Understanding psychological safety as experienced by students. What it means and why it matters.
My Action Research Project (ARP) focuses on students’ perceptions of psychological safety in online learning environments. Edmondson (1999) defines psychological safety as “freedom from fear, embarrassment, or humiliation in groups”. In the art context, this sense of safety is vital for students to confidently share their creative work, engage in critique, and develop their ideas collaboratively (Orr and Shreeve, 2017).
Sharing creative work is at the heart of an arts education. It’s through sharing that students invite others into their process, allowing for dialogue, feedback, and growth [citation]. But sharing isn’t easy. It requires vulnerability, exposing ideas that may still feel raw, unfinished, or deeply personal. For this to happen, students need to feel safe what Edmondson described as the ‘freedom from fear embarrassment, or humiliation’ within a group setting.
UAL data from the Postgraduate Taught Survey (PTES 2023/2024) highlights that postgraduate taught (PGT) students on online master’s programmes feel disconnected.
Postgraduate students don’t feel part of a community at UAL. Why is this? It may be that opportunities for dialogue and the safe sharing of creative work haven’t been fully embedded into the online curriculum.
When students feel disconnected, they’re less likely to share. Fear of judgment or misunderstanding can hold them back, creating a cycle where isolation deepens, and opportunities for growth are missed. In an online environment, where the absence of physical connection can already amplify feelings of disconnection, this becomes even more critical. Without intentional design that fosters a sense of community and trust, the process of sharing, an essential part of the creative arts pedagogy, can be stifled entirely.
In an on-campus setting, this might not matter so much. As, belonging and community often emerge organically as students share physical spaces over time (White, 2022). But in online spaces, where students are scattered across cities, countries, continents and time zones, feelings of connection are harder to cultivate. It isn’t enough to hope that students will ‘figure it out’ on their own. The structure must support connection.
If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.
Paulo Freire
If the structure doesn’t allow for dialogue for sharing, then the structure must changed. Grappling with this tension is central to my work, and practice, as a learning designer at UAL. When engaging in course learning design with tutors, I ask of myself and them:
- How can we invite students to share their thoughts, opinions, and creative work without fear?
- How can we co-design learning experiences that intentionally cultivate psychological safety?
It’s also important to recognise that not all students enter the online learning space on equal footing. Some students’ work and approaches are more readily legitimised, aligning with the ‘right kind’ of dispositions and cultural capital that the academy and the art world value (Orr and Shreeve, 2017). For others, their backgrounds, perspectives or approaches may fall outside of these “values”, leaving them more susceptible to the fear of being excluded or undervalued. When students sense that their contributions might not be not equally valued, they may hesitate to share their (real) work or fully participate in the learning process.
I suspect this might come down to a lack of psychological safety in the online environment, particularly for black and ethnic minority, LGBTQIA+, mature, and first-generation university students who are typically excluded from normative online student culture. This can lead to feelings of fear and isolation which impact student motivation, experience and retention (Tinto, 1993).
Recognising and addressing these dynamics is critical to fostering a truly inclusive arts education – where the fear of being oneself is removed as much as possible.
This is why understanding psychological safety and how students experience it is so important. I believe that it is key to delivering on the task of creating inclusive and transformative learning environments.
References
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), pp.350–383. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999. (Accessed: 16 December 2024).
Freire, P. (2017) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London, England: Penguin Books.
Orr, S. and Shreeve, A., 2017. Art and design pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. Routledge.
Tinto, V. (1993) Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. Chicago (Ill.): University Of Chicago Press.
White, D. (2022) Belonging is inconvenient, David White: Digital and Education. Available at: https://daveowhite.com/inconvenient (Accessed: 16 October 2024).