Sarah E. Silverman

Educator and Consultant

The Inclusive Teaching Umbrella

Note: This post is based on a LinkedIn post I shared on April 2, 2024. I have created this blog post as another option for interacting with the “inclusive teaching umbrella” idea.

An image of a PowerPoint slide. Title reads: "Opening framing: Inclusive teaching is an umbrella concept". White image of an umbrella. Under umbrella are several distributed text boxes reading: "Accessibility", "UDL", "Belonging and Self-efficacy", "Supporting first-gen students", "Inclusive Approaches for international students and English learners", "Feminist pedagogy", "Anti-racist pedagogy", "Authentic/alternative assessment", and "disability and neurodiversity-informed pedagogy"
Image description: An image of a PowerPoint slide. Title reads: “Opening framing: Inclusive teaching is an umbrella concept”. White image of an umbrella. Under umbrella are several distributed text boxes reading: “Accessibility”, “UDL”, “Belonging and Self-efficacy”, “Supporting first-gen students”, “Inclusive Approaches for international students and English learners”, “Feminist pedagogy”, “Anti-racist pedagogy”, “Authentic/alternative assessment”, and “disability and neurodiversity-informed pedagogy”

I use the image above when giving presentations to faculty that relate to the expansive concept of “inclusive teaching.” It has helped me a lot as a teacher and faculty developer to acknowledge that “inclusive teaching” is really an umbrella concept rather than one single teaching approach. It is a good idea to acknowledge this complexity, the fact that ideas under this umbrella can definitely support one another but can also have friction with one another, and that it is useful to be specific about what is meant by “inclusive teaching” in any given context. There is definitely more under this umbrella than I was able to put on the slide – these are just examples!

Sarah Silverman

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