Building Inclusive Classrooms

Our Center for Teaching & Learning treats "inclusive teaching" as an umbrella covering several distinct frameworks: Universal Design for Learning, anti-racist pedagogy, and social justice teaching among them. Start here for the concepts everything else on this page builds from.

Explore: Advancing Equity and Inclusion, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley.
This resource provides comprehensive strategies for advancing equity and inclusion in the classroom. It covers inclusive teaching practices that acknowledge diverse student identities and experiences, offering guidance on integrating social justice approaches, disability and gender justice, flexible instructional methods, reflective teaching, and fostering values affirmation and social belonging.

Explore: Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley.
This resource walks through UDL's core principles and how to apply them to a course's design, materials, and assessments, with "Unfolding Case Study" scenarios illustrating what that looks like in practice.

Students bring different histories with them into a classroom; some shaped by race, disability, gender, or a moment in the news that's affecting them personally. The resources below aim to address these.

Read: Anti-racism in Teaching, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley. 
This resource draws on scholarship from Education, Ethnic Studies, Black and African American Studies, and Gender Studies to outline approaches for advancing racial justice in higher education teaching.

Explore: Advancing Inclusion and Anti-Racism in the College Classroom: A Rubric and Resource Guide for Instructors (Blonder et al., UC Berkeley ESPM & Center for Teaching and Learning, 2022). 
This tool is a self-assessment guide that helps instructors reflect on their course design and teaching practices through an anti-racist lens. It's already been used to redesign ten large-enrollment Berkeley courses across Nutritional Sciences, Environmental Science, and related departments, with real before/after course revisions on record.

Read: Centering Disability in Teaching, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley. 
This resource addresses ableism and the systemic barriers, beyond individual accommodations, that exclude disabled students — and how to disrupt them at the level of course design.

Listen: Finding Space, UC Berkeley Research, Teaching, and Learning (RTL) Podcast. 
This series amplifies voices and stories from across campus, exploring how students with disabilities navigate academic life and build belonging through community support. 

Read: Gender Justice in Teaching, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley. 
This guide draws on feminist and transgender educational frameworks to center the experiences of students marginalized on the basis of gender.

Read: Fostering Belonging in Teaching, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley. 
This resource makes the case that belonging isn't a nice-to-have but foundational to student wellbeing and psychological health.

Explore: Establishing Inclusivity and Belonging, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Instructional Moves initiative. 
This resource outlines a seven-step pathway to establish inclusivity and belonging in the classroom. It emphasizes getting to know students, creating psychological safety, setting norms for brave spaces, modeling discussion norms, celebrating student strengths, diversifying small groups, and using consistent teams to encourage risk-taking. The guide provides practical strategies and reflection questions to help educators implement these steps.

Listen: Fostering a Sense of Belonging, Teaching in Higher Ed.
This Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode features Dr. Angel Herring and KaSondra Toney discussing strategies for fostering a sense of belonging in higher education. They share personal experiences and practical insights on building student confidence, creating inclusive learning environments, and expanding students' self-belief through supportive teaching practices. The conversation highlights the transformative impact of authentic relationships between instructors and students, emphasizing the importance of time, transparency, and encouragement in fostering belonging and student success.

Read: A Social Justice Approach to Teaching in Difficult Times, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley.
As global events become more hypervisible, it's increasingly likely that students in any given class are personally affected by them, this piece addresses how to teach through that reality rather than around it.

Read: Centering Transfer and Nontraditional Student Experiences, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley.
Addresses the specific needs of students who bring life experience beyond the typical college-age years, or who arrive with academic credit from another institution.

In practice: Chem 102: Foundations of Discovery Learning for College of Chemistry Transfer Students (Katherine Blackford, Lecturer in Chemistry)- a real example from Berkeley's CTL Teaching Innovation Showcase. 
Blackford's course was built specifically to help incoming transfer students access research and internship opportunities they'd historically pursued at lower rates than students who entered as first-years. Transfer students who took this course went on to engage in undergraduate research at a higher rate than historical data on transfer-student participation in the College of Chemistry. 

Read: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Teaching, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley.
This resource offers practical strategies for supporting international and multilingual students in higher education. It highlights common challenges these students face, such as language barriers, unfamiliar academic norms, and cultural adjustment, and encourages us to adopt inclusive, transparent, and culturally responsive teaching practices.