Inclusive Teaching Strategies S20

Inclusive teaching strategies are those that strive to serve the needs of all training participants, regardless of individual backgrounds or identities, and that support the full engagement of all participants with every part of the training content, regardless of individual ability.

One set of these strategies focuses on incorporating diverse perspectives into training content. This involves:

• Using resources and materials created by people who represent a variety of gender, racial, and ethnic identities.
• Offering various ethnic and racial perspectives in the human examples used in oral presentation, written materials, and visual images.
• Avoiding tokenism of individuals or groups of people (making just a perfunctory or symbolic effort to include them)

The other grouping seeks to create an inclusive and nurturing training climate in which all attendees feel individually valued and are comfortable participating in all of the training activities and learning experiences. This is achieved by:

• Learning what you can about their backgrounds and adapting your training plan accordingly.
• Establishing clear ground rules and expectations for individual behaviors during the training.
• Applying Universal Design principles to all areas of the training to accommodate learners (including but not limited to individuals with: visual or auditory impairments, physical limitations, varying levels of speaking, reading, writing ability, etc.)

Watch the video below on Universal Design, then complete the Inclusive Teaching Strategies ?Handout (page 10). After watching the video, reflect on this content and complete the ThinkSpot.

Resources

Yale: Inclusive Teaching Strategies – http://ctl.yale.edu/InclusiveTeachingStrategies