Integrating teaching on ‘sensitive’ topics into your lessons, 27 Feb (online)

Tuesday 27 February 2024, 2–3:30pm (online)

Jayne Kavanagh will draw on her ten years’ experience of facilitating UCL medical student sessions on so called ‘sensitive’ topics – abortion, FGM and domestic abuse – to open up discussion on integrating teaching on ‘sensitive’ topics into the curriculum.  

Jayne’s session will help attendees engage with learners and overcome barriers to teaching on ‘sensitive’ topics at a time when educators are under increased pressure to create curriculums that reflect diverse audiences and when there is a polarisation of opinions on campus.

The session will also cover lived experience from a teacher and learner perspective and will address psychological safety in the classroom.  

Event background

This Eugenics Legacy Education Network (ELEN) event is organised by UCL’s Eugenics Legacy Education Project (ELEP), a programme of education activity to help address UCL's harmful historical links to eugenics. 
 
ELEP is theoretically anchored within the field of difficult knowledge studies. Britzman (1998) developed the concept of ‘difficult knowledge’ to investigate the ways that experiences of education and learning can be problematic, uncomfortable, and even harmful when encountering complex curriculum areas. ELEP supports educational projects that encourage engagement with core issues in social justice-oriented approaches to education, such as difficult knowledge.