As an expert in education, it’s no surprise that Trinity College Dublin takes equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) training seriously. That includes programmes to ensure it has an inclusive curriculum, explains Orla Bannon, the university’s director of careers.
“Trinity has a very strong commitment to training so it’s a big area for us. That means we have training for students but also training for staff, including the Trinity Inclusive Professional Learning module in inclusive practices,” she says.
The programme brings teaching and non-teaching staff together to encourage a shared, inclusive language and approach to communication with the student body and with one another.
Trinity also offers students and staff an online training module entitled Let’s Talk About Race in the Higher Education Sector to develop greater awareness of the nature of racism and provide an understanding of how racism may take the form of inequality and bias.
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Another online training module, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education, seeks to raise awareness of how EDI and human rights issues permeate organisational culture and provides an understanding of what staff responsibilities are under Irish equality and human rights legislation. The university also ensures senior management and staff are provided with unconscious bias training.
“It’s the kind of associations that we hold, that can influence our attitudes and behaviour, that we might not even be aware of,” explains Bannon, who says this is particularly important in recruitment.
Trinity College Dublin offers an EDI policy and people microcredential, a course that staff and outside organisations can enrol in. Part of its success is down to a peer-learning element, whereby people from all sectors come together to talk about their EDI experiences.
Ensuring a culture of equality, diversity and inclusion is vital, she points out. “For Trinity, both from an employer and a teaching perspective, there has been a big diversification of our student body and our staff body over the last while, with lots of people from lots of different backgrounds coming in,” she explains
Whether staff or students, “It’s about making sure people can fulfil their potential and achieve the best performance they can, so it’s really critical that everyone is skilled in this area,” she adds.
Workshops are invaluable in terms of promoting an inclusive culture.
“For us, getting people from right across the university – from the academic schools to the professional and support areas, people in the labs and people from the drama department – getting that diversity of experience to explore and have open conversations around this is really important,” says Bannon.
“It’s about creating an environment where people feel comfortable speaking about maybe their own experiences or the experiences that they’ve observed, so that we can talk about and explore them in a comfortable way, to create that shared understanding.
“After all, we all have our own lived experience and we make judgments as a result of that. But to hear about someone else’s lived experience really has an impact; it helps you think about something differently if you see it again.”
That sense of commonality is important for Trinity, whether it’s supporting those who are the first in their family to go to third level or securing a Silver Athena Swan award for gender equality within higher education and research.
“It’s not about having some EDI office ‘over there’. EDI is everyone’s responsibility,” says Bannon.
While in-person events are invaluable, the ability to provide online programmes can boost access enormously for some organisations.
“Post-pandemic there has been a huge shift to e-learning,” says Ann Marie Brennan, learning and development partner with the Public Appointments Service (PAS), the central provider of recruitment, assessment and selection services for the Civil Service and other public bodies.
It offers staff access to training from organisations such as the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Irish Centre for Diversity. E-learning is the perfect way to undertake such programmes because it allows people to undertake them at their own pace.
“So much of this is about people learning it for themselves as individuals and then reflecting on it,” says Brennan.
Here too, however, programmes and webinars are layered with in-person workshops, wherein experts and people with personal experience of an issue host events. Unfortunately, the sensitivity of a topic can sometimes deter people from signing up.
“If it’s something about domestic violence and coercive control, for example, the very person who may need it most might not want to attend,” Brennan explains.
PAS works with specialist organisations such as Ahead and Open Door to develop mentoring initiatives around areas spanning everything from migraines to migrants. It also recognises events such as World Suicide Prevention Day and runs seminars from the HSE around such topics as menopause.
Organisations can’t make such programmes mandatory, Brennan points out, they can only make them available. “It’s about trying to capture the staff’s imagination so that they want to attend,” she adds.
