Belonging Is Designed

Belonging is not granted after learners prove they can access the curriculum.
Belonging is created through the way curriculum, instruction, assessment, relationships, and evidence-informed responses are designed.

That idea has been sitting with me deeply. In schools, we often talk about belonging as something relational, cultural, or pastoral. Whilst it is, of course, all of those things, I also think belonging is a curriculum and learning design issue. Learners experience belonging, or exclusion, through the tasks they are given, the examples they see, the feedback they receive, the ways they are invited to participate, and the assumptions adults make about what they can do.

Inclusion, then, cannot sit only in intervention structures or individual support plans. These matter, of course; some learners need targeted and specialist support, and schools need strong systems to provide it. But if inclusion begins only after a learner struggles, we have already accepted a design problem as an individual problem.

The deeper question is not, “How do we support learners who cannot access this?” It is, “How do we design learning from the outset so that more learners can access, engage, contribute, and grow?”

That shift matters.

It moves inclusion from a response to a principle. It asks us to look not only at learners’ needs, but at the curriculum, assessment, routines, relationships, language, digital tools, and meeting structures that shape their experience of school. It asks us to examine whether our systems are designed for the learners in front of us or for an imagined learner who already knows how to succeed.

The danger of locating the problem in the learner

Many schools are working hard to become more inclusive. Becoming more inclusive is not simply a matter of admitting, enrolling, or welcoming a wider range of learners. It requires a deeper examination of the assumptions embedded in our systems.

One of the most persistent assumptions is the idea that there is a “normal” or “typical” learner, and that others require adjustment. This can show up subtly: in the pace of a lesson, the texts selected, the way discussion is structured, the weight given to written expression, the kinds of background knowledge assumed, or the expectation that learners will automatically know how to use feedback.

When a learner struggles in that environment, it is easy to see the difficulty as the learner's. They are not independent enough. They do not have enough language. They are not ready. They lack confidence. They need support.

Sometimes those things may be partly true. But they are not the whole truth.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) reminds us that barriers are often created by the design of the learning environment rather than by the learner (CAST, 2018). Culturally responsive teaching similarly asks us to combine high expectations with deep knowledge of learners, relationships, culture, cognition, and context (Hammond, 2015). Culturally responsive school leadership goes further by asking leaders to recognise and disrupt the practices that marginalise learners rather than treating inequity as a student deficit (Khalifa, 2018). That is a demanding leadership stance because it requires us to look at the system we are responsible for shaping.

It also requires us to challenge the “single stories” schools sometimes hold about success. Adichie (2009) warns of the dangers of reducing people or communities to a single dominant narrative. Schools can carry single stories too: the successful learner as articulate, independent, compliant, fast-processing, confident, literate in particular ways, or already familiar with the hidden rules of school.

Inclusive leadership requires us to ask who benefits from that story, who is constrained by it, and what other forms of capability we may be failing to notice.

Inclusion is a Tier 1 design responsibility

One of the most important shifts is in the idea that inclusive design belongs in Tier 1. In other words, inclusion should be designed into the learning that all learners experience, not added only when learners are identified as needing something different.

This does not mean every learner receives the same thing. It means the learning environment is intentionally designed to anticipate variability.

That includes the way learning goals are clarified, the way knowledge is built, the way learners are invited to process ideas, the way examples are selected, the way discussion is structured, the way success criteria are made visible, the way feedback is used, and the way assessment allows learners to build and demonstrate understanding over time.

It also includes the way we design for intellectual challenge. There is a risk, in some conversations about inclusion, that access and rigour are positioned as opposites. They are not.

Access is not about making learning easy. It is about making meaningful, challenging learning possible. Hammond (2015) argues that culturally responsive teaching requires both relational trust and cognitive challenge. Hinnant-Crawford and colleagues (2023) similarly point to the importance of classrooms that are warm and demanding: places where learners are known, supported, and intellectually stretched. Belonging is not created by lowering expectations. It is created when learners experience themselves as capable of doing important work with the right design, support, feedback, and time.

Assessment is part of belonging

Assessment is one of the places where learners most powerfully experience whether they belong.

If assessment is primarily experienced as judgement, it can narrow learners’ sense of possibility. If every piece of work is treated as a final measure, learners may become cautious, compliant, or grade-focused. They may learn to protect themselves rather than take risks.

Assessment can do something different.

When assessment is part of learning, it helps learners understand what quality looks like, where they are now, and what they can do next. It creates space for feedback, revision, growth, and evidence-building. It allows learning to be seen as developmental rather than constantly measured in miniature.

Feldman (2019) argues that grading practices can reproduce inequity when they reward compliance, prior advantage, or inconsistent access to support rather than valid evidence of learning. Berger, Rugen, and Woodfin (2014) offer a different vision: learners as leaders of their own learning, able to understand goals, use feedback, reflect on progress, and build ownership.

That kind of assessment culture matters for belonging because it communicates something profound: your learning is not fixed at the first attempt or a single point in time. Your growth counts. Evidence matters. Feedback is usable. Improvement is expected.

Digital equity is not just access to devices

In many well-resourced schools, it is tempting to think that digital equity has been addressed because learners have devices and platforms. But access to a laptop is not the same as equitable participation in digital learning.

Digital equity is also about how tools are used, whose learning they support, what barriers they reduce, what new barriers they create, and whether learners are taught to make ethical and informed decisions about technology. Jackson, Starr, and Weaver (2024) frame digital equity as a broader issue of access, use, design, and the conditions for meaningful participation.

AI makes this even more important. AI tools can support access, planning, feedback, translation, drafting, multimodal expression, and assistive learning. They can also introduce risks around privacy, bias, over-reliance, academic integrity, and the erosion of important learning processes. UNESCO’s AI competency framework highlights the need to develop learners’ knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes for ethical and responsible AI use (Miao et al., 2024).

The question is not simply, “Should learners use AI?” The more useful question is, “How do we help learners make wise, ethical, and learning-centred decisions about AI?”

Inclusive digital leadership asks whether technology increases access to learning, makes thinking visible, supports feedback, reduces barriers, and strengthens rather than weakens engagement with the learning itself.

Meetings are part of the design

Inclusive leadership is not only enacted in classrooms. It is also enacted in the way adults gather.

This has become increasingly important to me. Department meetings, planning meetings, leadership meetings, professional learning sessions, and evidence conversations are not neutral containers for work. They shape what is noticed, whose expertise is heard, whose questions are legitimised, and whether teams focus on teaching activity or student learning.

If meetings are poorly designed, they can reproduce compliance, busyness, and dominant voices. They can become places where information is transmitted, decisions are already made, and collaboration is more performative than participatory.

If meetings are intentionally designed, they can become spaces for professional learning, shared sense-making, evidence-informed decisions, and collective responsibility.

Boudett and City (2014) argue that collaborative time for educators must be deliberately designed. McDonald and colleagues (2023) show how protocols can support more equitable, focused, and evidence-informed professional dialogue. Parker (2018, 2022) reminds us that gatherings need a clear purpose and intentional design.

This has significant implications for school leadership. If we want teams to focus on learning, we have to design meetings for that purpose. If we want collaboration to be inclusive, we have to consider who speaks, how evidence is used, what protocols support participation, and how decisions are made. The agenda is not just an administrative tool. It is a leadership artefact. It communicates what matters.

Designing for evidence, not assumption

If inclusion is designed, then we also need evidence of how that design is being experienced.

Planning documents matter. Curriculum maps matter. Assessment criteria matter. But they are not enough. They show adult intention; they do not automatically show learner experience.

We need to listen more closely to learners. We need to look at student work, feedback use, participation patterns, confidence, help-seeking, revision, transfer, and belonging. We need to ask learners what helps them access the learning, what gets in the way, where they feel known, and where the design still excludes them.

Safir and Dugan (2021) argue for evidence that is closer to students’ lived experiences. This is a crucial point for inclusive leadership. If the goal is belonging, access, and growth, then our evidence cannot be limited to adult-facing approaches. It has to include what learners are actually experiencing.

That does not mean abandoning professional judgement. It means strengthening it with better evidence.

The leadership challenge

The hardest part of this work is not writing the policy, designing the template, or naming the strategy. The hardest part is cultural.

Inclusive leadership requires us to challenge deficit thinking without creating new deficit stories about colleagues. It requires us to be clear about direction while remaining humble about the professional learning and identity shifts involved. It requires us to hear concerns about workload, pace, standards, and change, while still asking whether those concerns protect learners or protect inherited practices.

This is delicate work.

It asks leaders to hold strategic clarity, relational trust, and moral courage together. It asks us to design professional spaces where adults can examine evidence, surface assumptions, and build shared responsibility for access and belonging.

It also asks us to keep returning to the central question:

Are we designing learning for the learners in front of us, or for the learners our systems have historically found easiest to serve?