Measuring Inclusion Efforts: Tools for Assessment, Feedback, and Reflection
You might be interested in reflecting on or assessing your individual inclusive teaching efforts, or have general questions about the climate of inclusion within your department or more broadly at your institution. You may want to know which tools already exist in the literature or are otherwise available. The list below captures several of such instruments including those that examine the curriculum, instructor teaching practices, and students’ perspectives. They include surveys, rubrics, inventories, and other types of tools that can be used for assessment or reflection purposes. You might notice that the instruments vary in the factors they measure related to inclusive teaching or broader inclusive climates, and some have psychometric property information available (i.e. validity and reliability evidence) for the context in which they were developed. Please feel free to share this list, and send other instruments that can be added.
Updated: 8/29/22
Curriculum & Teaching Practices
Surveys
Inclusive Teaching Strategies Inventory (ITSI)
Measures faculty attitudes and actions towards accommodations and Universal Design for Learning principles. Seven constructs include: accommodations, accessible course materials, course modifications, inclusive lecture strategies, inclusive classroom, inclusive assessment, and disability laws and concepts. Validity and reliability evidence present.
Inclusive Teaching Strategies Inventory – Distance Education (ITSI-DE)
Adapted from the ITSI to assess strategies used in distance learning. Validity and reliability evidence present.
Reflection Tools
Course Design
Social Justice Syllabus Design Tool
Supports instructor reflection on course syllabi. Focuses on relationship, community, and process.
Inclusion by Design: Tool Helps Faculty Examine Their Teaching Practices
Allows instructors to review the design of their course. Focuses on inclusion and course context, inclusion and “text”: syllabus and course design, inclusion and subtext.
Teaching Practices
Inclusive Teaching Strategies: Reflecting on Your Practice
Inventory that instructors can use to reflect on their inclusive teaching practices.
Inclusive Teaching Strategies Inventory
Adapted from the Inclusive Teaching Strategies: Reflecting on Your Practice tool and includes a gender equity lens.
Departmental
Supports STEM departments in assessing their DEI efforts and identifying areas of growth.
Comprehensive
Inclusive Teaching Higher Education Rubric
Allows educators to examine specific standards around inclusive teaching, including: faculty awareness, learning environment, course overview and syllabus, instructional materials, instructional strategies, and assessment.
Students’ Perspectives
Surveys
Institutional Environment
Diverse Learning Environments Survey
Provides insight into students’ overall perceptions of the institutional climate and campus practices.
General Sense of Belonging
Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM)
Assesses students’ perceived sense of belonging. Originally used with middle school students. Validity and reliability evidence present.
Sense of Belonging Scale (Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship)
Adapted from the Panorama Student Survey scale and sense of belonging survey developed by York (2016). Modifiable to administer at the course or departmental level.
Sense of Belonging Scale (Hoffman et al., 2002)
Measures perceived peer support, perceived faculty support/comfort, perceived classroom comfort, perceived isolation, empathetic faculty understanding.
Departmental Sense of Belonging
Assesses belongingness, engagement, and self-confidence more broadly, and at the department level. Validity and reliability evidence present.
Measures students’ sense of social fit to a group (e.g. department).
Departmental Sense of Belonging and Involvement (DeSBI) (Biology Department)
Adapted from the Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM). Contains three subscales: sense of belonging: valued competence, sense of belonging: social acceptance, involvement. Validity and reliability evidence present.
Engineering Department Inclusion Survey (EDIL)
Assesses student perceptions along four scales: department caring, department diversity, and department pride.
Additional Tool
Panorama Equity and Inclusion Survey
Measures experiences and actions of belonging and inclusion for students, teachers, and staff at the K-12 level. Major areas assessed are diversity and inclusion, cultural awareness and action, sense of belonging, educating all students, professional learning about equity. Validity and reliability evidence present.