Welcome to the Brighter Thinking Pod from Cambridge – the podcast that brings you advice and conversation from authors, teachers and academics. Today, we’re talking about inclusive education – what is it? What are the benefits of it as a teaching approach? And what are the misconceptions?
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Show notes
Cambridge Getting Started with Inclusive Education guide
Cambridge Inclusive education and accessibility pages
Ep 51: Introduction to Inclusive Education
Laura Kahwati: Hello, welcome to our latest episode of the Brighter Thinking Pod from the International Education Group of Cambridge University Press and Assessment. Today, I am your host. My name is Laura Kahwati and I am an Education Futures Manager at Cambridge. We created our Brighter Thinking Pod to support teachers and school leaders around the world. Each episode brings you helpful advice and interesting conversation from authors, teachers and academics.
Today we are going to be talking about inclusive education. Inclusive education engages students in learning that is meaningful, relevant and accessible to the widest possible spectrum.
Remember all the links and info that we discussed today are available in the show notes for your ease. And if you want to get your voice heard on the show, you can get in touch on X, formerly Twitter, or Instagram at CambridgeINT.
Let’s meet our guests. Today, I am joined by Lilian Dogiama, Head of Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, and Lauren Woods, Assessment Accessibility Lead, both from the International Education Group here at Cambridge. So, welcome both. Welcome Lauren. And welcome Lilian.
Lauren Woods: Thanks for having us Laura.
Lilian Dogiama: Very nice to be here. Hi, hi, everyone.
When did you feel included?
Laura Kahwati: We begin each show with an icebreaker to help our listeners get to know our guests more. And to help you get energised for the discussion ahead. On that note, I would like you to tell me about a time you felt included.
Lauren Woods: What a great question, Laura. When I first moved here to working in International Assessment from teaching a secondary school, it felt like I was stepping into a completely new world. In my previous role, I was a language teacher and I worked as a school leader focusing on inclusion and special educational needs. I knew what I was doing. I felt confident in my expertise. But in this new role, though I was still confident in what I was doing, I was confident in my expertise. I didn’t know anyone.
I had to navigate completely new ways of working, new systems, new processes. But what really made a difference was how my colleagues valued my expertise, they valued my knowledge, my experience, they introduced me to new people. And some of them really did take me under their wing. They actively sought my perspective on making assessments more accessible for students, reminding me that inclusion isn’t just about being present, it’s about actually being heard and valued.
This experience really struck me and it’s something that I really want to try pay forward in supporting others when they start new roles in the future as well.
Laura Kahwati: That’s so wonderful to hear that you had that support from your colleagues and just shows how important it is that you’ve remembered it to this day to share in a podcast. What about you, Lilian?
Lilian Dogiama: Yeah, I I echo the sentiments from Lauren. Working at Cambridge is really, it’s a great place to work in. Myself, as a person with hidden disability, I always feel very grateful when people go the extra mile to include me. I’ve been working with Cambridge now for nine years, and also I’m a remote worker, so I’m based in Athens in Greece.
And I really appreciate it when I join remotely our meetings and colleagues open up their cameras in their laptops so I can see who’s talking to me rather than just seeing, you know, a really big, you know, conference room full of people and not knowing who’s talking to me. So it’s the little things that actually make life easier for me as an employee, but also as a person I feel, you know, validated and I feel seen.
And I feel that this is an organisation where I belong. So yeah.
Laura Kahwati: It just reminds us what you’ve been saying that inclusivity isn’t about massive changes necessarily, but all of those little things that are…
Lauren Woods: The little things make such a difference.
What does inclusive education mean to Cambridge?
Laura Kahwati: Yeah. Well, I’d like to ask you a question about inclusive education and what it means to Cambridge. So following on from that, Lilian, what does inclusive education mean to Cambridge?
Lilian Dogiama: So inclusive education is about recognising the fact that students are not a homogenous group of young people, but there is inherent diversity in their characteristics, for example, the way and the location they grew up in, the way their brain perceives the world, and also so much more beyond that, which ultimately means that they’re very likely to also have different learning styles and different learning needs as well.
So if we have a one size fits all approach to education, then we’re not really giving each and every learner the same opportunities to shine. So by adopting inclusion in education, we’re really providing every learner with an education they can actively be a part of. And that entails making sure that everyone in the classroom feels that their needs are met, that they feel seen, respected, and valued, valued for who they are.
And that in turn creates an environment where a student can thrive. Our commitment to quality education is also evident through our endorsements of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. As signatories of the UN Global Compact, we are committed to advancing the UN SDGs on gender equality and quality education, which includes inclusive education as well.
Laura Kahwati: So actually, when we think about inclusive education, it goes beyond access and actually into the realms of every learner being able to thrive?
Lauren Woods: Totally, it is more than just placing everyone in the same classroom. It’s about promoting fairness. It’s about ensuring that everyone’s got the opportunities that they need to flourish and to achieve their best. And that could mean by providing additional support, appropriate support, additional resources, access to technology, or it could be in a classroom offering additional help. But it shouldn’t just be seen as another approach or another method. It’s about actually committing to creating a school environment where every learner, no matter who they are, can make the progress in line with their expectations.
Benefits of inclusive education
Laura Kahwati: I think that leads me on really nicely to my next question because we’ve talked about meeting expectations and thriving. Could you outline some of the other benefits of inclusive education?
Lilian Dogiama: Yeah, absolutely. Research shows that when a student feels comfortable in their education setting, they’re also more likely to open up, to like going to school, and eventually to develop a love for learning. So if we also consider the physiological and mental changes that students undergo as they enter puberty, then spending time in an inclusive school environment can do wonders for an individual’s self-acceptance and also self-love.
And I like to believe that this is paid forward in society. So in a nutshell, for me, inclusive schools can help children accept who they are and grow up to be confident and empathetic individuals. And I think our society could definitely use more people like that.
Lauren Woods: I completely agree with you there. It isn’t just about academics. It’s about helping to foster that sense of belonging where learners of all abilities can really feel that they’re valued and confident. It’s about fostering a real appreciation for diversity. Because if you learn alongside peers with different strengths or different challenges or different lived experience, you can really develop a much deeper understanding of the world around you. And as you’ve said, it’s about respect and empathy for others.
However, it does also obviously link to academics and inclusive education has been shown to improve outcomes, but not only for ones with, but for learners with disabilities or with any barriers, it can improve outcomes for all learners. And that’s because it helps teachers to really explore more flexible teaching methods and they can benefit all learners. It also encourages more social interaction, all those transferable skills as well. It can help inspire creativity, et cetera, et cetera.
It really does help prepare learners for the real world.
Laura Kahwati: So we’ve got two really key things there from what you’ve both been saying that we’ve got this academic success that comes from inclusive education, but underlying all of that, we’ve got this real importance of wellbeing. And actually, if we foster a love of learning in learners, it has to first come from confidence, self-acceptance, self-esteem, and all of those things that come from feeling like they belong in their school environment.
Misconceptions around inclusive education
Laura Kahwati: I think we definitely all agree on that, but there must be some misconceptions around inclusive education as well. So could you tell us a bit about some of the misconceptions?
Lauren Woods: Definitely, as I just mentioned then, there is a key misconception that it’s only learners with barriers to learning that might benefit from inclusive education practices. And actually that’s not the case. They benefit everybody because if a teacher increases the range of their teaching methods or is more creative with materials, that can really help to cater a really wide variety of learning styles. It can help engagement. It can help motivation.
Another misconception is that taking an inclusive education practice related stance might be akin to lowering academic standards and that isn’t the case at all. It’s about enhancing standards by making things in a way that is appropriate to the learners in the class, differentiating appropriately, offering personalised support and it’s about then helping each learner make progress from their own starting points.
Lilian Dogiama: I think that’s really important, Lauren, what you just said. And sometimes we do see it with access arrangements. And we do see sometimes retinence for people to apply for access arrangements because they might think there’s stigma associated with that because my classmates or my teachers might think that I need this exam to be made easier for me. But that’s actually absolutely not the case.
It’s all about finding a different exam for the candidate that needs that, but always maintaining the same assessment standards of fairness and validity. So that’s, think, it’s a really key issue to highlight here in our talk.
How does Cambridge ensure inclusive education?
Laura Kahwati: I guess some of these misconceptions and challenges that you’re talking about make it all the more important that we are here today chatting about inclusive education and really defining what it means. In terms of what it means for Cambridge, how does Cambridge ensure inclusive education? What does it look like in our products and services?
Lauren Woods: So here at Cambridge we work to support inclusive education through loads of our key strategies and practices and I just want to highlight maybe a few examples.
Firstly, we really focus on designing our curriculum and assessments to be as inclusive and as accessible as possible to the widest possible spectrum of students and where students may need additional support to minimise barriers we do offer of course a wide range of access arrangements and modified papers.
I’ve been working recently on developing more accessible images, for example, in some of our modern foreign language papers. I’m starting a piece of work looking at our science papers, looking at practical assessments. So we really do think about this and we design it in as much as possible.
We also look at making sure our curriculum assessments really reflect the diverse cultures that we work in and also reflect diverse perspectives so that students can see themselves in their learning as much as possible. And this also applies to the resources we work on, it, Lilian? And it’s not just about our assessments. That’s the area that I work in, but we do so much similar work within our publishing teams as well.
Lilian Dogiama: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, do you have all day?! We have so many examples in International Education. To give a little bit more context, we’re both a publisher of teaching and learning resources and also an awarding body. So that means that we have an array of opportunities to embed accessibility and inclusion in the materials and the contents that we create.
We’ve also made inclusion and accessibility parts of the overall strategy that we have as a product group. And it’s a recognised area of strategic priority for us. So that means that basically every team that we have in International Education has accessibility and inclusion on their to-do list of how you’re embedding it in our products and services, rather than the way that we design the products and services.
So as Lauren said, there are opportunities in textbooks, syllabus development, in our question papers. So some of the recent examples that we have is the redevelopment of our IGCSE music. So for 2026, we have broadened the areas of study to include more diverse musical genres, composers, artists, and instruments.
Another good example is our AS & A Level physical education, where we’ve improved access arrangements for candidates with particular assessment needs. And the new syllabus is actually going to include Goalball, which is a sport for people with low vision or blindness, and it’s played with eye shades. So we collaborated with a charity called Campsite and Goalball UK to understand better the requirements of the game. And I were very happy to say that it will be included in the new physical education syllabus.
Another great example that I’m very proud of is the Cambridge Latin course. So this is a beginner’s course, a series of textbooks, and in there we’ve tried to represent people from minorities or chronically underrepresented groups such as women, people of colour, of different social classes, people with disabilities and other marginalised groups. And we also have added cultural background sections where we sensitively explore Roman history and society and we encourage a critical understanding of the Roman world in issues such as enslavement and imperialism.
Last thing I promise, I just wanted to say this, we only found out a couple of days ago, but we’ve won an industry awards on inclusion. It’s the IFIP global inclusion award. And we won a category two on mental health, social, emotional, and wellbeing with our primary and lower secondary wellbeing curriculum.
So a huge shout out to the team that have worked so hard on this amazing curriculum that can support primary and lower secondary students with well-being. And yes, I’m really, really happy with that. So here I will stop.
Laura Kahwati: Well, thank you so much and also wonderful to hear about the award as well for those developments in curriculum. That was such a fantastic and profound plethora of really tangible examples, Lilian, so thank you so much. I’m sure many of our listeners will be so interested in certain examples that we’ve just heard.
Where to find out more about inclusive education
Laura Kahwati: And so they may well be wondering where can people go to find out more?
Lauren Woods: I think the first port of call would be the new section on accessibility and inclusivity on our website. Because on that we have lots of links to blogs, to podcasts such as this one, to education briefs, to information about conferences, to our getting started with guides and to lots of the Cambridge CPD, the professional development that we have on offer for teachers. In fact, Laura, you’ve been working on quite a lot of these materials, haven’t you?
Laura Kahwati: Yes, absolutely. Well, you mentioned the Getting Started with Inclusive Education guide there. It’s a fantastic interactive guide. It also features Lauren Anderlein as talking heads in the videos on the guide. And you can find it on our Leading, Learning and Teaching with Cambridge pages of our website.
Lauren Woods: On a more practical level as well, we’ve talked about access arrangements and the portal that we’ve launched recently. If listeners wish to find out more about our access arrangements offer, I encourage them to look at section 1.3 of the Cambridge Handbook. This has loads of information about our offer and how and when to apply, et cetera. The final thing I’d like to highlight really is that at Cambridge, we’re always looking at ways to make things more accessible and more inclusive.
It’s an ongoing journey and we’re really excited to continue sharing our progress updates with us. So do keep checking our web pages because that’s where we’re going be posting our latest updates.
Laura Kahwati: Fantastic, that’s great to know. Thank you very much. That is all we’ve got time for today on our inclusive education episode. Thank you to Lauren and thank you to Lilian. You have been such fantastic guests and thank you for sharing some really useful insights. Don’t forget to tell your friends and colleagues about us and rate our show on whatever platform you’re listening on.
Lauren Woods: Thank you for having us.
Lilian Dogiama: Thank you so much.
Laura Kahwati: Our show notes have lots of useful links that we’ve discussed throughout this episode, so be sure to take a look at them. You can also follow us on X and Instagram at CambridgeINT. Thanks for listening and we hope you join us again soon.
