Social Justice and Inclusive Pedagogy

I recently went to a talk by Dr Lani Florian on social justice and inclusive pedagogy. She spoke of how difference has been often positioned as a problem. However, with the increasing diversity of students and vulnerabilities, her research had focused on understanding differences to understand students' different outcomes.

Dr Florian made really interesting points about the assumptions that teachers make about school-aged students, their abilities and their potential. This is something I have been thinking a lot about lately since often teachers of higher education also make assumptions about their students' knowledge and prior learning experiences which can be quite different from the reality for many students.

Based on her research, Dr Florian argued for the need for teaching pedagogies that promote whole-class engagement and inclusivity rather than perpetuating differences in practice for presumed group differences. This doesn't hold other students back but, rather, acknowledges that differences are to be expected between students and accommodates differences inclusively. 

Dr Florian, speaking about school-aged students, argued that we need to reconceptualise differences between learners as opportunities for teaching. I would agree from the perspective of student/staff partnerships of co-creating the higher education curriculum. These dialogues and collaborations recognise students' wide variety of prior learning experiences, preferred learning pedagogies, and future goals to be more inclusive and (so it seems) help students achieve much more from their studies. I hope that my research can build on Dr Florian's work and look at higher education and how this may be possible.