Driving institutional change for societal impact: Embedding inclusive assessment across an Irish University

As student populations become more diverse, there is increasing attention to diversity, equality, and inclusion in higher education, resulting in pressure from stakeholders to shift to a more inclusive culture reflected not only in teaching and learning practices but also assessment. Inclusive education demands abandoning stigmatising and exclusionary assessment practices in favour of approaches that support all learners (Tai, Ajjawi, and Umarova 2021). Change is complex in all organisations but particularly challenging for higher education institutions given the rate and complexity of change they have encountered (Dowling-Hetherthen, 2014). In fact, Marshall (2010) considers universities to be particularly resistant to change. The change process in higher education in Ireland has been typically characterised as top down and a key impediment to change is leadership capability (Hodgins, Mannix-McNamara, 2021).

This paper discusses an inclusion initiative at an Irish university that developed a whole-of-institution approach to inclusive assessment and resulted in a major change initiative. The Path 4, Higher Education Authority (HEA) funded project aimed to embed universal design principles into assessment practices, with a particular focus on first year assessment. This resulted in the drafting of the first assessment policy for the Irish HEI, to reduce inconsistencies and inequities in assessment practices across the university. In this paper, we discuss the process of change from which the draft policy emerged. This paper presents a case study of change and analyses the process from a change management perspective as a change management strategy emerged to challenge norms, assumptions and values in relation to assessment reflected in the change process of consultation. From creating the sense of urgency to embedding new practices, we conceptualise this change initiative as a process of unlearning (Klammer et al., 2025). During this process of unlearning, organisations can intentionally and deliberately discard undesired, obsolete, or harmful knowledge—often to make room for the creation of new knowledge and new ways of doing things. To this end, organisational unlearning can target different knowledge structures, such as systems, routines, basic assumptions, values, or norms. We analyse drivers and barriers to change at the HEI, using Lewin’s model of change (Cummings, Bridgman & Brown, 2015) and discuss the role of change agents. We conclude with reflections on the opportunities and challenges for institutional change projects that aim to enact meaningful inclusion in higher education.