Step 3: Norm-Setting to Build Brave Spaces

To enable significant learning, the classroom must be a brave space where students are encouraged to explore new ideas, respectfully challenge each other’s assumptions, and make mistakes. Norms are a valuable way to help shape such a classroom culture. While some interpret an inclusive environment as a place where students always feel comfortable, Gretchen Brion-Meisels explains that in inclusive environments, “all of us feel questioned, regardless of where we’re coming from, so that we all have the courage and the strength and the vulnerability to actually figure out what to do.” Setting aspirational norms at the start of the semester helps create a learning environment that encourages all students to “grapple” with challenging questions and grow from the experience.

Profiled: Gretchen Brion-Meisels, Lecturer on Education, teaches "Partnering with Youth in Educational Research and Practice" to 23 students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Takeaway Tips

Invite students to co-construct norms with you and their classmates. Working together to create the norms that will guide classroom behavior and discourse helps to create a more inclusive environment.

Be intentional about the norms you and your students are constructing. It’s important to connect your norm-setting to the goals of your course so this exercise doesn’t feel like a checklist item. Consider how norms can support inclusivity and belonging as well as academic learning. 

Related Resources

“Leveraging Norms for Challenging Conversations” articulates a variety of ways in which instructors can collaborate with students to set norms and productively respond to norms violations.

“Setting Expectations” from the Center for Teaching Innovation at Cornell helps you set classroom expectations that foster community. 

This resource from the Harvard Graduate School of Education explains how the course syllabus lays the groundwork for challenging conversations and includes sample language that exemplary instructors at Harvard use in their syllabi. 

The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Connecticut provides an overview of brave spaces and a variety of resources for leading courageous conversations with students. 

Reflection Questions

What hard questions will students grapple with in your course? What norms would help all students, regardless of background, seek answers to those questions? 

Are there any groups that have been marginalized or excluded in your discipline, either historically or in the present day? What norms would help students from those groups feel welcome and included in your classroom? 

It’s one thing to set norms for your classroom; ensuring that those norms are kept alive and well is another thing entirely. In the next video, we’ll learn how you can model those values and behaviors for students.

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