Inclusivity in education
Diversity and Inclusion in Master Population Studies
As part of a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant project, students on the course Qualitative Research for Policy & Practice produced a series of eight reports on multiple facets of Diversity & Inclusion in the Master Population Studies. Through interviewing staff & students, conducting lecture observations, reviewing course materials, reaching out to support structures at the university like the Student Service Centre and beyond the university to organisations such as VISIO, students have developed a series of recommendations for enhancing inclusivity.
Seven cross-cutting themes were identified in these reports, which this summary aims to translate into practical educational advice with supporting educational resources. Resources are hyperlinked where relevant and each point ends with a number in brackets, eg. (1.1), to indicate its position within the overarching inclusive teaching model, the Universal Design for Learning. This report adopts the UDL approach of encouraging the removal of as many barriers to learning as possible through intentional proactive design, whether students disclose personal circumstances or not. If you would like to know more, you can follow these links to broader explanations, further examples, and supporting educational research.
Beyond Words: Developing an Inclusive Demography Language
Building on the success of the previous years project, students on the Qualitative Research for Policy and Practice course collaborated with the IUSSP in order to develop an inclusive demography language useful to the global demography community. Using participatory and creative qualitative research methods, such as photo elicitation, interviews, and focus groups, the students worked with demography scholars, accessibility experts, and students. Students explored a range of topics from unpaid work, feelings of ‘home,’ cartography and mapping, and increasing accessibility for those with visual or auditory impairments. Alongside an academic report, students produced a number of non-academic formats to disseminate their findings to wider audiences. These included guidelines to better include visually impaired persons at conferences, a call for papers for a special issue on unpaid work, an infographic and gifs showcasing demographic sign language, a card game exploring ‘Where is Home?,’ magazine article (with an accompanying podcast) about visualisations in demographic journals for blind and visually impaired persons, a policy brief about including non-binary persons in population pyramids, and finally a poster with instructions for creating maps.
The initiative aimed to contribute to existing IUSSP activities such as the FAIR vocabularies in population research, the Demopaediaproject,andvarious IUSSP Panels such as “Rethinking Family Planning Measurement with a Reproductive Justice and Rights Lens.”
Learn how to sign the following key demographic concepts by clicking on the word:
| Last modified: | 10 February 2025 2.05 p.m. |