October 04, 2021: Five Moore Minutes! with Shelley Moore Inclusive Education is not more work, it’s different work!

Five Moore Minutes is back for season 4! Created by Shelley Moore, a currently SSHRC funded Ph.D. candidate here at UBC. Shelley Moore is a highly sought-after teacher, researcher, consultant and storyteller. Her research and work has been featured at national and international conferences and is constructed based on theory and effective practices of inclusion, special education and curriculum. Inspired by a little bowling video…her website Five Moore Minutes features videos dedicated to empowering schools and classrooms to support ALL Learners! It is an inclusive education channel designed with educators in mind. As teacher-students, we don’t always have a lot of time, so the video series offers digital resources, research, professional development activities and inspiration in 5-minute chunks!


Five Moore Minutes evolved out of a video competition where Shelley was one of five students nationwide to win the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Storytellers challenge in 2016. Each year the competition asks students to show Canadians how social sciences and humanities research is affecting our lives, our world and our future for the better. Shelley made the video on research in inclusive education, it was about bowling! After the video, Shelley got so many requests for more that with the help of the Ministry of Education of British Columbia, Five Moore Minutes was launched. Watch below her innovative way to explain inclusive education using a metaphor for bowling!

Inclusion describes the principle that all students, through meaningful participation, are entitled to equitable access to learning, achievement and the pursuit of excellence in all aspects of their educational journey. Presuming competence in our students is the gateway for inclusive education. All people have different abilities and disabilities, resulting in different styles of learning. Our job as teachers is to adapt to each of their styles through a competency-based learning education. We should enhance the capabilities of their mind and cherish their diversity so our students become life-long learners that adapt to a changing world. To understand more about presuming competence watch Shelley’s TED Talk – Under the Table below. It is more than five minutes…

Shelley Moore recommends that we stop thinking about what students can’t do and, even better, encourage them to overcome obstacles by nourishing their wonder, curiosity, and imagination. Shelley reminds us that as educators our assumptions affect students learning and they shouldn’t. Coming to understand that all students are capable of learning and contributing to their community is key to any form of education. “We have to believe that people are competent, we have to trust that all people can learn. If we don’t presume competence it is us who is disabled” (Moore, 2016). The new season of Five Moore Minutes includes videos that explain “The Five Ps of Inclusion”. The first of five in the “P” series was presuming competence which Shelley explains above. The second video of “The Five Ps of Inclusion” Series looks at how we can connect place to our understanding of inclusion. Drawing from Indigenous worldviews, the following video promotes seeing inclusive classrooms as more than locations, and emphasizes the building of community, identity and belonging. Subscribe to Five Moore Minutes to find out the other three “Ps” of Inclusion.