Dr Elizabeth Caldwell, Dr Louise Innes and Dr Sarah Robin

Tuesday 24th June 2025

Understanding Inclusive Teaching Practice Through The Lens Of A Reciprocal Mentoring Scheme

“Don’t underestimate the role of the personal touch.”

In 2021, the Learning Development team were awarded a LU widening participation grant to create a reciprocal mentoring project that attempted to understand the teaching and learning experiences of ethnic minority students at Lancaster. The project would ultimately match Black and Ethnic Minority students with white senior teaching staff and create a space to share learning experiences, as part of a tailored programme of sessions and events. In this keynote, we will present findings from this project in relation to inclusive teaching practice and curriculum design. These findings have illuminated the importance of considering the student as an individual, and the need to create communities and spaces that facilitate in-depth and personable learning.

Dr Christine Mortimer and Ms Jingru Guan

Wednesday 25th June 2025

Building A Caring Community Of Practice In A Sino/UK Collaborative Institute

This Keynote will discuss experiences from the Lancaster University College@Beijing Jiaotong University- Weihai Campus, in developing an inclusive caring Community of Practice for staff and students, in a rural, isolated area of China. Issues of ‘belonging’ and ‘community’ in Transnational Partnerships are not only focused on the student population, but also on the staff who are either based in China for the full 2 semesters or those who fly into the campus from Lancaster on either 12 week or 2 lots of 8-week assignments. The challenges of defining ‘practice’ are also problematic, with the Lancaster staff being ‘betwixt and between’ two very different cultural ways of approaching education. How do we, our Chinese lecturing colleagues and the students navigate the pedagogical and cultural differences, to move towards creating a caring community of practice?