• What this Toolkit is about
• Using this Toolkit
• Download the Toolkit (PDF 1.3MB)

USING THIS TOOLKIT

This Toolkit can be used as a self-evaluation resource. It can help academic staff to evaluate how well they are delivering for race equality in learning and teaching.

The Toolkit has four key sections, covering

• curriculum,
• learning and teaching,
• assessment, and
• institutional action.

Most sections contain self-evaluatory questions to help staff identify areas of good practice as well as gaps requiring further consideration.

The Toolkit provides information to assist individual lecturers, schools, and universities as a whole to respond to the questions posed by the Commission for Racial Equality in its best practice guidance on race equality for further and higher education institutions as outlined in Chapter 1.

Quotations within the Toolkit represent the views of minority ethnic home and international students as well as those of academic/teaching staff.

The Toolkit is not a template or blueprint on how race equality should be addressed within learning and teaching. It is designed to assist staff in universities to consider issues of race equality and to reflect upon ways in which race equality can be mainstreamed into learning and teaching.

Using the Toolkit at an individual level

Individual members of staff should be provided with opportunities for self-evaluation of their practice in relation to the four key areas covered. Staff could be asked to consider what further continuing professional development requirements they have in order to assist them to mainstream race equality effectively into their practice.

The Toolkit is also useful for raising awareness of how racism and racial discrimination are manifested in Scotland.

Using the Toolkit at a school/departmental level

Schools and departments should consider how they can make further use of this Toolkit. For example, is there a school/department Learning and Teaching Committee or Equality and Diversity Committee that could take the lead role in considering the four key sections of the Toolkit, in identifying examples of good practice as well as gaps requiring attention? How would any good practice be disseminated across the school or department so that others may learn from these examples? How would gaps be addressed? Whole school or departmental seminars could be offered to staff to consider the issue of race equality within learning and teaching using the four key sections in this Toolkit as prompts for discussion.

Using the Toolkit at an institutional level

The section on institutional actions provides corporate-level action ideas. These action areas have been identified as ones that would assist individual academic teaching staff and schools/departments with taking forward the key ideas of the Toolkit. These action areas will also assist institutions with meeting the requirements of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, particularly in the area of learning and teaching.

Institutions could utilise cross-institutional committees such as University Learning and Teaching Committees working in collaboration with University Equality and Diversity Committees to consider which action areas have been appropriately addressed and which require further consideration.

Agreed changes should then be built into programmes and the outcomes monitored. Ownership of the Toolkit at institutional level is essential to ensure maximum usage at individual or school/departmental levels.