A new UBC resource is encouraging instructors to rethink how writing is taught, assessed, and supported across university classrooms.
Led by JWAM Associate Professor of Teaching, Dr. Laila Ferreira, the Inclusive Teaching of Writing (ITOW) website brings together research, classroom practices, and student perspectives to support more inclusive and accessible approaches to writing instruction. The website offers adaptable activities, assessments, and examples that faculty can use to support student writing, even if writing is not their area of expertise.
Ten key characteristics of inclusive writing instruction are the heart and foundation of the ITOW project. The ten characteristics frame, inform, and guide the development and adoption of the resources.
(L-R) The ITOW project team: Rebecca Carruthers den Hoed, Laila Ferreira, Katja Thieme, and Jennifer Walsh Marr. Photo: Ritwik Bhattacharjee
The ITOW website grew out of conversations that began in 2021, when Dr. Ferreira, and JWAM Chair of WRDS and Assistant Professor of Teaching, Dr. Rebecca Carruthers den Hoed, put out a call to faculty and staff across UBC who were committed to teaching writing in ways that respond to student diversity.
“If we care about antiracism, decolonization, and disability justice, then we also need to care about how we teach writing in every classroom.”
Rather than positioning writing as the responsibility of writing specialists alone, the ITOW website is designed as a resource hub for instructors in all disciplines. It incorporates images and icons of plants native to what is now called British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest as a deliberate choice to contribute to reconciliation and challenge colonial narratives.
Driven by students
The project centres the work of Graduate and Undergraduate Academic Advisors (GAA/UAA) who have been integral to the design and development of the website as well as the shaping of the ten characteristics of inclusive writing instruction.
(L-R) The ITOW student team: Ryosuke Aoyama, Danielle Tan, Lillian Ghorbani, Hitechha Sahni, Debbie Kim, and Maile Kilen. Photo by Julie Hoang.
UAA Maile Kilen, a fourth-year student pursuing a double major in Anthropology and Sociology, highlighted agency and voice as the most meaningful characteristics of inclusive writing instruction.
“Every student is coming into the classroom with such a unique lived reality. Being able to instill the confidence to not only embrace their positionality but incorporate it into academia is a great step in unsettling a hegemonic pedagogy that does not give space for these voices,” she said.
Collaborative endeavour
The website reflects months of collaborative research, writing, and design involving faculty and students, as well as partners from the Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, Indigenous Initiatives, and Arts Instructional Support and Information Technology.
The working group of instructors grappled with how writing functions in university classrooms, how it can unintentionally exclude students, and how these exclusions might particularly target marginalized communities. All aspects of the project were piloted not only WRDS classrooms, but also in Coordinated Arts Programs and Sauder, and then were revised based on feedback from instructors and students.
“This is about giving faculty a framework to support inclusive and accessible writing instruction, or even just a place to start.”
The ITOW website is now publicly available and intended to support instructors across UBC who are interested in strengthening how they teach writing in increasingly diverse classrooms.
ITOW gratefully acknowledges the financial support for this project provided by UBC Vancouver students via the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF).
