果冻影院

Educators in 果冻影院 Italian work together to share experience and explore new approaches

Educators in 果冻影院 Italian took part in 果冻影院 Arena Peer Dialogue to develop their inclusive teaching.

The team, based in the School of European Languages, Culture and Society, worked together to reflect on and share their experiences of inclusive teaching practices, looking at existing approaches and identifying ways of enhancing their current and future module provisions.听

The aim of 果冻影院 Arena Peer Dialogue

果冻影院 Arena Peer Dialogue is a method of focusing on different dimensions of education practice, including classroom teaching, assessment and feedback, resource development. Open to all 果冻影院 staff who teach and support students鈥� learning, its aim is to inspire staff to develop their practice, by working closely with colleagues.

There are three options for peer dialogue:

• Option A - Collaborative enhancement of a specific area of practice
• Option B -听Pair-based Teaching Observation
• Option C -听Reflection and dialogue with student reviewers

How the team used Peer Dialogue?

Following successful previous group work through peer dialogue (/teaching-learning/case-studies/2017/mar/using-peer-dialogue-improve-teaching-practice-ucl-department-italian), the team decided to work together again through Option A, this time to respond to 果冻影院鈥檚 Inclusive Curriculum Health Check.

In advance of the peer dialogue meeting, team member Beatrice Sica:

• attended the Arena Centre for a session on Inclusive Teaching, run by the 果冻影院 Equality and Diversity team
• ordered free paper copies of the 果冻影院 Inclusive Curriculum Health Check through 果冻影院鈥檚 Teaching and Learning Portal (/teaching-learning/sites/teaching-learning/files/ucl_inclusive_curriculum_healthcheck_2018.pdf), which she shared with the team.

Beatrice says:听

鈥�Attending the session at the ARENA Centre in advance was great, because it helped me focus on a set of issues that later we could all address at the peer dialogue meeting using the ARENA slides.鈥�听

Another group member, Lisa Sampson, thinks that having the Inclusive Curriculum leaflets in advance also helped shape their discussion.

The group discussed a variety of topics, such as protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010, duties of HE institutions, and 果冻影院 inclusion rates of BME as reported by available statistics. Group members also explored stereotype threats and confirmation biases as well as ways to liberate the curriculum through curriculum content, events for students, and teaching practice.

Developing an inclusive curriculum

The last part of the meeting focused on curriculum content. There are a number of ways in which the group members are tackling the issue of inclusivity and plan to enhance their existing module provision.

Disability awareness

In his ITAL0004 module 鈥淚ntroduction to linguistics and syntactic theory鈥�, Vieri Samek-Lodovici considers the acquisition of Sign Languages, and the equal complexity and expression power across signed and spoken languages.

Liberating the curriculum from a Eurocentric perspective

In his ELCS0043 鈥淭he Structure of Human Language 鈥� Topics in Linguistics 2鈥�, Vieri Samek-Lodovici combines examples from European languages (English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish) with examples from Asian and African languages (Mandarin Chinese, Thai, Korean, East Papuan [New Guinea], Xhosa, Zulu, !X贸o), and again Sign Languages (Israeli Sign Language).

Representing gender, sexuality, race and disability

Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti works on the concepts of minority, emancipation, integration, anti-black racism, and anti-Jewish/anti-semitic representations in her ITAL0018 Module on Fascist antisemitism, in which she also touches briefly on eugenics and views of people with disabilities and people with mental health issues.

Carlotta also deals with gender representations and the relationship between law, culture and society in her ITAL0031 鈥淢arriage and Divorce Italian Style, 1861-1975鈥� module, and contributes to ELCS0032 module on 鈥淣ationalism and Ethnicity鈥� with lectures on representations of migrants in Italy.

Beatrice Sica and Catherine Keen have re-designed an ELCS0048 module on 鈥淩eading European Poetry鈥� making sure that the readings reflect a gender balance. Beatrice is also planning to make changes accordingly to her ELCS0031 module on European Avant-Gardes.

Catherine Keen commented on the benefits of collaboration in module design as a stimulus to reflection on inclusivity. This bore fruit in co-convening both ELCS0048 on Poetry, and also core module LITC0011 鈥淚mitation, Invention, Authorship鈥�, where re-designing the set readings with Jennifer Rushworth (French/Comp Lit) aimed at facilitating dialogue with students about literary representations of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and colonial and postcolonial experiences.

Lisa Sampson explores questions of gender construction and early pro-feminist thought in her ITAL0019 Module on 鈥淲riting Women in Renaissance Italy鈥�, and social and personal identity formation with a focus also on gender in ITAL0036 鈥淚dentity and Performance in Renaissance Italy鈥�. These modules encourage students to think critically about how sexual difference has historically been configured and expressed, and linked with anxieties over power.

In her co-taught modules ELCS0036 鈥淭opics in Film Studies: Stories and Genres鈥�, CMII0069 鈥淕enre in Italian Cinema鈥�, and in her literature module on crime fiction ELCS0040 鈥淲atching the Detectives鈥�, Lucia Rinaldi explores constructions of gender identities, representation of women and issues of racism.听

Finally, the Italian language modules for second and final year students already include discussion topics such as feminism, multiculturalism, and LGTBQ rights in contemporary Italy, but at the end of the meeting, all members agreed to revamp the existing teaching material on inclusivity for Italian language courses with new readings and exercises for all students of Italian.

The听impact of enaging with Peer Dialogue

Vieri Samek-Lodovici, the current Head of Department, said: 鈥淗aving several people address the Inclusive Curriculum together allowed us to tackle important issues that are currently being discussed at Teaching Committee meetings and ensure that the teaching provision of our department modules is planned in a way that enables all students taking modules in Italian language and culture to develop critical thinking and awareness of different perspectives on issues relating to diversity in ethnicity, nationality, culture, and disability. The Peer Dialogue was a great opportunity and we are looking forward to doing this again next year.鈥�听

Dr Ros Duhs, who set up the 果冻影院 Arena Peer Dialogue scheme in 2015, said:

鈥�The Italian Department's initiative is a really good example of exploiting the full potential of Peer Dialogue. Their work demonstrates that this is not about 'inspecting' each other's teaching: rather, it鈥檚 a much more constructive and enjoyable process of developing teaching - and therefore student learning - with colleagues.鈥�

Highlights of the 果冻影院 Italian team鈥檚 approach:

1. working together collaboratively for maximum impact for minimum effort, for instance with Beatrice going to the session on Inclusive Teaching and sharing resources so they're well-informed.
2. selecting a topic which they need to focus on and which is central to 果冻影院's current strategic aims.
3. directly addressing difficult topics such as bias and 'stereotype threats.'
4. including the student perspective
5. enhancing the benefit of an activity which is part of the ASER cycle to enrich the learning experience of all students.
6. providing stimulating examples. The modules seem topical and relevant to the real world.听听