Creating a Safe and Inclusive School Culture and Climate: Preventing and Addressing Bullying and Harassment Online Course Series

The MAP Center’s EquiLearn online courses are asynchronous, e-learning modules that participants can engage in at their own pace and in the comfort of their own setting.  These web-based professional learning opportunities are designed to advance practitioners’ capacities to create and sustain equitable learning spaces.   All EquiLearn online courses include professional learning modules through which participants construct knowledge and enhance their skills and sense of agency in areas related to advancing equitable practices in every day, school-related spaces.  Participants enrolled in MAP Center EquiLearn online courses are also supported to build their network of fellow equity-minded leaders through online resource sharing, dialogue groups, and other forms of online collaboration.

The MAP Center’s Creating a Safe & Inclusive School Culture and Climate:  Preventing and Addressing Bullying and Harassment EquiLearn online Course Series is a three-course series focused on essential school-level practices for ensuring inclusive and bully and harassment-free schools.  During this course series participants learn the legal and ethical requirements to appropriately address bullying and harassment in schools; as well as key strategies for promoting an appreciative culture for diversity in their school settings.

This course series consists of three self-contained, yet connected, courses.  Participants enrolled will experience a total of 15 hours of course content.  Each course includes a pre-knowledge assessment, content and media-rich interactive activities, an application or extension activity, and a post-knowledge assessment.   

The MAP Center’s Creating a Safe & Inclusive School Culture and Climate:  Preventing and Addressing Bullying and Harassment EquiLearn Online Course series is open for enrollment for the 2023-2024 school year.  The following is a brief description of each course. 

Course I: Centering Equity in Safe and Inclusive Schooling Environments

This course focuses on the importance of educational equity as foundational for cultivating safe and inclusive school cultures and climate free from bullying and harassment. 

Following this module, participants will be able to:

• describe the relationship between educational equity and creating safe and inclusive schooling environments, 
• summarize the MAP Center's definition of educational equity, including the four concepts of access, representation, meaningful participation, and high outcomes, and
• discuss essential strategies to increase awareness and advance the implementation of equity constructs.     

Course II: Defining Safe and Inclusive Schools: Identity-Based Bullying, Harassment, and Discrimination

This course concentrates on federal and state legislation pertaining to bullying (cyber included) and harassment within K-12 school systems. In addition, information regarding the characteristics of bullying, intimidation, harassment, and retaliation will be presented.

Following this module, participants will be able to:

• distinguish between aggressive student conduct, bullying, and various types of harassing behaviors, 
• discuss federal legislation and state policies that prohibit bullying and harassment in K-12 settings, and
• comply with the pertinent legislation regarding bullying and harassment in their district.

Course III: A Framework for Developing Safe and Inclusive Schooling Environments

This course focuses on the MAP Center’s framework for developing safe and inclusive schooling environments.  This framework guides educators and education stakeholders through a process of determining the extent to which their policies, practices, and language are indeed safe and inclusive.  

After completing this course, participants will be able to:

• name the four domains of the MAP Center’s Safe and Inclusive Schools Framework,
• explain the ways in which creating spaces that are physically, intellectually, socially-emotionally, and culturally safe and inclusive goes beyond being anti-bullying and anti-harassment, and
• analyze local context and begin to make considerations for how to create and sustain safe and inclusive schools utilizing the four domains of the MAP Center's Safe and Inclusive Schools Framework.   

Enrolling in EquiLearn Online Course Series

Participation in EquiLearn Online Course Series is a cost-effective way to bring people together across your organization as a strategic action to further system-level improvement efforts toward promoting inclusive education and equity. Multiple individuals from the same organization are encouraged to enroll as a professional learning community.    Currently, public school educators can enroll in any course for their own professional growth and development at no cost.  Upon completion of each course, participants will receive a certificate of completion, for 5 hours of learning content.  Complete the entire course series (all three courses) for a total of 15 professional development hours.

Primary Authors and Contributors

Nationally recognized scholars from the Indiana University School of Education in Indianapolis and practitioners in educational equity, school reform, educational leadership, policy, and special education contributed to the development of each course module.