Cultivating inclusivity: strategies field school directors use to promote safe and supportive field schools

ABSTRACT

We report the results of a survey that assessed self-reported actions field school directors take to reduce and prevent sexual harassment at field schools. Using the Contextual Model of Learning framework, we interpret these actions within the realms of the personal, sociocultural, and physical contexts that are unique to the field school learning environment. These data show that field school directors are taking proactive steps to support student learning; however, we identified areas where field directors can make greater progress to build safe environments for students, such as including a greater representation of match mentors among field school staff, ensuring the physical context of the field school allows students to connect to their networks outside the field school, and providing evidence-based sexual harassment and assault training.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual harassment
• field schools
• field-learning pedagogy
• means of prevention
• contextual model of learning
• archaeological education

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted under the approval of the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Institutional Review Board #603 (original protocol approved November 26, 2019; renewed protocol approved December 21, 2022). We would like to thank the field directors who volunteered their time to respond to the survey. We also thank the Southeastern Archaeological Conference Executive Committee and Task Force on Sexual Harassment and Assault for supporting this work and building the foundation to make this research possible. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their insightful comments. The authors are responsible for all the thoughts, opinions, data, and any errors presented.

Data availability statement

The primary data sources used for this research are field school directors’ responses to survey items and were voluntarily submitted. The Institutional Review Board protocol approved for this research prohibits the sharing of these data in unaggregated form. Primary data cannot be made available.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under award number EDU #1937392.