sense of belonging for all students. This includes a commitment to mainstream traditional reasonable adjustments to ensure that individual adjustments become the exception and not the rule. The values that we demonstrate and embed in our learning environments are those that our graduates will take with them into society.
Inclusive education acknowledges the need to remove barriers for all students. We strive to mainstream reasonable adjustments where appropriate and offer a range of reasonable adjustments for students with a diagnosed disability where mainstreaming is not yet possible.
Proactively addressing the needs of our diverse student body and planning accordingly.
Ensuring that all learners can flourish and achieve their full potential free from prejudiced attitudes and unlawful discrimination.
Designing a curriculum that is fully representative of diverse student characteristics, lived experiences, and cultural perspectives.
Ensuring teaching and learning environments, both physical and online, are safe spaces that respect individuality, empower student voice.
Assessment can be flash points that cause unnecessary stress, anxiety, self-doubt, and fatigue. Therefore, assessment is designed at programme level to be purposefully diverse and flexible.
Decolonising the curriculum
Inclusive education ensures the student journey and experience for all Keele students - including its minority group students – is optimally beneficial and productive. Keele teaching is proud to be research-led, and therefore we promote and engage with decolonising its curriculum, its research, and even its libraries. We are decolonising within our classrooms and beyond. Decolonising matters because knowledge (construction and legitimisation) in higher education has for too long been dominated by just a small section of elites, who come from a relatively homogenous background (predominantly male, white, middle- or upper-class), making education exclusive and excluding. Decolonising involves an interrogation of what constitutes knowledge, who is authorised to validate it, what type of knowledge is excluded, where knowledge is produced, and by whom. Decolonising involves ensuring we hear from diverse parts of the world, from diverse voices and groups, and that we teach and research in ways which are less discriminatory and more genuinely collaborative and co-creative.
Our approach to Decolonising the curriculum (DTC) has been a joint effort from students and staff alike. Our approach to Decolonising the Curriculum (DTC) has been a joint effort from students and staff. The University-led plan has been overseen by Chair of the Race Equality Charter Self-Assessment team, Dr Lisa Lau.
Toolkits for inclusive education
To support academic and professional services colleagues with implementing aspects of the IEF we have introduced IEF Toolkits including diagnostic self-assessment, relevant literature, and examples of internal and external good practice. Toolkit resources will evolve over time as we collate inclusive practice stories from across the University, and as we all embrace and aspire to be 'Inclusive by Design'. Working in collaboration with Glenn Hussey (Senior Lecturer & Dean of Education, Natural Sciences) and Nicola Keeling (Disability Support Manager, Disability Support and Inclusion) the IEF Toolkits have been designed alongside various Codes of Practice (CoPs), Tables of Expectations (ToEs), Benchmarks, and Guides that support inclusive practice across Keele University.
Toolkit links
If you have questions concerning the IEF Toolkits, please contact the Keele Institute for Innovation and Teaching Excellence (KIITE) via kiite@keele.ac.uk
