School Inclusive Practices Support Diversity and Equality

This informal CPD article, ‘School Inclusive Practices Support Diversity and Equality‘, was provided by Human Focus International, a global leader in skilled behaviour change in the workplace. They assist clients in achieving world-class business performance by helping to build skills and change habits that keep workers safer, healthier and more productive.

Here’s the good news. Even teachers who are only halfway invested are probably already doing a fair bit to promote equality and diversity in their classrooms.

The better news. You’ve taken the time to learn more about equality and diversity, so you’re clearly more than halfway invested. That means you’re probably already doing a lot for the children you teach. You might not recognise this fact because concepts like inclusivity, equality and diversity are often explained in vague or unhelpful ways.

So, this article will explain how school inclusive practices support equality and diversity as plainly as possible. It’ll cover the why’s and the how’s of inclusivity to give you an idea of what you can do to make your whole class progress.

What are Equality and Diversity?

If you’re in education, you should have heard the terms equality and diversity. Promoting these concepts should be a priority for schools as they’ve been shown to help children learn and feel a sense of belonging. But as important as these ideas are, they’re often misunderstood.

Equality

You’d be forgiven for mistaking equality as giving everyone equal treatment. After all, it’s got ‘equal’ right there in the word. But this is a fundamental error. Equality ensures everyone can experience equally successful outcomes, which can’t happen if they’re treated the same way.

Diversity

Diversity is necessary for equality. Almost all definitions of diversity refer to celebrating differences, which is essential. But it’s arguably more important to recognise differences. You can’t give everyone an equal opportunity to succeed if you don’t acknowledge they all have different needs.

What are Inclusive Practices?

Inclusive practices are the things you and your schools do to facilitate positive outcomes for everyone. It’s up to headteachers and governors to implement the broadest or most significant adjustments – think along the lines of step-free access or toilet facilities for children with disabilities – and there’ll be similar small-scale changes you’ll need to make for your classroom. For example, can all children easily move around the room or access resources? You’ll need to design your learning environment with this in mind.

This example does risk reinforcing the notion that inclusive practices are primarily for children with physical disabilities or special educational needs. These are two key factors to account for, but you’ll also need to consider a child’s:

• Background – including culture and religion
• Home life
• Education history
• Gender
• Socio-economic situation

You must apply this mentality to your pedagogy, lesson plans, and classroom. Consider all your children’s individual learning needs (that’s the diversity) and put support in place (those are the inclusive practices) for them all to achieve the learning objective (and that’s equality).

Why You Should Promote Equality and Diversity

For starters, a teacher’s job is to promote equality and diversity. The Department for Education’s (DfE) policy on equality and diversity¹ states:

“Equality and diversity are critical to delivering DfE’s vision: we enable children and learners to thrive by protecting the vulnerable and ensuring the delivery of excellent standards of education, training and care.”

And, as the DfE’s policy also notes, promoting equality and diversity makes society fairer, strengthens communities and delivers eventual economic value.

Besides the broader benefits, inclusivity makes children feel valued and safe at school. It’s essential for a child’s development to experience this stability, and it also improves academic performance². And this is academic performance for all children, not just those who need significant support.

Inclusive Practices for the Classroom

It’s easy to say teaching should be inclusive, but implementing strategies is harder. So, this guide has pulled together some of the most straightforward inclusive practices you can implement in your teaching.

Know Your Class

The first and most crucial step is to get to know your class. You’ve got 30 (or 25 if you’re lucky) individual learners with diverse needs, and you must understand them all. Learn all about your pupils and determine where additional support is needed. This is the most important thing you can do as a teacher.

Teach a Diverse Curriculum

Children need to see themselves reflected in the curriculum. Ensure that your lessons cover a diverse range of figures, and never miss an opportunity to celebrate an unsung hero.

Design Accessible Classrooms

This has already been mentioned. Think about seating, access to resources, and access to learning. Children with physical disabilities might need to be placed closer to specific resources or given additional space. A learner with a visual impairment must be seated closer to the board.

Remember, every child needs an unobstructed view of the board and must be able to see and hear you.  Never commit to a classroom set-up until you’ve sat in every seat at the approximate eye level of your pupils to test your arrangements.

Make Adjustments

This goes hand in hand with accessible classroom design. Apply the same principles to lesson design, including resources. There are simple things you can do – coloured text on a pale background is dyslexia friendly, as is the font Comic Sans, for example. (Yes, if you’re a new teacher, there’s a good reason why the most hated font is used liberally in education.)

You also might need to provide additional resources to some learners. Less-confident mathematicians benefit from physical counters or dienes, for instance. Printed handouts of lesson slides also support children who might struggle with the pace of some lessons.

Use Support Staff

If you’re lucky enough to have support staff, use them. TAs and other helpers are a fantastic resource. They are often a source of unparalleled insight into your pupils and how they learn best. And as living, breathing, compassionate humans, they can pivot and adapt on the fly during lessons just in case your best-laid plans don’t work out.

Model Inclusive Behaviour

Think about the language you use. For example, do you always refer to your protagonists as ‘he’ in a creative writing lesson? It’s also important to challenge stereotypes or misconceptions. You can do this directly (but gently) or through diverse stories or other resources you introduce to your class.

Policy and Staff Development

If you have any say in policy or staff development, prioritise inclusion. Senior leaders set the vision for their schools so widespread, impactful inclusivity only happens with their wholehearted support. The leadership team also sets the training schedule, which should regularly cover inclusive practices in-depth and how they can be applied in your school.

Equality and Diversity Training

There are more in-depth equality and diversity training programmes focused on education, but starting with a general awareness-level course could still help. Online Equality and Diversity Training gives everyone the same understanding. It provides an overview of the general principles of inclusivity.

We hope this article was helpful. For more information from Human Focus International, please visit their CPD Member Directory page. Alternatively, you can go to the CPD Industry Hubs for more articles, courses and events relevant to your Continuing Professional Development requirements.

References:

1 https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education/about/equality-and-diversity

2  https://www.gov.uk/research-for-development-outputs/implementing-inclusive-education