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QMUL

Project Summary

In order to facilitate inclusive learning and teaching spaces, this toolkit will provide an outline on the empirical evidence around the BAME attainment gap, pedagogic methods that can be implemented to counter issues surrounding belonging, trust or pressure, and supporting literature and media to further understanding of issues and methods mentioned.

Methods to implement these characteristics within schools are diverse and effective but require an active effort to implement successfully and academics must hold accountability for the attainment of BAME students. As bell Hooks (1994) states;

“The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility, we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practise of freedom”

This notion of ‘paradise’ is accessible to all of the academy, yet it requires the active implementation by academics to strive towards an inclusive pedagogy and hold accountability for the attainment of all its students, to provoke discomfort to achieve comfort for all students. Overall these methods highlighted within the toolkit will require professors to strive for excellence in their teaching, promote strategic critical thinking (Mann, 2010) confront racism when it surfaces, challenge student resistance and be courageous enough to teach and not fear in a more inclusive environment.

Read the full introduction by the Student Consultants Project Lead Safiyah Raja: Introduction to the QMUL Student Consultants Toolkit