But it’s important to understand that inclusion safety isn’t merely tolerance; it’s not an attempt to cover up differences or politely pretend they’re not there. No, inclusion safety is provided by genuinely inviting others into your society based on the sole qualification that they possess flesh and blood. This transcendent connection supersedes all other differences.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
Giving inclusion safety is a moral imperative.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
As the first stage of psychological safety, inclusion safety is, in its purest sense, nothing more than species-based acceptance. If you have flesh and blood, we accept you. Profoundly simple in concept, devilishly difficult in practice, we learn it in kindergarten and unlearn it later.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
Clearly, granting and receiving inclusion safety is a matter not only of happiness but, indeed, life and death.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
Inclusion Safety
My point is that worth comes first, worthiness comes second. Inclusion safety is not about worthiness. It’s about treating people like people. It’s the act of extending fellowship, membership, association, and connection—agnostic of rank, status, gender, race, appearance, intelligence, education, beliefs, values, politics, habits, traditions, language, customs, history, or any other defining characteristic. Inclusion marks passage into civilization.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
The only reciprocation requirement in this unwritten social contract is the mutual exchange of respect and permission to belong.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
Worth precedes worthiness. There’s a time and a place to judge worthiness, but when you allow someone to cross the threshold of inclusion, there’s no litmus test. We’re not weighing your character in the balance to see if you’re found wanting. To be deserving of inclusion has nothing to do with your personality, virtues, or abilities; nothing to do with your gender, race, ethnicity, education or any other demographic variable that defines you. There are, at this level, no disqualifications, except one—the threat of harm.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
What should it take to qualify for inclusion safety? Two things: Be human and be harmless. If you meet both criteria, you qualify. If you meet only one, you don’t. The great African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass made the definitive statement about inclusion safety when he said, “I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity.” That statement can apply to any characteristic. When we extend inclusion safety to each other, we subordinate our differences to invoke a more important binding characteristic—our common humanity.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
The choice to include another human being activates our humanity.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
Inclusion safety is not earned but owed.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
Diversity is a fact. Inclusion is a choice.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
But not just any choice.
We include naturally in childhood and exclude unnaturally in adulthood.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
…psychological safety is the foundation of inclusion…
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
If you’re a leader and want your people to perform, you must internalize the universal truth that people want, need, and deserve validation. Inclusion safety requires that we condemn negative bias, arbitrary distinction, or destructive prejudice that refuses to acknowledge our equal worth and the obligation of equal treatment. If everyone deserves inclusion, if we’re all entitled to fellowship and connection, if we have the right to civil and respectful interactions, if the reciprocation of courtesy defines us as a species—we have an obligation to demolish nativism and ethnocentrism.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
And it really doesn’t matter whose theory of superiority you read; they’re all meditations in hypocrisy, bathed in jingoism, resting on the same veiled attempts to preserve the vassalage of the past.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
Key concept: No person living in a prison of prejudice can be truly happy or free.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
Inclusion and Equity
Having diversity without equity is most definitely possible; but without equity, diversity itself is not any institution’s strength—at least not for the people who are denied equity. So we should be careful not to conflate diversity, equity, and inclusion. When we do, we risk obscuring the demands that equity makes of us that diversity and inclusion without equity don’t make. We can lead a school that is racially or economically diverse, but if our “diverse” school is full of racism and class inequity, we can’t say it’s equitable. That’s why we put equity and justice at the center of the conversation: robust, healthy diversity and inclusion cannot exist without equity.
Fix Injustice, Not Kids and Other Principles for Transformative Equity Leadership
Diversity is priceless. Inclusion is critical. But diversity and inclusion without equity are hollow. We reach meaningful diversity and inclusion through equity, not vice versa.
Fix Injustice, Not Kids and Other Principles for Transformative Equity Leadership
In the article “Language of Appeasement,” Dafina-Lazarus Stewart (2017) demonstrates further how we can ask those deeper questions by prioritizing our commitments to equity and justice despite the allure of softer commitments to diversity and inclusion. Stewart compares the questions framed by a focus on diversity and inclusion with questions that center equity. For instance, “Diversity asks, ‘Who’s in the room?’ Equity responds: ‘Who is trying to get in the room but can’t? Whose presence in the room is under constant threat of erasure?’” and “Inclusion asks, ‘Has everyone’s ideas been heard?’ Justice responds, ‘Whose ideas won’t be taken as seriously because they aren’t in the majority?’” (para. 10). These are great examples of redress questions, revealing the essence of equity so we can cultivate a more transformative version of it.
Fix Injustice, Not Kids and Other Principles for Transformative Equity Leadership
Inclusion as Belonging
As our title signals, we focus on discussing and facilitating inclusion in terms of pupils’ sense of belonging, which is to say learners’ subjective sense of whether or not they are part of their school community, safe, and valued. This connects to a larger research on understanding school belonging, and how it impacts pupils. As discussed in more detail under Approach 1 in the Planning Guidance document, this body of research suggests that it may be an important contributor to pupils’ participation and achievement, rather than following from these later.
Guidance Part 1: An Introduction to School-level Approaches for Developing Inclusive Policy – Belonging in School – a school-level resource for developing inclusive policies
A sense of not belonging at school can hinder learning and lead to disaffection and active disengagement from learning.
Nearly 80% of Australian students say they ‘didn’t fully try’ in latest Pisa tests | Australian education | The Guardian
There also appears to be a close relationship between the sense of belonging and reading scores across most OECD countries. While there are exceptions, most OECD countries including Australia have experienced declining student engagement with learning and school and declines in PISA results since 2003.
Nearly 4 in 5 Australian Students Didn’t Fully Try in PISA Tests – SOS Australia
A sense of not belonging at school can result in less motivation, effort and participation learning. It and lead to disaffection and active disengagement from learning.
Nearly 4 in 5 Australian Students Didn’t Fully Try in PISA Tests – SOS Australia
Inclusion and Open Source
Open Source, at its fundamental levels, is all about inclusion—it’s about always asking the question, “Who am I excluding?” or “Who have I excluded, and need to go back and include.” And then setting forth to make things right by thinking, and acting, as inclusively as possible.
John Maeda: Enlisting With The Next Generation | Design.blog
