Inclusive Teaching Practices

Inclusive teaching cultivates environments where students:

• Have equal access to learning
• Feel valued and supported in their learning
• Experience parity in achieving positive course outcomes
• Share responsibility for the equitable engagement and treatment of all in the learning community

Inclusive studios and classrooms are spaces where instructors and students work together to create and sustain an environment in which everyone feels safe, supported, and encouraged to express views and concerns.

Resources

• RISD’s Inclusive Education: A short guide for faculty
• The Room of Silence: A short film documenting a small fraction of interviews and testimonials conducted by marginalized students at RISD.
• Universal Design for Learning
• The Research Basis for Inclusive Teaching
• Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom by Kelly A. Hogan and Viji Sathy
• The Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning (Brown University) 

To advance social equity and inclusion (SEI) in teaching and learning:

• Adopt an assets-based pedagogical framework

• Attend to differential embodied experience

• Consider the workload for your course

• Employ pedagogies and practices that meaningfully engage a diverse range of students and support the work they seek to create

• Expand the forms of knowledge from which courses and curricula originate

• Diversify your course content by engaging non-western, indigenous, and historically marginalized cultures, histories, and forms of knowledge

• Investigate, critique, and address the ways power shapes notions of value through intersectional analysis

• Unsettle creative and scholarly practices by examining the ideological underpinnings of disciplines and methods

Resources:

• Asset-Based, Student-Centered Learning Environments (National Education Organization)
• Communicating Course Workload Expectations
• Teaching from an Asset-Based Mindset (Association of College and University Educators)
• Social Equity and Inclusion Resources

• ‘Ask Me’: What LGBTQ Students Want Their Professors to Know (Julia Schmalz)
  • Transgender and gender-nonbinary students share what keeps them from feeling safe and thriving on campus.
• Calling In and Calling Out Guide (Harvard University)
• Content & Trigger Warnings
• Don't call people out -- call them in (Loretta J. Ross, TED Talk)
• Guidelines on the use of racial epithets, slurs, and other offensive material in the classroom
• How to Respond to Racial Microaggressions When They Occur | Diverse: Issues In Higher Education (J. Luke Wood and Frank Harris III)
• LGBTQ+ Glossary
• Think Before you Speak
  • A presentation on the use of inclusive language in everyday life and its benefits towards community cohesion.
• TRANS 101: EDUCATION, ADVOCACY AND PRONOUNS

For Further Reading:

• Ross, Loretta. Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel. Simon & Schuster, 2025.

• Sofer, Oren Jay. Say What You Mean: A Mindful Guide to Nonviolent Communication. Shambala Publications, 2018.

• Civility in the Classroom: A Better Approach (Richard K. Olsen and Vernon Cronen)

• Difficult Dialogues (Vanderbilt Center for Teaching)

• Handling Controversial Topics in Discussion (University of Michigan Center for Research on Teaching & Learning)

• Teaching in Times of Stress and Challenge (Columbia University Center for Teaching & Learning)

For Further Reading:

• Start Talking: A Handbook for Engaging Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education (Kay Landis, editor)

RISD Resources:

• RISD’s Disability Support Services
• RISD's Multilingual Learners Hub

Additional Resources:

• Creating Accessible Learning Environments (Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching)
• Culturally Diverse Learners (Centre for Teaching and Learning at Thompson Rivers University)
• Disability Rights and Disability Justice Inclusion Resources: Content and Pedagogies by Elizabeth Maynard and Courtnie Wolfgang
• How to Help First Generation Students Succeed by Mikhail Zinshteyn
• Tips for Engaging with Different Disabilities (University of Washington)

• Intergroup Relations Insight Handouts (University of Michigan)

• The LARA Method

• The LARA Method (Cornell University, Intergroup Dialogue Project)

• “The Art of Effective Communication: The LARA Method” (University of Michigan, video, Professor Barry Checkoway discusses the LARA method)

• “Are You Ready to Talk?” (Stanford University, toolkit that features the LARA method)

• Reflective Action Facilitation Framework and Case Study Handout (Harvard Initiative for Learning & Teaching)