Co-creating inclusive learning experiences for diverse students
How might we create truly diverse learning experiences for Leeds students?
Harriet Boyd (she/her), Lecturer in Societal and Cultural Transformation in Dental Education, explains how inclusive teaching exists inside and outside the classroom and brings staff, students, and the local community closer together.
As part of our Curriculum Redefined work, the School of Dentistry is designing an inclusive curriculum that provides our students with the skills, support, and social awareness to prepare them for their future careers.
Diversifying the Curriculum
We are currently working on the ‘Diversifying the Curriculum Project’, in which we are building strong relationships with the wider Leeds community by encouraging students to deliver social responsibility projects. In these projects, students will work outside the classroom with hard-to-reach communities and deliver preventive dental advice to drug and alcohol centres, asylum groups and care homes. By participating in these projects during their studies, students learn first-hand about the social challenges preventing individuals from accessing dental care and are encouraged to work with empathy and compassion to break down these barriers.
As part of the project, we are also developing inclusive resources to prepare our students to work with diverse communities. However, accessing teaching materials that reflect a diverse patient group can be challenging inside the classroom. For example, when teaching students to identify problems such as oral cancers, most cases available to us through journals and literature are on white skin. We want to address this by developing resources with the medical and dental illustration team to support our students’ diagnostic skills and benefit our patients. We also plan to create ethical and clinical scenarios that feature patients with hidden characteristics, such as gender diversity, ethnicity, religion, or LGBTQ+. These resources will be embedded within the Curriculum, designed to arm students with the strategies for managing the variety of patients and situations they may encounter in their future careers.
Student voice in inclusive learning
Our students are passionate about working with us to address accessibility challenges. For example, the dental students have set times for attending their clinical sessions, a requirement of their course. However, some students have needed help in attending their set times. As educators, we know the educational value of clinical sessions for our students; however, we also want to support students to take time out when needed.
Our students are passionate about working with us to address accessibility challenges.
To understand how to be inclusive of students who struggled to attend the clinical sessions, our team developed a survey for our undergraduate students. We learned that religious observances, caring responsibilities, and sporting commitments presented difficulties for students and that they needed support and flexibility to succeed in their studies. As a result, we have already begun to improve the student experience by implementing a Religious Observance policy that allows our Muslim students to leave the clinic for a short period of time in the winter months to pray during daylight hours. In addition, by asking students how we can include them in their learning experiences, we can address difficulties and work collaboratively to design a diverse curriculum that benefits our students.
Our students deserve a curriculum that is inclusive, diverse, and rooted in real-world challenges. Being a part of Curriculum Redefined provides the opportunity to design an innovative and inclusive curriculum that benefits staff, students, and broader communities in Leeds. I am excited to continue supporting the development of a curriculum that truly reflects the diverse population of students within the School of Dentistry, and I look forward to watching our students succeed as a result.
Harriet Boyd (she/her), Lecturer in Societal and Cultural Transformation in Dental Education
