Available at: http://journals.staffs.ac.uk/index.php/ipihe/article/view/224/352 (Accessed: 17 August 2022)
- Paper considers how to foster belonging in response to Covid-19 and global calls for racial justice
- Recommendations are ‘myth-busting belonging’ to consider the implications for educators in planning and delivering the curriculum, putting UAL implementing equitable policies and practices as central.
- One of the three AEM strands is: Fostering Belonging and Compassionate Pedagogy.
- what does this mean and is this globally recognised amongst all organisational stakeholders?
- ‘We (Hill and Bunting: Educational Developers) define belonging as a social and relational construct rooted in human connection.’ (p.2)
- On methodology: ‘we draw together, and critically reflect upon, the experiences of thirteen course teams across the six UAL Colleges […] we reflect upon our conversations with academics and technicians and their experiences of fostering student’s sense of belonging during the past year of online and blended teaching in response to the pandemic. We have facilitated 23 synchronous workshops around the themes of ‘Belonging online’, ‘Debiasing’, ‘Microaffirmations’ and ‘Courageous conversations’ (Hill et al., 2020) and have curated a range of multi-media resources, including our own series of podcasts, that are provided for staff to engage with asynchronously. We follow a constructive change approch (Lueddeke, 1999) and support course teams to reflect on teaching interactions […] in relation to bias, racism, oppression and silencing (Mountford-Zimdars et al. 2015; NUS/UUK, 2019).
- ‘several sources indicate that issues of belonging persist at UAL particularly for students of colour. Comments and experiences captured within the nSS/USS open comments, @UALTruths, Decolonising the Arts Curriculum Zine, UAL Creative Mindsets and UAL Student voices, all speak to student feelings of isolation, loneliness, not ‘fitting in’, being an outsider, and being stereotyped’ (pp.3-4).
- ‘In UK HE, belonging became a prominent topic following the publication of Liz Thomas’ (2012) HEFCE funded ‘What Works? Student Retention and Success Programme’ report. The report found that feelings of isolation and not ‘fitting in’ (i.e. unbelonging) were the most common reasons for students to consider withdrawal from undergraduate study.’ (p.4)
- This research uses a psychological stance on defining belonging:
- ‘students’ feelings of being valued, respected, supported, included, and that they matter by teachers and peers, so that they feel part of the university learning community’ (Hill et al., 2020, p.4) […] a transitory concept that can be lost and found […] is at higher risk during moments of vulnerability and change. As belonging exists at difference levels within HE, such as class, university, and course – it is possible to feel both belonging and unbelonging simultaneously.’ (p.5)
- ‘As Vanessa May states (2013, p.154) ‘who can achieve belonging and where is always tied to issues of power and inequality [within society].’ Due to the intersections of identities no student will experience belonging in the same way (Cureton and Gravestock, 2019_. Belonging is an inherently individual experience (Riley, 2018) and, as there is not a ‘one-size fits all’ intervention to create a sense of belonging (sic).’ (p.5)
- Their podcasts had the following features, and they provide their rationales for these as follows:
- ‘Dialogic: […] to align problem-posing education with the quest for social justice’ (p.8)
- ‘Asynchronous: […] synchronous learning is biased’ as it ignores difference in time zones, can be culturally unaware, is problematic for those with families, is elitist when involving auto-visuals and relies on linguistic capital (Bali and Meier, 2013)’ (p.8).
- ‘Affective: […] acknowledge that the act of embodied listening provoked an affective response from voice, accent, tone, timbre, atmosphere and that this opened space to further reflect on values of compassion and empathy’ (p.9).
- ‘Addressing epistemic and procedural needs: […] revealing tension between ‘how do I do this?’ and ‘why am I doing this?’ […] the relationship between the ‘procedures and lived realities’ (p.9).
Myth-busing on belonging:
- ‘The unexamined importance of the academic role in fostering belonging by proactively connecting with students was found to be overwhelming by some staff as they realised that the ‘onus is on me’ […] preexisting concerns about boundaries and becoming ‘friendly’ with students are exacerbated by the hyper-availability of being in the online context due to the pandemic’ (p. 11).
- ‘Connected to a focus on building peer relationships, is a problematic emphasis on arranging extra-curricular social activities’ (p.11).
- ‘ […] students are ‘incorporated’ into academic communities. This projects an opinion onto students of what it means to belong at university and can result in pressure being placed on students to ‘fit in’ (Strayhorn, 2019) and gain cultural caputal (Bourdieu, 1977) by confirming to pre-existing norms of the global North’ (p.13).
- ‘The idea of education as a form of healing’ (p.13)
- ‘The need to design spaces and frameworks to encourage students to build listening skills were seen as key factors in creating compassionate, anti-racist learning environments and discussed Gilbert’s micro-skills on compassion as an example (Gilbert, 2016)’ (p.14).
- On limitations to belonging: ‘to create a culture of belonging, the institution needs to take responsibility in designing policies and infrastructure that can engender it (Thomas 2012).
Conclusion:
- ‘The importance of ongoing reflexivity at an institutional level to challenge myths and normative assumptions around fostering belonging cannot be underestimated […] support and commitment from snr leadership to develop compassionate policies and practices for staff is essential to effect structure and cultural change […] and we encourage the use of creative arts-based methods for educational development to remind each other that listening is a force for change (Rogers, 1980)’ (pp.17-18).
OK, so I think there’s a lot of scope here. For one, as a relative layman to the discipline, I don’t feel like I have learnt anything new today. I also feel like there’s suggestions towards how belonging can be fostered, but not a way of suggesting how one might monitor it?? Obviously it should be proactive, but there were only quite wooly recommendations around how these could be implemented. Furthermore, this was during the time of majority online-delivery, we’re in a different space now. We’re perhaps dealing with students whose very framework for ‘belonging’ has shifted.