Back to the core module, EDPM05, and another split day with guest lecturers – covering equality in the university in the morning, and how to handle difficult classroom situations in the afternoon.
I feel like I must have attended half a dozen equality and diversity training sessions over the years, so the content of the morning session was very familiar, covering our legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act of 1998, as well as emphasising our moral obligations to be inclusive, and the reasons why it is just good business practice. What was different about this session was the discussion we had on the uniqueness of the HE sector. Universities tend to have rich and diverse international student bodies – at Sunderland one third of our on-campus students are from overseas – and they tend to be young, still forming their own identities, and at university will be exposed to values and opinions that are likely to be new and potentially very different from anything they have experienced before. As staff, we have a responsibility towards these students and can help them by creating inclusive learning environments which includes flexibility of teaching and assessment methods, encouraging interaction between different groups, offering pastoral care as required, and being aware of culture shock which some students may suffer from, and any unconscious biases that we may hold ourselves.
The afternoon session on how to handle difficult classroom situations was very useful. It was noted that it’s a strange omission in HE academic education that classroom engagement isn’t taught, as it seems to be assumed that it won’t be necessary with students being adults. However, these are often young adults and behavioural issues can and do arise. To manage these we were advised to set clear rules and lines about what is tolerated, preferably as teaching teams, explain these to students early on, and then enforce the rules fairly and consistently. We were advised not to get into direct confrontations in classrooms, but to record the problem behaviour and address it afterwards in accordance with the university’s regulations.
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