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King's College London

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Promoting inclusive and equitable learning environments for international students

King’s International Foundation programme (KIF) provides access to King's degree programmes for international students and aims to prepare students to excel in their chosen destination departments. As a result, King’s Foundations as a department has a pivotal role in welcoming international students into King's learning environments and shaping their subsequent learning journey (for KIF last year this was 86 different degree programmes across 8 faculties).

A better understanding of how students encounter and experience learning environments both as part of the KIF programme and once they move on can help build a more comprehensive comparative picture by virtue of the wide range of destination departments that KIF students progress to. This will offer invaluable insights into current successes and opportunities for improvement.

Aims

This project aims to understand how KIF students perceive and experience inclusive learning environments on their academic journey through King's. Engaging with current and former KIF students at all stages of UGT study, it seeks to build insight into perceptions and experiences of belonging and equality within the various learning communities they participate in through their King's education, and how this potentially connects to key factors such as engagement, welfare, and attainment.

Our goal:

Foster more inclusive and equitable learning environments for King’s International Foundation Programme students, both within King’s Foundations and destination departments.

Objectives:

  1. Add to and enrich existing data on student perceptions/experiences of belonging within King’s Foundations specifically, and other learning communities they progress to while at King's
  2. Develop actionable recommendations to improve inclusivity and equality in KF learning communities.
  3. Draw connections with other ongoing departmental work to decolonise curricula, providing essential focus on the social, cultural, and physical environments in which learning is embedded which is potentially overlooked when looking at EDI and curricula.
  4. Promote reciprocal learning between KF and destination departments on best practice in promoting inclusivity and equality.
  5. Develop proposals for ongoing monitoring and review mechanisms regarding inclusive learning environments.

Methods

  1. Survey current KIF students and former KIF students still within the King's community (across all UGT levels) to gather data on perceptions and feelings on inclusion and equality during their studies.
  2. Conduct focus groups to build on and further explore themes identified in surveys, aiming to generate richer qualitative data to further understanding of current drivers and barriers towards inclusivity and equity.
  3. Write up initial draft of principles and actionable recommendations.
  4. Conduct student-led workshop for review and feedback on draft and co-construct visions of more inclusive and equitable learning environments.
Project status: Ongoing

Principal Investigator

Affiliations

Keywords

EQUITABLE LEARNINGINTERNATIONAL STUDENTS