Introduction
This report builds upon my proposal to introduce concepts and strategies of ‘brave space’ discussions within the classroom, which germinated from the difficulties I recognised within my own and my colleagues’ teaching experiences. In an increasingly polarised world, stoked by the incendiary models of digital media platforms, which encourage conflict and disagreement as central to our everyday lives, I ask: how do we navigate difficult conversations in the classroom? How do we encourage disagreement without shutting down discourse? How do we avoid cancel culture? My intervention aims to provide staff training in the form of a workshop that teaches about brave space pedagogies through practice-based strategies and also draws on ritualised practices to employ within the classroom.
Context
As a lecturer of cultural studies in the BA Fashion, Jewellery and Textile programme, as well as in BA and MA Fashion Histories & Theories, an aspect of my role is to facilitate seminars which explore gender, bodies, sexuality, colonialism, racism and histories of power, oppression and resistance. Social justice and decolonial theory are at the core of my own teaching areas and strategies, my own positionality as a British-Canadian woman of the Korean diaspora shapes my research interests. Lately, my classroom conversations have been filled with difficult and emotionally fraught perspectives that have questioned gender/sex identifications, histories of racialised violence in America, and so on. I found that I did not have the tools in my pedagogical training to thoughtfully cater to these alternative (and sometimes problematic) positions. This intervention thus offers staff training as a discursive workshop and suggestions for ritualised practices which encourage challenging conversations in the classroom by using theories of the ‘brave space’.
- Workshop
Facilitated by a convenor of ‘brave space’ workshops, this will comprise a taught component which explores the histories and theories of safe space and brave space (as highlighted in ‘Inclusive learning’ section), expansive discussion, and practical exercises, including difficult scenarios to navigate in the classroom using persona pedagogy. This framework employs strategies to overcome exclusionary biases without having to reveal one’s own identity (in case of threat), developing instead an archetypal persona to perform in a range of scenarios to better explore the systemic asymmetries through varied identities (Thomas 2022, 1-3).
2. Rituals Practices
These would be discussed as strategies to employ in the classroom on a day-to-day capacity. The repetition of which would establish familiarity with common goals and ideas about conversation within the classroom. This would then be folded into everyday pedagogy, rather than as a contained workshop.
Inclusive learning
John Palfrey’s Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces asks ‘[m]ust a community tolerate intolerance?’ (2017, 16), arguing that it is crucial for free expression to be upheld alongside principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. Situated in a time of student activism in the aftermath of BLM and MeToo, Palfrey discusses how there is growing polarisation between a traditionalist way of thinking which uses ‘free speech’ to justify antagonistic language, and worst xenophobia and hate speech versus student activists who sometimes deploy cancel culture to ensure ‘a faster route to social justice’ (Palfrey 2017, 1). A further critique of free speech lies in its historical foundations which have privileged those in power, and more often affects (negatively) those who have been historically marginalised and oppressed.
Safe spaces were created in the 1990s by women’s and LGBT movements. However, activist Minnie Bruce Pratt revealed that one’s notion of ‘safe place’ was rooted in one’s own history, identity, and privilege; she recognised safety in early women’s movements were defined by ‘white, heterosexist notions that sought safety and security for a few women at the expense of many women’ (Fox and Ore 2010, 629). Inclusive learning thus needs to consider the intersectional privileges of safety, for as Fox and Ore highlight ‘safe space discourse continues to operate within a normalizing gaze of a white, masculinist, middle-class subject, rendering queer subjectivity in a most simplistic and reductive manner’ (2010, 631). The safe space is now reiterated in the classroom and in our own PgCert discussions to assume that a universal safety is achievable, but we seldom question the term or what it means. Safety has also become conflated with comfort (Fox and Ore 2010, 632).
According to Arao and Clemens (2013), ‘authentic learning about social justice often requires the very qualities of risk, difficulty, and controversy that are defined as incompatible with safety’ (139) That is, recognising oppression, hearing stories of pain and struggle, holding accountability, feeling guilt and hopelessness are the embodied by-products of understanding oppression, and should not be negated. Safety (and/as comfort) can shield privilege. Drawing on Wise (2004), Arao and Clemens argue that deploying safety as a condition of cross-racial dialogue about racism is the ultimate expression of White privilege, particularly as Whiteness once again, gets to articulate how these conversations should unfold (Wise 2004, 15 IN Arao and Clemens 2013). We should acknowledge that our institutions have never been safe for those oppressed by supremacy systems.
The brave space then emerges from Boostrom’s (1998) critique and assertion that learning not only involves risk, ‘but the pain of giving up a former condition in favour of a new way of seeing things’ (399). By drawing on a framework of courage, Arao and Clemens note the process of actualising the brave space includes: establishing ground rules, employing collectivist approaches – which reflects the practices of IP Session 1 – to develop discussions around social justice. Additionally, my own intervention would not only outline these histories, but also establish rituals, habits, everyday practices to build collaborative conversations. In these practices, I am reminded of Foucault’s ideas about discipline, who theorises how our everyday actions, in reiterative replay reinforce identities and/or beliefs (see Foucault 1995 [1977]). Erica Keswin’s defines rituals as ‘something which we assign meaning and intention […] a regular cadence […] goes beyond its practical purpose’, the latter meaning that there is a symbolic or signifying meaning (2022). By developing unifying rituals that move beyond what is practically necessary, a bond is forged to enhance teamwork, and hopefully an atmosphere of challenging but collective learning.
Reflection
My discussions with Amberlee encouraged me to draw upon ritual practices and persona pedagogies to further shape the brave space intervention. We spoke about how workshops can silo learning into contained moments, that we can forget about, separated from our everyday classroom practices. This is certainly the case in my own learning, as my requirements to learn fire safety rules or GDRP regulations on the ESS platform, never become fully absorbed until I need to apply them. Rituals, in contrast, are regular, helping to build ‘psychological safety, purpose, and performance’ (Keswin 2022). Within these reiterative practices, we can become habituated in the intentions and beliefs of our actions, which can be applied to building and moderating challenging classroom conversations. Amberlee also encouraged me to to inject as much play into the intervention as possible, which I understood as a form of experimentation with the staff training. One exercise that I thought about was how medical students play out scenarios to diagnose patients. Employing persona pedagogy, the staff training could have us perform different identities to work through challenging classroom moments, working collectively to consider and converse about the best practices.
In my group presentations, it was recommended that I could speak about previous mistakes. I think this would be a great opportunity to highlight how our intentions may not match up to our practices as they unfold, discussions within the team about how they may have confronted these same scenarios can help us to think about more effective strategies to moderate those challenging perspectives. It was also flagged up that rules around accepting disagreement were important; Amberlee also suggested that depersonalisation was important – drawing from the academic research and theory to enrich students’ contributions, which I always try to instil. One further recommendation was that I could encourage discussions that may take place in the workplace, which include scenarios of disagreement and risk – teaching diplomacy in conversational skills is also important.
Action
I will develop this staff training programme as part of the upcoming Action Research Project, deploying the approaches within the contained setting of my cultural studies team. I aim to analyse the practice through semi-structured interviews with the team that I will collect before the sessions begin, after the workshop, and after the first semester of teaching to reflect upon the introduction of the strategies in classroom practice. If there is a wider need for the training, I will hopefully introduce it to the wider contextual study teaching staff.
Evaluation of process
This process has allowed me to review literature on brave space and persona pedagogies, which have been fairly new terms to me prior to the PgCert programme. These readings have illuminated critical reflections on how we use or understand ‘safe space’ in the classroom, situating it within a historical context and critiques of universalism. The metric of the practice ‘working’ would be harder to qualify – although I would be taking semi-structured interviews, the real success would be following difficult conversations in the classroom, and to see whether these teachings helped.
Conclusion
This process of reading, developing a programme, presenting (to multiple audiences), revising, reading further, and writing up this report has allowed me to synthesise my knowledge with an actionable plan and edit this according to audience suggestions. Working through these reflections was an almost collaborative process, which considers the wider classroom settings beyond my own experiences (of seminar focuses), which has been helpful. I have learnt new pedagogies, including persona and brave space.
Works Cited
Arao, B. and Clemens, K. (2013) ‘From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice’ in The Art of Effective Facilitation. Sterling VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC., pp. 135-150.
Boostrom, R. (1998) ‘“Safe Spaces”: Reflections on an Educational Metaphor’, Journal of Curriculum Studies 30(4), pp. 397-408.
Foucault, M. (1995 [1977]) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, A. New York: Vintage Books.
Fox, C.O. and Ore, T. E. (2010) ‘(Un)Covering Normalized Gender and Race Subjectivities in LGBT “Safe Spaces”, Feminist Studies 36(3), pp.629-649.
Keswin, E. (2022) ‘How to Create Powerful Workplace Rituals’, IDEO U, 20 Sept 2022. Available at: https://www.ideou.com/en-gb/blogs/inspiration/how-to-create-powerful-workplace-rituals?_pos=5&_sid=598964a17&_ss=r (Accessed: 10 July 2025)
Palfrey, J. (2017) Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Thomas, C. (2022) ‘Overcoming Identity Threat: Using Persona Pedagogy in Intersectionality and Inclusion Training’, Social Sciences 11, pp. 1-15.
Wise, T. (2004) ‘No Such Place as Safe’, Columbia University, 23 July 2004. https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/sites/dsa/files/handbooks/Tim%20Wise%20Reading.pdf (Accessed: 10 July 2025)