Sadiq (2023)‘s talk on teaching Diversity, Equity & Inclusion deeply resonates with my teaching experience and has sparked reflection on inclusive considerations that I had in my current teaching practice, in particular, on linguistic diversity and inclusion.
A recent intersection between considerations learnt from this social model and my own teaching context is linguistic diversity and inclusion. In an MSc unit that I’m teaching, one of the observations is that a number of bilingual students have difficulties in joining class conversations, reading, or articulating ideas due to language barriers. I thought about adding considerations on language in my teaching, for instance, I relate myself as an EAL (English as Additional Language) learner to figure out how I can adapt my teaching materials with less jargon and more accessible language, or encourage students to join language support sessions offered by the language centre. However, I realised that I have only considered the needs of EAL learners from my own singular perspective, and I certainly can’t speak for all students who all have unique ways of using language and learning with language.
In relation to this, my takeaway from Sadiq’s talk is that assuming what kinds of support are needed from underrepresented groups is not a path to inclusive learning environments. And inclusive support should go beyond “boxes ticking”, to understand that every individual is different, each and every individual is part of the change. In particular, when Asif mentioned his experience of being asked about the view of Muslims while he felt that he certainly doesn’t speak for a group of 2 billion people, or being assumed that “this is the experience of people who look like me”.
Another source that I found on the topic is the paper from Sharma et al. (2025), which highlights how the use of language in academic environments also has a strong connection with race, culture, and identity, and how the in-built monolingual/monocultural context has made it difficult for non-native English-speaking students/researchers to participate in the academic world (Bradbury, 2020). This is especially true in the context of arts and design, where cultural and emotional nuances from other languages are difficult to convey in English. As suggested by Schiffer (2020) (i.e., shifting from a needs-based to an asset-based intervention), it is the learning environment we provide that should remove barriers for non-native English speakers.
For Sadiq’s talk, I found practical challenges in implementing an experiential learning approach in many teaching contexts. It’s not the burden of underrepresented groups to educate others about their needs and preferences, therefore, we do need to learn about needs and appropriate support through a journey of experience with students. However, a long-term engagement with students isn’t always available in a 12-month or 15-month course. My opinion on addressing this challenge is that we as educators need to actively talk to individuals, understand their stories and journeys, and get feedback, in order to provide a timely response to difficulties.
References
- Bradbury, A., 2020. A critical race theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England. Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), pp.241-260, (Accessed: 12 June 2025).
- Sadiq, A. (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. TEDx [Online]. Youtube. 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw (Accessed: 12 June 2025).
- Schiffer, A. (2020) ‘Issues of Power and Representation: Adapting Positionality and Reflexivity in Community-Based Design’, International Journal of Art & Design Education, 39(2), pp. 418–429. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12291.
- Sharma, S. et al. (2025) ‘Lost in Translation: Researchers’ Reflections on Writing in English for CHI’, in Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (CHI EA ’25). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3716231 (Accessed: 12 June 2025).
Thank you Jasper, I agree, it’s impossible to think of language support for a singular ‘other’- when all students have completely different requirements, experiences and approaches to learning. Large group sizes and the short period of time we have with students can make it hard to naturally learn all these details about everybody. Perhaps we need to find ways to foreground these discussions at the start of the course. It may be that shifting the question to the students to ask them to identify how we can best support them might alleviate the need for staff members to make assumptions and generalisations. (However, this may raise other issues!)