The Inclusive Instruction Working Group is a cross-disciplinary community based at the University of California, Irvine for participants to collaboratively learn about and develop inclusive teaching practices. Conceiving of inclusive instruction broadly, we seek to discuss how faculty and graduate instructors/teaching assistants can design and practice pedagogical strategies that create learning environments accessible to students across a wide range of abilities, coming from diverse cultural, class, and racial/ethnic backgrounds, and with differing previous educational experiences.
Our first project was a 5-week series of discussions focused on Cultivating Habits of Accessible Teaching. In these sessions created specifically for graduate Teaching Assistants, we focused on how varying forms of disability may affect students’ engagement with normative modes of instruction. Drawing on scholarship on inclusive teaching and learning, as well as on a survey circulated to UCI students who identify as having a disability that affects their participation in and experience of education, this group discussed both general and disciplinary-specific strategies for teaching in ways that are inclusive to a wide variety of students. This series met in May 2019. Find out more information here.
Check out our future event, Thinking Creatively to Reach Learners in the Classroom and Beyond (Workshop). The Inclusive Instruction Working Group welcomes ideas and proposals for future workshops, presentations, or other events related to creating inclusive learning environments. Email the facilitators to share your ideas.