Supporting First Year Students: Inclusive Teaching
Incoming students are accustomed to the language and practice of inclusion and equity and will expect their classrooms to promote inclusion. A sense of belonging has been demonstrated to be among the most important factors in student persistence.
Inclusive teaching:
- Takes into account the diverse needs and backgrounds of all students
- Creates an equitable environment where all students belong, have access to learn, are engaged and feel valued
- Includes and appreciates diverse course materials, ideas and perspectives
When students feel like they belong they:
- Learn better, challenge themselves, participate, persist, and keep up
- Experience less conflict and are more equipped to follow it with dialogue
- Develop supportive relationships with instructors and each other
Create a supportive learning environment that promotes mutual accountability by:
- Adopting community agreements. They promote the notion of a classroom as a community of learners, support civility and honest exchange and encourage students to raise concerns before issues escalate.
- Communicating clearly using inclusive language. Pay attention to the everyday words and phrases you use and check if you’re unintentionally leaving anyone out. Take the time to explain acronyms and idioms that may be unfamiliar to students. Make sure you’re including everyone by using gender-inclusive phrases like, “Welcome, class,” instead of “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.”
- Getting to know your students as whole people. Students feel seen when faculty know their names (and how to pronounce them) and use their correct pronouns. When faculty take the time to understand what individual students need to do well in their classes, it makes a difference.
- Providing students multiple modes of engaging with the course material and demonstrating their knowledge. Being open about how students can show what they’ve learned, for example by letting them choose between creating a game, or writing a final paper, or proposing their own project, gives students autonomy, while catering to and honoring different learning needs and preferences.
- Overemphasizing structure. When syllabi and course assignments are structured in clear and consistent manners, everyone has the information they need, and it’s easier for students to stay on track.
- Welcoming diverse voices and experiences. Exposure to a broad range of social identities signals to students that they belong and have meaningful contributions.
- Continuously considering who’s missing and why. If there are barriers to inclusion in your discipline or field, talk about that.
- Committing to ongoing self-reflection. To foster learning environments that are intentionally inclusive, we need to develop and maintain an awareness of how our own identities, what we bring into the room, and our own inherent biases—alongside systemic inequities—affect student learning experiences.