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This chapter introduces the purpose and structure of this edited volume, including why safe spaces are needed in educational settings, how to think about what makes a space safe for different individuals or groups, and aspects to consider in creating and maintaining safe spaces. It describes the two broad sections, the first of which comprises chapters that introduce the problem, context, need for safe spaces (Chapter 2), the broad conceptual frames supporting them (Chapter 3), and detail and deconstruct examples of various safe spaces created in diverse educational settings (Chapter 4). Chapters in Section II include aspects of the conceptual foundations and details about the purpose, development, and implementation processes, and outcomes of various efforts to create and/or maintain a safe space for education.

The purpose of this chapter is to invite readers into a discussion of experiences with and perspectives on creating safer spaces in education. Dialog has been used to demonstrate analytical processes and meaning-making, as well as aspects of “space” in education research. This dialog represents a safe space to share and access insights, experiences, and reactions to the ways in which we can foster safer spaces in education for our students and ourselves.

This chapter describes why safe spaces are needed in education settings for full inclusion of gendered identities as they intersect with categories such as race/ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and ability. This discussion briefly addresses varying and intersecting levels and domains of privilege or marginalization such as identity, inter-/intraaction, organization, society, and knowledge, and how safe spaces in education can support learning as it is entwined with gender, gendered biases, and power dynamics and structures.

This chapter provides foundations of differentiating the sophisticated and various theoretical approaches towards safe spaces demonstrated in this book. For the purpose of framing the examples provided in this collection, we offer three broad ways of thinking about safe spaces: safe learning spaces as separate, counterhegemonic, or third spaces; safe learning spaces of difference, sameness, and intersecting identities; and deliberative and democratic learning spaces. It needs to be noted, however, that these are not mutually exclusive but different aspects to consider and that they each operate within and across, and are therefore influenced by, the five levels of inequity discussed in Chapter 2. That said, not all levels of inequity are necessarily addressed by any given space, regardless of the frame used to interpret it. This discussion respects the multiple paradoxes in education, especially the one of pluralism and sameness, offering approaches to modes and learning settings of inclusion and exclusion and how they create different, yet “safe,” spaces.

This chapter discusses and interprets examples of safe spaces through the lenses provided in Chapters 2 and 3. Specifically, we discuss a few diverse examples of safe spaces for learning and development taken from children's literature, an art exhibit, a feature-length movie, and a professional development experience, detailing how each can be seen in terms of to what extent it offers a separate safe space, works with aspects of sameness/difference and intersectionality, and/or creates a space for democratic iterations that address one or more of the levels of inequity.

This chapter explores the methods developed to improve STEM success for students at two public urban institutions, a project whose aim is to improve academic outcomes for undergraduate students, especially for those most vulnerable and least likely to succeed in this student population. The theory of change that underpins the project – including its activities and its evaluation plan – posits that three interlocked activities (course redesign, peer mentors and articulation) will lead to improvements in academic outcomes and ultimately contribute to the overarching goal of increasing the number of students from underserved backgrounds who graduate with baccalaureate STEM degrees. The project focusses on the first courses students take in STEM, where they are also most likely to fail. We describe the methodology developed for faculty development and the organizational structure of the peer mentoring component for these courses. Both of these components constitute safe spaces where faculty and peer mentors learn to support students using evidence-based and inclusive instructional practices. Courses redesigned by faculty were offered following a cluster-level randomized control trial design, where sections were assigned to treatment (with or without a peer) or control. These interventions have a positive impact on cumulative GPA, according to preliminary analyses. The project also has a positive effect on faculty participants and on peer mentors, both groups now better prepared to jointly deliver STEM curricula in more effective ways. Among the reasons why this works, instructor empathy surfaces as playing a leading role in academic outcomes for undergraduate students.

The shift in undergraduate student demographic composition, particularly for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, has been coupled with an ever increasing need for faculty to be more culturally aware and responsive. Traditionally, higher education has relied on the professional development programs of disciplinary societies and associations to meet such needs. However, designing professional development for STEM faculty in ways that awaken awarenesses about racial differences and their impact on academic success requires more than the conventional faculty development offerings, which, more often than not, only give cursory nods to difference or limit programming to “cookbook” protocols of do's and don'ts. Indeed, today's STEM faculty professional development must be met with more sophisticated paradigms that foreground personal reflection and development. Safe brave spaces represent an ideal mechanism for supporting not only personal reflection but also the grappling with and letting go of the destructive values and beliefs that negatively impact undergraduate STEM student success. The chapter offers the reader a view into our perspective as conveners of safe brave professional development spaces. In it, we also share the words of a safe brave space occupier, demonstrating how the power of reflection can influence the value of safe brave spaces. As a result, the reader is left with a different lens through which STEM faculty professional development programs can and should be considered – whether it is who is in them, who is missing from them, or what is required to facilitate more productive interactions within them. Admittedly, there is more work yet to be done. Understanding that this work requires safety and bravery is a necessary next step.

This study is a meditation of the master's program “Globalization and Education” at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. It contributes an evaluation of the function of bravery in academic discourse. Safety and bravery refer to the complexity of educational space in higher education: to interactions in the classroom, the institutional context, and social imaginaries of Western modernity. While civility and respect are essential, and potential causes of pain should be acknowledged, the control of conduct can never fully guarantee safety. The chapter proposes replacing the classroom with a research community. It would no longer excessively focus on the relationship between a teacher and students, but the subject matter. The commitment becomes more symmetrical, and, therefore, a research community creates a brave space.