Six Fundamentals of Building an Inclusive Learning Community

1. Awareness

Educators must know that with their own awareness of their words and actions, they are building a community. By doing so even more mindfully and intentionally, they will enhance the myriad benefits an inclusive community offers for all learners.¹ These benefits, both academic and social-emotional, increase the likelihood of the “long-term flourishing,” as teacher-author Dave Stuart puts it, of individuals and societies.²

Awareness and self-reflection often involve clarifying language: what does it mean to be “inclusive?” The narrowest definition in K-12 education is historically linked to special education, particularly for students with physical, intellectual and developmental disabilities. While full inclusion may not work for every child, as most educators know, when students receive education in the least restrictive environment, “research shows that they are more successful academically and socially.”³

Over time, the concept of inclusion has broadened to recognize a range of other student needs—linguistic and cultural responsiveness, neurodiversity, and racial, gender and economic trauma and inequality—as well as awareness that individual students can be “twice or thrice exceptional,” thus affected by more than just one variable. Eventually, in its most expanded sense, inclusion honors the varied ways in which we all learn, at times differently than how others learn, or from some presumed “norm.”

2. Feeling Safe

A true fundamental of an inclusive learning community is ensuring learners feel safe, including being able to openly discuss what matters to them. Beyond just physical safety, our instructional choices and expectations can help build emotional safety in our classrooms, contributing to risk-taking and growth mindsets. “Educators can promote inclusivity by creating environments where students can openly discuss thoughts and feelings about privilege and structural oppression,” as Alexis Anderson notes,⁴ but most students need to learn how to have civil, respectful, effective discussions of complex subjects. When students engage in Shared Inquiry across the curriculum, they not only understand content better, they also gradually learn the lifelong skill of how to learn from others, recognizing everyone’s need to feel safe.

3. Belonging

Knowing that your presence matters, that you are a key part of the group, is a third fundamental of inclusive learning communities. Teachers in inquiry learning start with the expectation that no one has all the answers—especially when we’re thinking about complex content that raises essential questions that everyone cares about. Then, by using skillful open questioning, teachers model curiosity and interest in the reactions, questions, ideas, and perspectives of everyone. They regularly look for opportunities to help all students see how much everyone’s contributions helped the group go deeper and understand something better.

At each step in the Shared Inquiry Sequence of Activities, all students are asked to share experiences, questions, observations, and ideas. The expectation is always that these responses will vary, and that variance is normal and beneficial—and that by learning together, we all learn more.

The fifth and sixth fundamentals of Learner Voice and Agency are intertwined, and are often seen as long-term goals that most students may or may not be able to achieve, especially within the constraints of current educational practice. Educators may talk about giving students voice and agency, but not have practical ways to do that on a regular basis.

But Shared Inquiry learning enables teachers to gradually release responsibility for key elements of learning to all students in ways that honor the diversity of their needs and experiences. With experience and guidance, students can take on appropriate pieces of learning, but don’t have to already know how to learn independently, or be able to sustain the full effort without support.

Calls for equity and educational excellence for all learners that lead to more inclusive and thus more effective communities of learners build on these fundamentals in countless ways — across academic, non-academic, and extracurricular dimensions. As part of this rich mix, Great Books programs and Shared Inquiry learning add transferable value and meaning by enacting inclusion as an essential, core component of the curriculum.