Presentation for 2012 CICE conference

1. Developing an Inclusive Culture in
Higher Education: Policy, Practice,
Participation and Change
Victoria L. O’Donnell1, Jane Tobbell2,
Chris Bradshaw1 & Elizabeth
Richmond1
1Universityof the West of Scotland, UK
2University of Huddersfield, UK

2. Inclusion in Higher Education
• Legislative drivers and protected characteristics within
UK law: equality and diversity
• The UK Higher Education Academy defines an inclusive
culture as
– one which enables all students to develop academically,
professionally and personally to fulfill their potential
• University of the West of Scotland Vision
– For UWS to have a transformational influence on the
economic, social and cultural development of the West of
Scotland and beyond, by producing relevant, high quality,
inclusive higher education and innovative and useful
research.

3. Approaches to inclusive practice (1)
Contingent Alternative Inclusive
approach approach approach
Students Arrangements Flexible
assimilate into are made within anticipatory
the existing the curriculum arrangements
system for particular are made within
individuals the curriculum
for everyone
J. Waterfield & B. West (2006). Inclusive assessment in Higher Education:
A resource for change. Plymouth: University of Plymouth

4. Approaches to inclusive practice (2)
In-reach Out-reach Flexibility in
programs programs program
Focus on Partnerships provision
attracting with external Systemic and
students to the organisations structural re-
institution organisation to
allow full
participation by
all
Osborne, M. (2003). Policy and practice in widening participation: A six country
comparative study of access as flexibility. International Journal of Lifelong Education,
22(1), 43-58

5. Research background
• UK HEA Change Programme: 16 UK HEIs
• University of the West of Scotland project
aims: to explore
– the nature of inclusive L&T practices
– the ways in which policy/strategy changes in
inclusivity construct inclusive practices within the
community
– factors which prevent or enable participation in
such practices

6. Socio-cultural theory and higher
education practice
• Communities of • Ecological theory
Practice (Wenger, 1998) (Bronfenbrenner, 1979;
– Valued practices 2005)
– Participation
– Change
– Identity

7. The data
• Qualitative approach
• Methods
– Document analysis
– Self-evaluation by senior managers
– Semi structured interviews with staff and students
• Analysis
– Inductive, grounded theory
– Emergent themes
– Focused problem approach

8. Acceptance and resistance
• Its about maybe just making sure you’ve got a bit of
variety in your teaching and what you’re doing, so that
there is, you know, hopefully, something that everyone
can take from it.
• I’ve not actually changed anything completely, we
often are governed by what’s in the module descriptor.
But I think that for some students they could probably
do with differing assessments. But then you might end
up designing a whole load of assessments that are
probably not comparable. I’m not sure if any
institution would do that, or if it’s practical.

9. • I always sort of think of [inclusion] meaning assisting
people to get the most out of their education so that
they can get, so things like learning support, and things
like using scribes, doing what we can as academics to
make sure that people have the material to go on. It’s
not so much about creating an even playing field, but
creating more equality.
• …I think I’ve had in total about 15 to 20 additional
needs things, and I have to be absolutely honest and
say that I tend not even to open them any more…

10. • I think sometimes my accent is so broad that there was
foreign students and particularly students who don’t
have English as their first language. I occasionally find
myself worrying a little bit about that. That they won’t
understand the accent. And certainly lectures probably
for students who are, English isn’t their first language,
lectures probably aren’t the best of all the potential
learning tools.
• I always sneak around it by saying, “We’re doing global
society in trimester 2”, but in actuality, global society
means European, North American, and the concept of
global things…

11. Academic identity
• We’re academics… we know how to recognise
someone who’s struggling, but we don’t have the
teaching skills to assist someone who is
struggling.
• …learning to write an essay is as much a part of a,
to me, I know I’m very old-fashioned, but it is an
academic rite of passage.
• So there is this over-reliance on the kind of
academic who is at the coal-face in a sense…and
they’ll direct you to x, y and z, education guidance
or whatever…

12. Perceived barriers to inclusive practice
• I think people are working really hard, and you just
wonder, how much more can we ask of them?
• It’s like, you know, this is changing, that’s the policy
now, how do you know about the policy? Well, you
know, we’ve got 156 of them and they’ve been
wheeled round through the internet and we’ve to go
and look at it.
• …nine hours a week of contact and the rest of the time
you’re expected to engage with the material
independently, at home…I’m not sure that we do them
any favours, we don’t encourage participation outside
of those nine hours…

13. Conclusions
• Consistent with other areas of higher
education, practice does not always reflect
rhetoric (O’Donnell et al., 2009)
• Resistance to shifts in practice seems firmly
rooted in academic identity
• The role of macro-level institutional factors
lies in real or imagined constraints on
academic practices, and individuals’
negotiations with these factors

14. Next steps
• Ongoing analysis of staff and student data
• Exploration of other themes