Inclusive STEM curricula build belonging when students help rewrite the narrative
Updated Aug 07, 2026
Students can be told that STEM is for everyone and still meet a curriculum that mostly celebrates the same familiar names. When that happens, belonging starts to look like a slogan rather than something students can feel. That is why Thomas Hobson and Ellie Davison's Journal of Further and Higher Education paper, "Hidden Histories: co-creation to diversify the narrative in STEM curricula increases students' sense of belonging", published online on 3 August 2026, matters for universities using student voice to understand inclusion and course culture. At Student Voice AI, we pay attention to this kind of work because students often describe belonging through what a discipline chooses to foreground, and who it leaves at the margins.
Context and research question
The paper starts from a practical inclusion problem. When curricula overlook scholars from diverse ethnic, gender, sexuality, disability, and cultural backgrounds, some students struggle to identify with the teaching materials and to imagine themselves within the field. In STEM, that problem can be especially sharp because the discipline is often presented as objective and universal, even when the stories used to teach it are highly selective.
Hobson and Davison examine the Hidden Histories project, a co-created curriculum-diversification initiative in which student researchers developed interactive seminar activities that embedded undercelebrated scholars into STEM teaching. The evaluation asks a simple but important question for UK higher education: if students help reshape the story a curriculum tells, does that change awareness, belonging, and appetite for more inclusive teaching?
Key findings
The most important finding is that diversifying the curriculum affected belonging, not only awareness. The evaluation found a stronger awareness of thinkers from marginalised backgrounds, but it did not stop there. It also reported that students from a range of backgrounds felt a stronger sense of belonging in STEM. That matters because belonging is often discussed as if it sits outside teaching, in induction, societies, or support services. This paper shows that what students encounter inside the curriculum can shape whether the discipline feels open to them.
"has encouraged a sense of belonging in STEM for students from a range of backgrounds."
The route to that change matters as much as the outcome. Students were not only asked to react to a finished curriculum. Student researchers helped create the seminar activities themselves, so the intervention combined representation with participation. That makes the paper useful for UK universities that want more than end-point consultation. Co-creation appears to have made the inclusive curriculum work feel more credible, not just more visible.
The paper also points to a stronger appetite for deeper engagement with inclusive teaching and learning. That is a valuable result for UK teams. It suggests students do not necessarily see inclusive curriculum work as a symbolic add-on or a compliance exercise. They may read it as a sign that the university is taking their place in the discipline seriously, which can make later dialogue about teaching more honest and more useful.
Finally, the project developed the student researchers as well as the wider cohort. The paper reports gains in employability skills, a more questioning mindset, and more confidence in challenging established norms. In practice, that means curriculum co-creation can do double work: improve the taught experience for the wider cohort and give student partners meaningful developmental value.
Practical implications
For UK universities, the first implication is to treat curriculum representation as a student experience measure, not only a content-design question. If students rarely see diverse contributors, examples, or histories in a subject, a belonging survey may show the consequence only after confidence and participation have already been shaped. Add open questions that ask where students do and do not feel reflected in their course. The benefit is earlier evidence about cultural fit.
Second, institutions should move beyond occasional curriculum audits and build students into the redesign process itself. This paper suggests the strongest change came when students helped design teaching materials rather than only commenting afterwards. That reinforces the case that student voice gets more inclusive when universities redesign how participation works. The takeaway is practical: co-design can make inclusive curriculum work more credible and more diagnostic.
Third, universities should analyse belonging comments alongside curriculum and representation themes. If students say they feel peripheral, unseen, or unsure whether they fit, the cause may sit in teaching examples, seminar activities, or who is treated as a legitimate knower in the discipline. A structured approach such as the NSS open-text analysis methodology helps teams compare those patterns consistently. The benefit is clearer action for course teams.
Finally, Student Voice Analytics fits naturally here because it helps universities separate comments about belonging, representation, curriculum relevance, and classroom inclusion across module evaluations, NSS-style surveys, and local pulse checks. That gives Student Experience teams a clearer way to test whether inclusive curriculum work is actually changing how students describe their discipline.
FAQ
Q: How should a university test whether inclusive curriculum changes are improving belonging?
A: Start with one stable belonging item, then add an open-text prompt asking where students do and do not see themselves reflected in the course. Compare the responses before and after curriculum changes, and review subgroup comments carefully using the student comment analysis governance checklist when the evidence is sensitive or small-scale.
Q: What are the methodological limits of this study?
A: This is best read as practice-oriented project evaluation rather than a sector benchmark. It shows a credible mechanism, namely that co-created curriculum diversification can shift awareness and belonging, but it does not tell us how large the effect would be across every subject, provider, or student group. UK teams should use it as a strong prompt for local testing, not as a universal effect size.
Q: What does this change about student voice practice more broadly?
A: It reinforces that student voice is not only a way to react to existing teaching. It can also be a design method. When students help reshape what a curriculum values and who it recognises, universities learn more about belonging than a satisfaction item or end-point comment set can show on its own.
References
[Paper Source]: Thomas Hobson, Ellie Davison "Hidden Histories: co-creation to diversify the narrative in STEM curricula increases students' sense of belonging" DOI: 10.1080/0309877x.2026.2708768
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