What did you do to create inclusive practice and how did you do it?
We co-created a new, inclusive, decolonised module in Psychology and Psychiatry, which was initially built from student ideas of ways we could dismantle traditional colonial hierarchies in the content and process of postgraduate teaching. We removed didactic lectures and replaced them with a combination of pre-recorded activities followed by collaborative seminars. We also left one week’s topic to be voted on, under the name of ‘decolonise this seminar’. This will be repeated each year to continually update and democratically vote on the course content. We also replaced traditional assessment methods with a combination of peer- and self-assessment through a student-led symposium.
Why did you implement your example of inclusive practice?
We implemented this practice in order to embrace a decolonial and inclusive approach to our teaching. Students have been demanding more diversity and choice in their education, especially in the historically biased and unrepresentative field of psychology. This module has attempted to answer this call by providing students the opportunity to take part in decolonising their curriculum.
What was the impact of your case study?
This module starts in January 2023 so, while it has been under development for over a year, we will only have feedback after the first cohort take part in this module. We already have over 30 students signed up, and enrolment is still open.
What were the lessons learned?
We will be keeping a critical incident diary and will publish our findings in order to understand and improve upon student experiences of taking part in this module.