These pages are intended for relative beginners. It is intended to provide a quick start on the broad considerations and also a gateway to other resources and projects.
Dilemmas not problems
Though each of these areas is discussed in turn, it’s critical to recognise that inclusive education is not a question of ‘solving problems’ or ticking boxes; there is no point at which you have ensured your support of learning has reached a point of completion.
Broad Principles of inclusion
Always assume by default that multiple factors apply to any student.
- For instance, ‘intersectional’ was coined as a term for legal discussions to illustrate the particular difficulties encountered by black women. Measures to protect black people tended to favour men, and measures to protect women tended to protect white women; neither properly captured the particular circumstances affecting black women. This principle obviously applies to many possible overlaps: a black person with a hidden disability is much more likely to not be taken seriously, for instance.
Social justice matters
It is tempting to focus only on sorting out what goes in ‘in your classroom’ (which is a good start) but do also factor in that students can have had quite a fight to get to the classroom; the trans student in a wheelchair may well have had an exhausting journey on a busy bus where they encountered audibly muttered prejudice after having to argue to get the wheelchair space on the bus at all, only to find that the ‘accessible’ room for their lecture is an hour away from the nearest toilet. These things are rarely under your control but doing your best to accommodate them and understand what’s going on will at least stop it becoming worse.
Solutions help (nearly) everyone
- You don’t need to tackle every issue exhaustively. For the most part, a change in design and delivery of teaching will benefit multiple people who were previously being excluded.
You can’t do everything at once but do something
Broadly speaking, flexibility is going to be your best strategy; providing alternative ways to access materials (eg recording lectures) is a good first step.
Legal, moral, professional obligations
Legal
The Equality Act 2010 requires universities to take reasonable steps pre-emptively to avoid discriminating against students with protected characteristics. Complying with the law is a start but does not cover all considerations.
Moral
Higher education has a profound effect on the thinking and experience of a large proportion of society. If it effectively perpetuates rather than tackles prejudices and impediments, it becomes an active cause of those prejudices and impediments. Given the sector’s long-established role in improving society, it cannot ignore this responsibility.
Professional
Where once we defaulted to treating students as ‘all the same’, we have come more recently to recognise the extraordinary breadth of diversity among our students. Why would we not want that in our academic disciplines? It is often the case that it is specifically the students with protected characteristics who can bring their experience to bear on particular issues that have been overlooked, from seat belts not being appropriate for women (because men designed them) to disease not being diagnosed because only white people were considered.
These resources move between these three-fold obligations, sometimes emphasising one then moving into another. Though they can be teased apart to some extent, they cannot be separated from each other.
Protected characteristics
This short overview will explore how the ‘legal protected characteristics’ of the 2010 Equality Act apply to Higher Education and UCL.
It is against the law to discriminate against someone because of the following characteristics: