This post offers some more tentative reflections on our autumn panel on ‘Disability, Technology, and Inclusive Education’. For reasons that will become clear, I shall be oscillating between the usual blog format and the lesser-spotted bleg (this one, not this one…).
My main aim in organising this panel was to bring together educators who have thought deeply about how technology can make higher education more inclusive for disabled and neurodivergent students, and who share a concern that widespread advances made during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic have been lost in the rush to ‘return to normal’.
Initially, my hope was to hear mainly from people who teach politics (understood broadly) and have published their thoughts and reflections in disciplinary SoTL. But I was unable to find much, if anything, in the usual outlets (e.g., those covered in Jeremy’s SoTL round ups) that included a focus on inclusivity gains during the early part of the pandemic and subsequent losses.
This was a surprise because, more generally, inclusivity is a strong theme in our discipline’s SoTL, as is co-production, and most of the disabled students we teach have a clear view on this: according to Disabled Students UK, 85% of disabled students report that they would benefit from the continuation of online teaching and learning options introduced during the early stages of the pandemic.
It seems to me that there are three possible explanations for my inability to find much disciplinary SoTL reflecting this perspective:
As we (or some of us, at least) move into a slower period of the academic year, I wanted to offer some reflections on this year’s events.
I must begin with a confession: for each of this year’s panels, I had a hidden agenda. I refer not to the printed running order (/script/emergency questions) that I kept handily out of view of my laptop camera when chairing. I mean to admit that the themes and participants for this year’s panels were selected with two goals in mind: first, the noble goal of discussing the latest ideas from some of the most influential and innovative researcher-practitioners in HE pedagogy; second, the – let’s say ‘prudent’ – goal of helping me advance my thinking on some embryonic SoTL research ideas.
With that in mind, my reflective posts (yes, that’s right – I just turned this into a series) will offer a summary of one of our panel events, followed by a brief account of how it has influenced a piece of SoTL research that I am in the process of developing. I would welcome feedback on either aspect.
Relational Pedagogies Inside and Outside the Classroom
Our first presenter at this event was Karen Gravett (Associate Professor and Associate Head (Research) at the Surrey Institute of Education, University of Surrey). Karen is among the leading researcher-practitioners of relational pedagogy in HE. She has written widely on relational pedagogies, including a recent monograph. Her presentation centred on the novel post-humanist strand of her conception of relational pedagogy and its potential benefits for addressing pressing questions around the role of digital tools in HE. In brief, she highlighted how much work on relational pedagogy is humanist in its focus and assumptions, e.g., focusing on staff-student relationships and student-student relationships. But a relational pedagogy can also be socio-material by taking into view our relations with environment and objects. This opens the way for a post-humanist strand of relational pedagogy that decentres the human subject and considers how we are constituted through our technologies and environments.
Karen highlighted two key benefits of her post-humanist conception of relational pedagogy. First, it can ground many familiar relational pedagogical practices, such as staff-student partnerships, co-creation, authentic assessments, and reflective writing. Second, it also provides us with theoretical tools to consider how to organize digital education to promote good pedagogical relations, rather than necessarily viewing the digital as a threat to the relational.
Next up were Kate Schick (Associate Professor of International Relations at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington) and Claire Timperley (Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington) co-presenting a selection of ideas from their recently published work on relational pedagogy.
To my mind, Kate and Claire are at the forefront of implementing innovative relational practices in PIR pedagogy. Their talk began with theory and moved on to practice, with each element corresponding to a recent, or upcoming, publication.
First, they explained their notion of ‘slow pedagogy’ understood as a relational form of subversive pedagogy. It is subversive in challenging the dominant ‘knowledge-transmission’ model of education, which emphasises efficiency and speed. It aims instead to create spaces for slowness, relationality, and care. This part of their talk built on their contribution to the 2024 Journal of International Political Theory special issue on ‘subversive pedagogies’ that they edited.
Next, they moved on to practical implications. First, they focused on classroom practices that invite students into slower spaces, offering three examples: micro-communities of learning, relational scaffolding for research projects, and creative writing. Here they drew on their 2025 article in Politics on ‘spacious learning’. As attentive ALPS readers will be aware, Kate and Claire previously published their own ALPS post on this work, so I will not do them the disservice of aiming to summarise it again here.
Finally, they focused on assessments, arguing that the goals of relational pedagogy are best served by a revised interpretation of ‘authentic assessment’ that reorients students to a different conception of learning through creative assessment practices. Here, they drew on ideas from their 2025 Teaching in Higher Education article on ‘assessment as pedagogy’.
UK-based readers will be pleased to hear that Kate and Claire are visiting in October with several events planned to discuss the conceptual foundations of their current book project. Keep an eye out for further details closer to the time.
The event then moved into the Q&A. Such was the richness of the discussion that I could not possibly aim to do it justice by way of providing a comprehensive summary. Also, it was a long time ago, and – cards on the table – I can’t read all of my notes. So, I shall instead highlight three questions that stuck in my mind as being especially incisive:
(1) Much research in this area is based on classroom experiences – can and should we aim to go beyond this to more general empirical research?
(2) Relational pedagogy can focus on micro-level practices, but do we also need greater attention to how universities can support these practices via macro-level systems?
(3) Many of the practical recommendations made by relational pedagogues are appealing, but do we need to sign up to the ‘theory’ to endorse them?
This academic year, the UCL Centre for the Pedagogy of Politics (CPP) is hosting a series of online panel events. Our first event on 4 December was on the theme of ‘Disability, Technology, and Inclusive Education‘. In this guest post, one of the panellists at that event, Martin Compton (College Lead for AI and Innovation in Education, King’s College London), offers further reflections on how best to use technology to facilitate the inclusion of disabled and neurodivergent students, the extent to which changes required in the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic improved inclusion for disabled students, and whether those improvements have been maintained.
I was delighted to be invited to speak at the UCL Centre for the Pedagogy of Politics’ recent panel on Disability, Technology, and Inclusive Education. My current role at King’s College London (AI and innovation in education lead) can sometimes mask my wider faculty development and student engagement passions related to inclusive education but this was a perfect opportunity to connect these aspects of my work. The invite prompted me to reflect again on my own position, shaped by both professional and personal experience. I spoke alongside two people whose work I admire greatly. Dr Miranda Melcher’s coherent thinking, scholarship and advocacy of high impact interventions were passionately shared. And my former colleague, Ben Watson’s, leadership in digital accessibility at UCL has had cross-sector impacts. It was a great opportunity to be reminded of the clarity of their arguments, their commitment to practical change and their willingness to challenge the limits of established thinking.
My own starting point in this space is relatively simple. Digital tools, and now generative AI, have already changed what is possible for many learners, especially those who have been historically marginalised. A significant complicating factor is that these same tools can widen divides at the same time. I understand the many good reasons to resist certain developments in educational technology. I understand the arguments that warn of harm and the potentials for exacerbating marginalisation. So to that end, I am neither a technological determinist nor a tech evangelist. I do, however, feel concerned by the strength of anti-technology narratives that often drown out successful inclusive applications and hard-won gains. Too often accessibility is an afterthought as opposed to embedded practice. In a 2023 paper, (co-authored with Ben and Dr Alex Standen, now at LSE), I argued that there was a risk (already apparent in fact) that progress made during the Covid lockdown period, and recently expanded through responsible uses of AI, would be undone wherever opportunity to ‘return to normal’ presented itself. But, wilfully ignoring or winding back on approaches that can narrow engagement and attainment gaps should never be on the table. We need to hold on to what worked for those whose needs and voices are so often the least heard in policy discussions.
We are delighted to share the details of our first event on ‘Disability, Technology, and Inclusive Education’, which is taking place on Thursday 4th December, 4.00-5.00pm (UK time).
It will include contributions from the following panelists alongside time for audience Q&A:
Martin Compton (College Lead for AI and Innovation in Education, King’s College London);
Miranda Melcher (Educational Technologist, Learning Enhancement and Development (LEaD) department, City, University of London)
We hope for a wide-ranging discussion on issues such as how best to use technology to facilitate the inclusion of disabled students; the extent to which changes required in the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic improved inclusion for disabled students and, if so, whether those improvements have been maintained; the current state of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in this area.
The event is primarily aimed at academics working in politics (or adjacent) departments who have an interest in pedagogical research and best practice in this area.
We hope to see some of you there for a thought-provoking discussion!
I recently got to attend the University of Central Florida’s Teaching and Learning with AI Conference in Orlando, and it’s one I highly recommend for anyone interested in practical ideas on how to think about, resist, and use Generative AI in higher education. The presentations are all 25 minutes and the presenters make the most of their short time. I want to share some ideas from one of those presenters, Ashley Evans, professor and Program Chair of Software Development and Cloud Computing at Valencia College. While her field is obviously far from political science, her strategies for transforming assignments from AI-vulnerable to AI-resistant are easily adapted to our field, and worth considering. I want to note that these are my recollections and takes on Evans’ presentation; all ideas here are hers, not mine (excepting the adaptations to polisci). Her website is https://ashley-evans.vercel.app/ and she has told me she’s happy to talk AI with other faculty; contact her by email.
Evans’ stated goals for creating AI resistant assignments include:
Reduce student ability to get high marks from solely AI-generated submissions
Eliminate the ability of AI to complete the task in place of the student
Challenge students to think critically about AI generated output, if used.
Relieve instructors from the role of AI-detectives.
All of these seem like worthy goals to me. Most importantly in my mind, she’s interested in taking the weight off of faculty of trying to root out unauthorized AI use, not by banning it, but by revising assignments so that AI is genuinely not useful on the assignment, and by establishing grading criteria that focuses on completion of tasks that AI cannot do well. This is a tough balancing act, but one that I think faculty need to wrestle with as they figure out how much they want to incorporate AI into their classes.
This semester I am once against tasked by my institution to introduce a new crop of students to the magical world of international relations theories. Yet, as many of us, who do that regularly, know, teaching theories in international relations can be a difficult feat, as many of our students (most of the time freshmen and sophomores) engage with abstract ideas/frameworks for the first time. In particular, keeping together the purpose of theories, why we have different ones, and what their core assumptions are in how they approach the world can be daunting – for both the student and the teacher tasked with that role. As a visual learner myself, I have adopted two measures in my classes to convey visually the meaning of theories and why we have them. Below, I briefly discuss them.
I just attended the Teaching and Learning with AI Conference in Orlando, and my brain is brimming with ideas on how to use AI in support of students and faculty. I think most of us remain stuck in the Chat GPT mindset, concerned about academic integrity and students using that platform to write their papers and discussion posts. I’m not downplaying either that, or the privacy and ethical concerns about AI. But that’s just one part of the conversation. In the last two years there has been an explosion of other tools that could have positive impacts in the teaching and learning environment, and as Jeremy noted, we should be talking about those, too.
If you’ve ever had the urge to say, ‘its in the syllabus!’ to a questioning student, I’ve got some good news: there’s an AI for that.
Technology marches on while our social institutions generally don’t. Eventually a force pushes the existing order beyond its tipping point, and there’s a bit of mayhem until a new equilibrium is reached. Think of knocking a wasp nest off the rail of your back porch after Aunt May has been stung for the third time. For the profession of teaching, that force is AI.
I know that I’ve been periodically yammering on this blog about the technological transformation of higher education for the last twelve years, and, by outward appearances, it may seem that the peasants haven’t yet grabbed their Instagram pitchforks and stormed the Ivory Tower. But I think AI is the qualitatively different icing on the cake, for a few reasons.
First, open-access AI has demolished the academic cheating industry. Here is the stock price of the “educational support services” company Chegg since OpenAI released ChatGPT:
Instead of buying an essay from an online paper mill in Pakistan or Kenya, students who are unwilling to learn can now get what we insist they deliver for free.
Second, AI has now improved to the point where its text output is equal to or better than that of most human students. Below is a partial screenshot of how ChatGPT analyzed “Why Are There No Arab Democracies?” by Larry Diamond (Journal of Democracy 21, 1). Yes, AI can now understand articles and even books that one uploads in pdf form.
AI has rendered the written assessment of student learning, as traditionally formulated, a pointless endeavor.
Last point, tangential to classroom praxis but not to higher ed as a whole: AI portends the death of academic writing as a genre, to which I say, good riddance. The overly educated often refuse to communicate in the vernacular to obfuscate the fact that they actually have nothing to say. Or that they do have something of value to say, but never learned how to say it. If all you do is spout vapid gobbledygook, you’re now redundant, because AI can accomplish the same task much more efficiently. If AI can convey your good ideas more clearly than you can, time to admit that all those years of formal education never trained you to write well in the first place. You need to up your game — possibly with the help of AI.*
*This blog post was not written by AI, though you couldn’t tell if it was.
This academic year, the UCL Centre for the Pedagogy of Politics (CPP) is hosting a series of online panel events. Our first event on 30 October was on the theme of ‘Using technology to teach politics’. In this guest post, one of the panellists at that event, Simon Sweeney (University of York), offers further reflections on the challenges involved in higher education’s embracing generative AI, where tools such as ChatGPT call into question issues of authorship and have profound implications for assessment.
A few years ago, we were worrying about students’ using essay mills, a form of contract cheating that plagiarism detection software struggled to identify. The Covid-19 pandemic and online delivery coincided with a reported increase in academic dishonesty (AD). In late-2022 the arrival of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) chatbots like ChatGPT is a further challenge to the integrity of assessment.
Universities realised that banning chatbots was not feasible, as AI has become an established feature in our lives and graduate employment. As educators, we need to respond positively to the opportunities AI presents, recognising its benefits and assimilating AI into teaching and learning practice.
This means developing strategies that accommodate students’ use of GAI while protecting assessment integrity.
You might also be interested to hear about a series of online panel events UCL CPP is organising this year, each of which will bring together a mix of political scientists and political theorists to discuss their work and thoughts on a particular pedagogical theme.
Our first panel event on the theme of ‘Using technology to teach politics’ is taking place this Monday (30 October) from 3.30-5.00pm (UK time).
We hope for a wide-ranging discussion, including reflections on effectively incorporating new tech, concerns about certain uses of tech, and ideas for using older tech in new/better ways, with plenty of time set aside for audience Q&A.
We hope to see some of you there for a thought-provoking discussion. If you are unable to attend, fear not – we will be sharing some of the main insights from the events on this blog throughout the year.
