A Three-Pronged Approach to an Inclusive Curriculum: Reading List Decolonisation, Learning Agreements, and Inclusive Assessment

The University of Winchester has been running the Decolonising the University within and Beyond the Curriculum symposium for several years now, and I was delighted that this year it was open to others beyond Winchester to join the fantastic conversations. I was quite nervous to present on the topic since it can be sensitive and I was aware that others have been working on decolonising curricula for much longer than me, but I was relieved to have a supportive audience and that my presentation was well-received with colleagues interested to learn about the practical steps I had taken.

During this presentation, I shared steps I took to audit and decolonise a reading list, develop a shared learning agreement, and enhance assessment to make it more inclusive of diverse learners participating in the Designing and Facilitating Learning module at the University of Stirling. The reading list audit revealed a propensity of UK-based, white authors which then led to revamping the resources to include more diverse perspectives. I worked with the other tutor and the students to engage in developing a learning agreement together to foster an inclusive and supportive learning community. Furthermore, the move to a portfolio-based assessment that I introduced was seen to be a more inclusive, authentic, and creative form of assessment. 

This presentation explored how the practical approaches of the reading list audit, learning agreement development, and portfolio assessment contributed to decolonisation efforts at the modular level. These three elements helped our learning community examine questions of race and representation in terms of academic perspectives from the literature, the backgrounds of the module teachers, and the diverse student body. Participants learnt about these three approaches to decolonising the curriculum and examined what approaches may work best for their own contexts. We reflected on the power of the resources and approaches we use in learning and teaching, and the importance of an ongoing, enhancement-led approach to making the curriculum more inclusive.