Apply it. Test it. Question it. Develop it.
The Six Stages Framework (SSF) is a developing psychological framework for understanding movement in human attitudes, behaviour, relationships and systems. Explore research with the Six Stages Framework.
Originally developed by Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah to deepen understanding of racism and anti-racism, the framework is increasingly being explored in relation to wider questions of identity, belonging, inclusion, prejudice, psychological safety, leadership, systems, polarisation and human behaviour.
As use of the SSF grows, so too does the need for independent research.
A framework should not simply be used because it appears useful or intuitively makes sense. It should also be tested, questioned, challenged and refined.
Research can help us understand where the SSF adds explanatory value, where its limitations lie, whether its concepts can be operationalised and measured, how it functions across different populations and contexts, and how the framework itself may need to evolve.
We welcome interest from doctoral researchers, academics, universities, Educational Psychologists, EPs in training and other researchers who would like to explore the Six Stages Framework within research.
Why research with the Six Stages Framework?
The SSF proposes that people, organisations and systems can move in different directions in response to difference, challenge, experience and perceived threat.
Its continuum ranges from positions characterised by unawareness, avoidance, hostility, blame and increasingly entrenched thinking through to greater awareness, reflection, systems thinking, advocacy and transformational leadership.
But describing a framework is not the same as demonstrating its validity or usefulness.
Research allows us to ask more demanding questions.
Can movement along the continuum be reliably identified? What psychological processes contribute to movement in either direction? Are particular transitions more difficult than others? What role do identity threat, defensiveness, empathy, curiosity or psychological safety play? Can SSF-informed interventions support measurable change? Does the framework operate similarly across different forms of prejudice and different social contexts? And what happens when we move from understanding individual attitudes to analysing teams, organisations or wider systems?
These are empirical questions.
The purpose of developing an SSF research community is therefore not to generate studies designed to prove that the framework is correct.
It is to develop a body of independent inquiry capable of establishing:
Where does the SSF help? Where does it not? What can it explain? What might it overlook? And what do we still need to understand?
You can see the research and citation record identified so far on the Research, Publications & Academic Impact page.
Possible Areas for SSF Research
There are many possible applications of the Six Stages Framework.
Researchers may wish to investigate the entire framework, one part of the continuum, a particular psychological process, or an individual SSF concept or tool.
Potential areas include:
- racism and anti-racist practice;
- prejudice, discrimination and bias;
- belonging versus fitting in;
- identity and intersectionality;
- psychological safety;
- educational inclusion and SEND;
- experiences of Black and minoritised children in education;
- adultification and interpretation of behaviour;
- leadership and organisational culture;
- professional decision-making;
- institutional and systemic change;
- allyship and advocacy;
- defensiveness and identity threat;
- empathy and perspective-taking;
- polarisation and ideological entrenchment;
- hate speech and pathways towards extremism;
- responses to uncertainty and ambiguity;
- disability and ableism;
- homophobia and attitudes towards sexual difference;
- social capital and authentic belonging;
- student voice;
- organisational readiness for change;
- human encounters and relational impact;
- movement between stages of the SSF continuum; and
- applications of the framework across cultures, countries and professional contexts.
Researchers are equally encouraged to identify questions that challenge assumptions within the framework.
Possible Research With Six Stages Framework Questions
The questions below are examples rather than prescribed SSF research projects.
Understanding the SSF continuum
How reliably can individuals identify different positions on the Six Stages Framework continuum?
Can movement between SSF stages be observed over time?
Are there identifiable psychological, relational or contextual factors associated with movement towards the positive or negative axis?
Are some transitions between stages more psychologically significant than others?
Is movement necessarily sequential, or might individuals move between positions depending upon context, identity, perceived threat or the issue under consideration?
These questions could help us examine not only whether the continuum is useful, but also whether the assumptions underlying it require refinement.
Belonging and inclusion
Can the SSF help us distinguish between presence, participation, inclusion and authentic belonging?
How do experiences of belonging relate to movement along the SSF continuum?
What conditions allow people to experience belonging without pressure to suppress or surrender important aspects of identity?
What is the psychological difference between being included by others and experiencing oneself as someone who genuinely belongs?
These questions connect with the wider SSF exploration of belonging, identity and human relationships that also runs through Through the SSF Lens.
Racism and anti-racist practice
How might the SSF support Educational Psychologists or other professionals in reflecting upon anti-racist practice?
Can SSF-informed reflective practice contribute to changes in professional understanding, confidence or behaviour?
What psychological processes contribute to movement from awareness of racism towards sustained anti-racist action?
What prevents awareness from becoming action?
Could different professional or organisational environments facilitate—or inhibit—movement?
The SSF’s original application to racism is described academically in Dempsey, M’gadzah and Watson (2022), Diversity and Racism in Higher Education: The Six Stages Framework, available through IGI Global via DOI.
Psychological safety
What is the relationship between psychological safety and an individual’s capacity to remain curious when identity, values or assumptions are challenged?
Does greater psychological safety make movement towards reflection and systems thinking more likely?
Might psychologically unsafe environments increase defensive responding, conformity, avoidance or entrenchment?
Could psychological safety therefore function not simply as an organisational outcome but as a condition affecting movement along the continuum?
Organisations and systems
Can the SSF be used reliably to understand organisational responses to equality, diversity and inclusion?
What happens when individuals within the same organisation occupy very different positions on the continuum?
Can an organisation publicly present itself as being at one position while its everyday practices suggest another?
What are the relationships between individual beliefs, organisational culture, leadership behaviour, policy and systems?
Can SSF-informed organisational interventions influence culture or behaviour over time?
Bias and professional judgement
Can SSF concepts help researchers understand how stereotypes, reputational bias or inherited professional narratives influence decision-making?
How might movement along the continuum affect the way professionals interpret behaviour, risk, ability or need?
How does uncertainty affect professional judgement?
Who receives the benefit of doubt?
Whose behaviour tends to be interpreted generously—and whose behaviour is more readily understood through a deficit or risk lens?
These questions have particular potential within Educational Psychology, SEND, education, health, social care and organisational decision-making.
Polarisation, hate and extremism
Can movement along the negative axis help us understand progression from unawareness and dismissal towards hostility, blame and increasingly entrenched positions?
Are there identifiable psychological warning signs before extreme positions emerge?
What role do perceived threat, group identity, social reinforcement, grievance and certainty play?
What factors interrupt that direction of travel?
And where might psychological, educational or systemic intervention have the greatest preventative effect?
SSF Concepts and Tools That Could Be Researched
Researchers do not have to investigate the whole Six Stages Framework.
In many cases, focusing upon one concept or psychological proposition may result in a stronger and more manageable research project.
Potential areas include:
The Six Stages continuum — including the positive and negative axes and movement between positions.
The White Privilege Fence — exploring standpoint, perspective, proximity and differences in how racism is perceived.
Roads to Certainty — examining uncertainty, competing explanations, attribution and thresholds of evidence.
Bias Impact Tree — examining how assumptions or biases may produce consequences across different levels of a system.
Mask of Me — exploring identity, adaptation, masking, conformity and belonging.
Racism Virus — investigating transmission, susceptibility, normalisation, social reinforcement and resistance.
Pathway to Violence — considering psychological and social movement towards hostility, hate and violence.
Family Equity Mapping — exploring relationships, resources, opportunity and equity within family systems.
Eight Pillars of Psychological Safety — investigating the conditions that support safety, voice, participation and belonging.
Human Encounters — exploring the relational question: How do people feel after they encounter us?
Researchers may also be interested in the developing collection of SSF Visual Psychological Formulations, which uses formulation to bring together psychological processes, systems, current events and lived experience.
Some SSF tools and concepts are still developing. This creates opportunities not simply for application, but for concept development, validation, operationalisation and critical evaluation.
Possible Research Methodologies
The SSF could potentially be investigated through a range of methodological traditions.
Qualitative approaches may include semi-structured interviews, focus groups, reflexive thematic analysis, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, narrative inquiry, case study, participatory action research and grounded theory.
Quantitative research might examine the development and validation of measures, associations between SSF-related constructs, differences between groups, reliability, pre/post intervention change or movement over time.
Mixed-method approaches may be particularly valuable where researchers wish to examine both observable or measurable change and the lived psychological processes underlying it.
Longitudinal research could explore whether positions or behaviours change over time and what predicts that movement.
Participatory and co-produced research may be particularly appropriate where research concerns communities whose experiences have historically been interpreted about them rather than with them.
Researchers might also consider action research, organisational case studies, programme evaluation or comparative studies across schools, professional groups, institutions or cultures.
There is no prescribed SSF methodology.
The research question should determine the methodology—not the framework.
Critical Research Is Welcome
An important principle of this research programme is that researchers should remain free to reach conclusions that do not support the Six Stages Framework.
Good research must not only be able to support a framework. It must also be able to question it.
Research might therefore ask:
Does the framework adequately represent the phenomenon being studied?
Are the stages clearly distinguishable?
Does a staged model imply greater linearity than human behaviour actually demonstrates?
Do people occupy different positions simultaneously depending upon context?
Are there populations, identities, cultures or situations for which the SSF works less well?
Are important psychological processes missing?
Could alternative theoretical frameworks explain the same findings more effectively?
Are SSF concepts measurable?
What evidence would lead us to revise the framework?
What changes would strengthen it?
Critical examination is not a threat to the development of the SSF.
It is part of its development.
Current and Emerging Research
The SSF and Dr M’gadzah’s wider work on racism and anti-racist Educational Psychology are beginning to appear within independently conducted doctoral research.
For example, Helena Wood’s doctoral research at University College London, Educational Psychologists’ Views on White Privilege, explicitly discusses the Six Stages Framework as an assessment and intervention framework. Read the UCL doctoral thesis.
Research by Jenny Knight at the University of Manchester, examining anti-racist practice and equity of access within Educational Psychologist referrals, cites Understanding and Dealing with Everyday Racism: The Six Stages Framework. Read the University of Manchester research.
Sathya Gunetilleke’s doctoral research at the University of Bristol explores belonging amongst secondary-school girls from ethnically minoritised backgrounds and cites Dr M’gadzah’s earlier anti-racism work. Explore the University of Bristol thesis record.
Other research has begun to explore the SSF beyond racism alone, including its application as an analytical lens when considering racism, homophobia and ableism.
Current doctoral research is also exploring SSF concepts in relation to social capital and authentic belonging for Black children within British schools.
This is an emerging research record rather than a finished evidence base.
That distinction matters.
The purpose of Research with the SSF is to help the next stage become increasingly independent, empirical and open to scrutiny.
You can explore the developing record on the Research, Publications & Academic Impact page.
For Doctoral Researchers and EPs in Training
If you are at the beginning of a doctoral project, you do not need to arrive with a fully developed SSF research proposal.
You may simply have encountered an aspect of the framework that connects with a question you are already asking.
Perhaps:
“I am researching belonging. Could the SSF help me think about it?”
“I am interested in anti-racist Educational Psychology practice. Could one aspect of the framework be investigated?”
“One of the SSF tools seems relevant to my research, but I am not yet sure how I might use it.”
“I want to investigate whether one of these ideas can actually be measured.”
“My findings seem to challenge part of the framework. Would that still be useful?”
Yes.
These are precisely the kinds of questions from which worthwhile research can develop.
Where appropriate, Dr M’gadzah may be able to provide an exploratory conversation about the framework, relevant publications and aspects of the SSF that may warrant further investigation.
Formal doctoral supervision, research governance and ethical oversight remain the responsibility of the researcher’s university and supervisory team.
Research With The Six Stages Framework Collaboration
We are interested in conversations with universities and research centres, Educational Psychology training programmes, academic supervisors, schools and Multi-Academy Trusts, Local Authorities, professional bodies, charities and community organisations, as well as researchers interested in interdisciplinary collaboration.
Future SSF research could include individual doctoral studies, collaborative research projects, evaluation studies, intervention research, measure development and cross-institutional or international research.
We are particularly interested in research that allows the SSF to encounter different disciplines, populations, cultures and theoretical perspectives.
Research should not simply extend the reach of a framework.
It should extend our understanding.
Citation, Intellectual Property and Research Integrity
Researchers are encouraged to cite the original SSF source relevant to the concepts they are using.
For the principal book-length account of the original framework:
M’gadzah, S. H. (2022). Understanding and Dealing with Everyday Racism: The Six Stages Framework.
For an academic application of the framework within higher education:
Dempsey, A., M’gadzah, S. H., & Watson, S. D. (2022). Diversity and Racism in Higher Education: The Six Stages Framework. In E. Meletiadou (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Practices for Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education (pp. 354–376). IGI Global.
Researchers remain academically independent and responsible for the design, ethics, analysis, interpretation and conclusions of their research.
Normal academic citation and critical discussion of published SSF concepts does not require conclusions to be approved by the Six Stages Framework or Dr M’gadzah.
However, some unpublished materials, proprietary assessment instruments, questionnaires, training resources, visual tools or adapted SSF materials may require permission before reproduction, modification or use in data collection.
If you are uncertain whether permission is required, please contact us before beginning data collection.
Already Using or Citing the SSF?
We are building a living record of research relating to the Six Stages Framework.
If you have cited the SSF or Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah in a thesis or publication, used the framework as a conceptual or analytical lens, applied an SSF concept or tool within research, presented SSF-related research at a conference, or are currently conducting research involving the framework, we would be very pleased to hear from you.
This helps us understand how the framework is being interpreted and applied independently and enables relevant research to be considered for inclusion within the Research, Publications & Academic Impact record.
Already citing, researching or applying the SSF? Please contact us and let us know.
Interested in Researching with the SSF?
If you are considering using the Six Stages Framework within doctoral, academic, practitioner or organisational research, we would be pleased to hear from you.
You do not need to have a final research proposal. You may be at the beginning of an idea, considering whether an SSF concept could support your research, or already using the framework within an established project.
Please contact us to request a short Research with the SSF Expression of Interest form. This will help us understand your research interests, the aspect of the framework you are considering and the kind of support or discussion you are seeking.
Continue Exploring the Research
If you are new to the framework, begin with Start Here: The Six Stages Framework.
To explore books, academic publications, independent doctoral citations and research applications, visit Research, Publications & Academic Impact.
To see psychological thinking applied to current events, systems and human behaviour, explore Through the SSF Lens.
Researchers wishing to discuss an idea, research application or possible collaboration can also contact the Six Stages Framework.
Building the Evidence Together: Research with the Six Stages Framework
The Six Stages Framework began with a question about how people come to understand and challenge racism.
That question opened others.
How do people change?
Why do some people become more curious while others become more defensive?
What helps us move from awareness to action?
How does belonging become possible across difference?
How do individual responses interact with relationships and organisational systems?
What contributes to increasingly entrenched thinking?
And what happens when movement begins to travel in the opposite direction?
The next stage in the development of the SSF cannot come from one person alone.
It requires researchers willing to apply it, test it, question it, challenge it and help us understand what the evidence says.
Interested in contributing to the next stage of SSF research?
Request the research form above.
