24/10/2025
Let’s Understand a Few Points About Psychologically Safe Education Settings
• Establishing clear norms: To create classroom/school norms around respect, questioning, safe dialogue. Students feel comfortable raising questions, making mistakes, and learning from them.
• Encouraging error-friendly culture: Mistakes are treated as part of learning, not as failure. Educators model vulnerability (“I don’t know that yet, let’s figure it out”) and encourage collaborative learning.
• Ensure inclusive participation: Actively engage quieter students, diverse learners (such as differently abled students, students with some specific psychological issues) and make sure they gain self-confidence and their voices are heard. Peer discussion and challenge are respectful, and diverse viewpoints are valued. Feedback is constructive, supportive, seeking growth for all.
• Power dynamics: teacher-student relationships often carry more authority imbalance than many workplaces, so deliberate efforts are needed to shift culture. Staff (faculties/teachers/trainers) also feel safe to propose changes, innovate, admit uncertainty
• Assessment culture: frequent testing and fear of failure may undermine safety; need to dissociate mistakes from shame and link them to growth.
• Openness and willingness to reach out for psychological support to a counsellor/psychotherapist for any emotional or mental disturbances. It can be for one and all, be it faculties/teachers/trainers or students/learners. Emotional disturbances are as similar as any other physical ailments that needs immediate attention and treatment.
