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Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL)

Inclusive Education

Inclusive Education has been a central area of development for IATL over the past five years. Areas of activity have included the following key activities:

  • Ensuring inclusivity underpins the ethos of IATL's module portfolio
  • Instigating a special call for IATL project funding on the theme of inclusivity
  • Being a collaborative partner in an inclusive education project with UCB
  • Contributing to Positive Pedagogies, funded by the Office for Students supporting part-time, commuter and distance learning students
  • Contributing to Potential Advantage, funded by the Office for Students aimed at improving the learning and supervisory experience of the PGR Community;
  • Contributing to the University of Warwick's Respect and Wellbeing Education with IATL being a key stakeholder in the Community Values Education Programme in collaboration with the Dean of Students’ Office.

IATL's Module Portfolio

The philosophies underpinning IATL’s modules aim to ensure our modules are inclusive to students no matter their home department with the assessments aiming to provide an equal opportunity for all students to succeed. IATL takes the following measures to ensure its modules are inclusive:

  • Module proposals undergo a detailed module approval process where the panel focuses specifically on ensuring that the module is inclusive to students from all departments both in curriculum content and proposed assessment methods.
  • Students are placed in interdisciplinary groups and provided with an inclusive and supportive environment so they can bring their own disciplinary experience to the discussion.
  • IATL seeks to enhance the quality and inclusivity of its provision through peer dialogue and support, co-creation, continuous feedback, and by placing transparent discussions at the core of its teaching and learning activities.

IATL's Project Funding

In 2022, IATL instigated a special call for proposals on the theme of Inclusive Education. This call, built on IATL’s long history of the support, development and sharing of inclusive teaching and learning, was open to staff and students, and supported the University’s Inclusive Education Model, which ‘includes immediate and long-term ambitions to achieve institutional and structural change' that will enable Warwick 'to deliver an education in which all students feel included and able to succeed.'

Seven inclusive education projects were supported, including one to develop a proposal on Anti-Racism and Anti-Racist Pedagogies in the Faculty of Arts and another which focused on stakeholder engagement to create content for a code of practice to support disabled students.

UCB Inclusive Education Project

IATL is a collaborative partner in the Inclusion Education project with UCB with funding from WIHEA. This project draws upon inclusive pedagogies developed at IATL, such as Open-space Learning to share practice between HEIs.

This project will bring together teaching and learning communities at University College Birmingham and Warwick to share practice in inclusive education, with a specific focus on co-creative and experiential learning. Through a series of hybrid workshops, co-facilitated by IATL's Director (Professor Jonathan Heron), staff will learn from each other’s approaches to inclusive learning, practical teaching and co-created curricula.

The workshops will be open to a range of pedagogic approaches and subject areas, but the clear focus will be inclusive education, involving students as co-creators. By the end of the project, the team will have facilitated at least three workshops for around 50 teaching and learning colleagues across the two institutions and offered practical examples (through online case studies) in relation to inclusive education.

Positive Pedagogies Project

IATL contributed to an OfS-funded project, entitled Positive Digital Practices, which involved a collaboration with the University of Warwick, Open University, the University of Bradford, and Student Minds. The University of Warwick (with involvement from IATL), led the positive project pedagogies project, establishing inclusive, compassionate practices in technology-enhanced learning that supported mental well-being.

Part of this project specifically looked at inclusive practices to support students' sense of belonging and wellbeing within the learning setting. Mature, part-time, commuter and distance-learning students often experience feelings of isolation and lack of integration within their learning community. The project report identified the learning environment as a crucial place where inclusion can be fostered and championed through teaching practices, by i) promoting problem- and team-based learning among mature students as a means to generate cohesion, and ii) identifying with students suitable pedagogic practices that can be adapted and applied across modules and learning opportunities to foster an enhanced sense of belonging.

Potential Advantage

IATL's Elena Riva, together with Louise Gracia (WBS), co-led a cross-institutional pedagogic intervention entitled 'Potential Advantage' aimed at improving the supervisory experience of Warwick's PGR community. The OfS-funded project took place between 2018-20 with Warwick receiving an investment of £276,000. Interventions, such as workshops and activities, were offered to over 100 PGR students and used problem-based and team-based practices to solve issues affecting their learning and well-being.

The national importance of these pioneering participatory pedagogy practices was featured in the THE, while an article assessing the value of using co-creation to tackle common issues experienced within the supervisory relationship was published in the Journal of Further and Higher Education.

Community Values Education Programme

IATL's Director, Professor Jonathan Heron, was the Academic Lead for the Community Values Education project, initially co-led with the Dean of Students' Office, established to develop activities and resources to promote a strong values-driven community at the University of Warwick.

The aim was to develop an environment that promoted equality of opportunity, values diversity, and where students and staff could work and study free from discrimination and harassment. Initial work included developing the Active Bystander Intervention Workshops and a range of values-based teaching activities.

Cruising Utopia: Queer Pedagogies in Higher Education

In July 2019, IATL presented an Open-Space Learning Workshop addressing issues of diversity and inclusion in relation to Universities as 'Open-Spaces' for all.

The workshop, presented by Professor Jonathan Heron (Director, IATL), Cath Lambert (Convenor of IATL 'Ways of Knowing' module) and Alyson Campbell (VCA, University of Melbourne), featured provocations on radically inclusive teaching practices drawing upon the rich tapestry of queer and feminist pedagogy within (and beyond) university contexts.