Learning Module Session 2: Inclusion

• Pre-class
• Objectives
• Gathering story/pics

ACTIVITY 1

• Activity Description:
• Instructions to Facilitators:
• Instructions to Students:
• Process Instructions:
• Sample Process Questions:

Lecturette

ACTIVITY 2

• Activity Description:
• Instructions to Facilitators:
• Instructions to Students
• Process Instructions:
• Sample Process Questions:

ACTIVITY 3

• Activity Description:
• Instructions to Facilitators:
• Instructions to Students:
• Process Instructions:
• Sample Process Questions:

Journal Assignment

For Next Week

Pre-class
Welcome the new comers
Assign color groups, emails
New comers' introduction
Introduce staff
Picture Manager Instructions and other techie stuff by Mike

Inclusion

• Welcome gifs (online only)
• inclusion gifs (online only)

Objectives

• To experience and observe how you negotiate membership in a group.
• To identify and articulate norms of human conduct.
• To demonstrate how self-disclosure is "icebreaking."
• To link your inclusion style to theory.
• To identify interpersonal strengths and limitation connecting with others.

Inclusion: gathering story/pics

"Eighty per cent of success is just showing up." Woody Allen.

"Beauty consists in a certain consonance of diverging elements." St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74):

"Those [early European immigrants] who came to the United States didn't realize they were white until they got here. They were told they were white. They had to learn they were white. An Irish peasant coming from British imperial abuse in Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s, arrives in the United States. You ask him or her what they are. They say, "I am Irish." No, you're white. "What do you mean, I am white?" And they point me [a black person] out. "Oh, I see what you mean. This is a strange land." --Cornel West

"Immigration . . . has required a process of racialization so that the prevailing national identity could be maintained. Earlier in this century Irish, German, Swedish, Italian, and Polish immigrants were also scapegoated and defined out of the national identity, not being the preferred "Anglo-Saxon." Later, as they embraced Anglo cultural supremacy, and also could be seen as white, inclusion became possible. Immigrants of color, on the other hand, largely remained outside Americanism." --Linda Martinez

"The concept of a white people is a creation; the same is true of black people, of yellow people, and brown people. The concept of race that now plagues the whole world is an artificial European invention. . . . While the word race and the concepts around it are artificial, the effects of its creation are real." --John Henrik Clarke

ACTIVITY 1 The Common Denominators

Activity Description: 

• Designed to facilitate meeting each other, and to establish triads of commonalities, on safe topics, while engaging in creation of norms or Contracting.
• Where: Large Group

Instructions for Facilitators:

• Validate the chaos for your respective group members
• Encourage and clarify communications
• Introduce the concept of 'responsible membership' according to the ground rules (i.e. respect, non judgmental communication, I statements, appropriate rules of self-disclosure and feedback etc.)

Instructions to Students:

• Find two people:
  • who like to party
  • who believe they are good communicators
  • who work, at least part time
  • who volunteer
  • who like to read
  • who belong to an organization
• Every time you find a set of 2 people for an item, form a triad, and introduce yourselves to each other. 
  • Please note, the task is NOT as much to complete the list, as it is for you to interact and connect with each other.
• Make a point of learning something about everyone on your list of people, as well as letting them learn something about you.
• Please note: Click on the "blue" name of the person you are addressing. (online only)
  

Processing Instructions

• Discuss the experience and highlight commonalities and differences.
• Observe who is where on the IN/OUT continuum
• Give feedback to students on their Inclusion behaviors
  

Sample Process Questions:

1. How was it for you, if you did not find two people for each of the 12 items?
2. How did you go about learning about others?
3. How was it for you to be 'found'? Not found?
4. How was it for you to approach others?
5. How and what did you let others learn about you?
6. How much do you value membership, in general?
7. Discuss the type of membership you are seeking in this class?

Lecturette 

FIRO Theory of Needs: William Schutz

Imagine that you're taking a course in communication research. The instructor has randomly divided the class into research teams to work on a joint project that will constitute your entire grade for the term. You warily eye the other three students in your group and wonder what to expect in the weeks to come. 

Will you fit in?
Who will take the leadership role?
Is this going to be strictly business or will you get close to someone?

William Schutz's FIR0 theory of needs seeks to answer these questions. According to Schutz, all humans possess three needs to a greater or lesser degree. They are the needs for inclusion, control, and affection.

NEED FOR INCLUSION

Schutz says that the need for inclusion is the inner drive "to establish and maintain a satisfactory relation with people with respect to interaction and association."  It has to do with being in or out.

Perhaps a classmate assigned to your research group has a strong need to feel included. Student A is anxious about being excluded or ignored, and this fear of being left out causes him/her to place a premium on face-to-face interaction. Even though Student A's membership in the group was determined by the instructor, it's important for Student A to feel a sense of acceptance, belonging, mattering, importance or group togetherness. In terms of self-concept, he needs to feel significant within the group. All of these characteristics match Schutz's profile of the person with a strong need for inclusion.

Inclusion can work two ways. In addition to being a person who wants inclusion from others, Person A might also have a high need to reach out to people so that they won't feel lonely or isolated. Schutz calls this the need to "express inclusion." It is an urge to be worthwhile by making others feel important. Schutz views the human desire to give attention and understanding to others as conceptually different from the need to receive recognition.

If Person A has worked out a comfortable relationship of inclusion in both directions, Schutz would expect him/her to exhibit normal social behavior in the project group. If s/he has an inordinate need to give or receive inclusion, s/he'll act in a way that's stereotypically introverted or extroverted. As different as their behaviors may be, the shy recluse and the boisterous life-of-the-party share an unfulfilled need to feel important. They want to be somebody, either by receiving or expressing inclusion.

The inclusion fear that grips the shy introvert comes from being ignored or abandoned as a child. The equally strong anxiety of the overly social gladhander is the result of receiving too much attention. Youngsters who grow up socially normal had parents who were moderately attentive.

FIRO-B SCALE AS A MEASURE OF NEEDS

Schutz created the FIRO-B questionnaire to measure an individual's orientation toward six interpersonal needs. The B on the end of the acronym indicates that the purpose of the instrument is to examine behavior. Responding to the 2 sample items below will give you a better understanding of this section of the theory, and might help you understand yourself at the same time.

1. Inclusion wanted: I like people to ask me to participate in their discussions.

Usually Often Sometimes Occasionally Rarely Never

2. Inclusion expressed: When people are doing things together, I tend to join them.

Usually Often Sometimes Occasionally Rarely Never

Break

ACTIVITY 2 Process Lecturette

Activity Description:
Process reactions to Inclusion Wanted/ Inclusion Expressed aspect of the Lecturette, as it relates to the class. Articulate and discuss norms. Encourage verbalizing of expectations.

Where: Small Breakout Groups

Instructions for Facilitators:

• Provide the opportunity for students' to situate themselves on the IN/OUT continuum, visa a vis the class.
• Encourage students' to communicate their perceptions and articulate what helps/hinders their inclusion in this class, in their intimate relationships, at work etc
• Discuss students' membership expectations/goals

Instructions to Students:

1. Discuss your reactions to the Lecturette.
2. Relate the material to your own experience.

Processing Instructions:

• Encourage open discussion of 'norms of conduct', or 'ground rules' necessary for healthy relationships in and out of the classroom.

Sample Process Questions:

1. What are some of the typical behaviors do you use in order to include yourself into a group?
2. What are some of the ways you include others into a group?
3. Are you as IN/OUT as you would like to be?
4. Of what behaviors would you like more and/or less?
5. What do you know of the impact you have on others? Others have on you?
6. What are some of the norms or ground-rules you need to have in a relationship, for you to include yourself to your satisfaction?
7. What relationship norms are negotiable for you? What norms are not negotiable?
8. How may compromising your standards affect your placement on the IN/OUT continuum of inclusion, in your relationships?
   

ACTIVITY 3 Picture Me

Activity Description:

Instructions for Facilitators:

• Ensure the 'fair' sharing of the pictures.
• Highlight commonalities.
• Observe and offer feedback on inclusion styles and the impact they had on you.

Instructions to Students:

1. Share with your group, the picture you drew of yourself in relation to the class, for your Learning Journal#1
2. Discuss the meaning of the picture to you.

Processing Instructions:

Sample Process Questions:

1. What changed for you (if anything) and how, after you shared your perception with your group members about how you see your place in the class on the IN/OUT continuum, described by Shutz?
2. What changed (if anything) and how, for the group in general?
3. What did you learn about yourself, as a result of the sharing?
4. Name one behavior you exhibited in today's class that you feel was effective in getting you included exactly as you wish.
5. Name one behavior you exhibited in today's class that you feel hindered your inclusion.
6. What may you have done instead?

Journal focus for the week

• Graphically situate yourself on a continuum of IN/OUT, in relation to the rest of the class, blue for how you experience yourself today and red for your goal of where you would like to be, by the end of the course.

• From your observations, discuss the role self-disclosure plays in including yourself into relationships as you wish to belong.
• Discuss an interpersonal strength on which you rely in order to successfully include yourself into relationships.
• Discuss a limitation you have, and the process that may prevent you from meeting your needs, in some relationships, to be as significant as you know you are.
• Discuss how you plan to achieve including yourself into the class, in order to reach your inclusion goal, as illustrated by the diagram you drew.

For Next Week
Read Reaching Out, Johnson, D., 2000,
Chapter2 "Self-Disclosure"