3 Key Principles of Inclusive Teaching

We’ll get to the specific strategies shortly, but first the theory. All three principles convey the same message: You, as the instructor, have the control to create experiences that level the playing field in your classroom.

Principle No. 1: Inclusive teaching is a mind-set. 

For every teaching decision you make, ask yourself, “Who is being left out as a result of this approach?” Consider: When you lecture, students vary in their ability to stay focused, pull out key ideas, and organize the information. Is it “hand-holding” to provide a skeletal outline of your lecture in advance? Critics might think so. But the result is that all students leave class with a set of minimal notes, a clearer idea of the main points, and an expert’s example of how ideas fit and flow together. And in the process, your students now have a good structure for how to take notes.

Principle No. 2: The more structure, the better for all students. 

It’s worth repeating: More structure works for most undergraduates, without harming those who don’t need it. Students come to your classroom today with different cultural backgrounds, personalities, learning differences, and confidence levels. Their very diversity may seem overwhelming at times, but you can reach more of them by sharpening the structure of your syllabus, assignments, tests, and pedagogy. In our experience, all students appreciate and thrive from additional structure, and some benefit disproportionately.

Principle No. 3: Too little structure leaves too many students behind. 

Some of the most traditional and common teaching methods — lecturing, cold-calling — aren’t very inclusive, at least as they are commonly done. Certain faculty members even take pride in using the classroom to cull the “weak” students from the “strong.” This is especially true in STEM fields, as we know from experience, since one of us teaches biology and the other statistics.  

When we run faculty workshops on inclusive teaching, we advise participants to envision the types of students who get left behind by low-structure teaching methods. To illustrate that here, let’s think about two hypothetical students: 

• Vanessa is a gifted student in a class with a Socratic approach — a low-structure method of class participation. But she’s uncomfortable raising her hand or blurting out answers the way other students do. The result: Her discomfort might be distracting her from learning, and her ideas are not part of the conversation, so others aren’t learning from her. Vanessa would benefit from varied opportunities for participation.

• Michael is an engaged student who is comfortable in class and in discussions, but he’s feeling like a fraud because he received a failing grade on his first paper. Up to this point, he was able to do well by memorizing a lot of content. Now he’s in a required course for his major that involves more analytical writing and expects him to apply concepts. It’s a low-structure class in which his entire grade will be based on how he performs on two papers and one exam. Michael would benefit from more practice — that is, more low-stakes writing assignments and quizzes, and more-frequent feedback. The discipline might miss out on an engaged student because he may feel that he needs to change majors. 

Both cases show how a lack of structure can inhibit student learning and development. Conveniently for our purposes here, Vanessa and Michael also illustrate the two main areas in which you can be more inclusive in your teaching — via classroom interactions and course design.