Healthy Pedagogy

What Is Healthy Pedagogy?

Healthy Pedagogy integrates sincere mindfulness of the health and well-being of instructors and students into course design and the craft of teaching. By fostering caring, creative, and inclusive participation in the classroom and beyond, both teachers and students can experience engaging communities of learning.

Healthy Campus Guide to Integrating Well-Being Concepts into Learning Environments

The “Healthy Campus Guide to Integrating Well-Being Concepts into Learning Environments” suggests strategies to incorporate and integrate health and wellbeing concepts into your classrooms and student activities. Support your students’ success by implementing one or more of these practices in your courses:

Be Mindful about Deadlines & Workload
Be Flexible and Offer Options
Encourage Breaks, Standing, Stretching, & Reflection
Share Resources & Wellness Infor with Students
Help Students Connect with You

Be Welcoming, Enthusiastic & Caring
Help Students Connect with the Community
Provide Timely Feedback & Helpful Advice
Provide Opportunities that Promote Professional and Personal Skills
Help Students Connect with Each Other

^{This guide was created by various partners as part of the University of California’s Healthy Campus Network (HCN). The HCN is a network of coalitions across all ten campuses working together to promote individual campus and systemwide changes to advance a culture of health and well-being across the University of California.}

Healthy Pedagogy Videos

Watch the “Weaving Health Into Pedagogy: UCR Faculty Share Their Experiences” Panel Discussion, 4.15.21 (Video)
Watch the faculty training session held for “Using the Healthy Campus Guide to Integrating Well-Being Concepts into Learning Environments,” 9.23.20 (Video)
Read the ACHF report from the Healthy Campus Subcommittee on Well-Being in Learning Environments study about the impact of healthy pedagogies on instructor and student health and well-being. (PDF)

Healthy Pedagogy Resources to Support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from the UC and Beyond

UCR Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Course Design Rubric (Request Form)

This rubric seeks to support reflective, collaborative, and iterative development of equitable and inclusive teaching practices.

Healthy Pedagogy and Positive Climate
- Read about “Teaching Practices that Support Wellbeing” in this tool for educators from the University of British Columbia (UBC), available through their suite of resources for promoting student wellness through teaching practices.
- Simon Fraser University (SFU) has crowdsourced resources for promoting well-being in learning environments from instructors. Instructors there are encouraged to invite student evaluation about the degree of support provided through a course, based on integration of strategies from its own Healthy Campus guide to encourage and support healthy pedagogies.
- “The (UC, Berkeley) Division of Equity & Inclusion has created a toolkit to aid faculty in establishing a virtual classroom culture and responding to hostile behavior online, and the Multicultural Education Program maintains a list of classroom tools from Berkeley and from our peer institutions.” - view source
Equity and Inclusion
- Review this resource from the Chronicle of Higher Education by Viji Sathy and Kelly A. Hogan about How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive, or read this short article by Jason Barr on Developing a Positive Classroom Climate.
- Visit this page of Learning Resources from UCR’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, about inclusion practices, implicit bias, and managing microaggressions.
- View this UC, Davis guide to Create an Inclusive Class Climate Online, or apply this Course Equity Checklist to enact more equitable approaches for courses taught partially or fully online. Additional resources for “Creating an Engaging & Inclusive Environment” can be found at this UC, Davis webpage for Just-In-Time Teaching, or at this page about Online Equity & Inclusion for TAs.
- UC, Berkeley provides these resources for Promoting an Equitable and Inclusive Learning Environment, and UC, San Diego offers these resources for instructors on writing inclusion statements, and on teaching Latinx/Chicanx students.
- UCLA provides guidance to instructors for promoting equity through this EDI Syllabus for Faculty, and through these resources for inclusive teaching practices. These Creating an Inclusive Classroom resources from Iowa State University include a Learner-Centered Mindful Syllabus Checklist (PDF), and lots more.
- Use this Syllabus Review Guide for Equity-Minded Practice from the Center for Urban Education for guided reflection on designing with racial and ethnic equity in mind, or these resources from Cal State, Chico for making syllabi more accessible. The California Education Learning Lab also has a Learning Lab Equity Conversations video series, including an installment called “The Syllabus as an Equity Practice.”
Anti Racism Resources

The University of California Office of the President website provides this suite of anti-racism resources. The California Community Colleges use this inquiry-based framework for encouraging anti-racist pedagogy. Recordings from faculty development webinars on equity-minded practices are publicly available through the Cuesta College website. Additional anti-racism materials from Cuesta College are included on this page under “Equity Resources and Articles.”
Trauma Aware Teaching

The “Online Learning Toolkit” created a self-enroll, self-paced course called Trauma Fundamentals for Higher Educators ($29). And “In Aug. 2020, the Center for the Advancement of Teaching partnered with the Wellness Resource Center, Office of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Advocacy and Leadership and Tuttleman Counseling Services to sponsor a three-part workshop on trauma-informed teaching.” - view source. Use this Trauma-Aware Teaching Checklist developed by Karen Costa for reflection about your own teaching practices.
Accessibility and UDL
- Additional accessibility resources from UC, Davis are this page about Making Course Materials and Classes Accessible and this Course Accessibility Evaluation Checklist. Another resource for “Making Accessible Materials” is this list of Top Tips from the Faculty Center at Cal Poly Pomona.
- Reference this article about ADA Compliance for Online Course Design, use WebAIM’s WCAG 2 Checklist for guidance on building accessible courses, or view these resources for developing accessible online courses from the University of Washington.
- The University of Washington is home to the Center for Universal Design in Education. View their Introduction to Universal Design in Education, or review the Universal Design for Learning Guidelines developed by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST).