Why don’t students belong? A transition pedagogy approach
Dr Joseph Crawford, University of Tasmania. Editor in Chief, Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice
At the close of 2020, there were many rapid studies emerging on the COVID-effect on student success, wellbeing, and belonging among others. I, like many, struggled to support students to do well in rapidly constructed online environments. We all tried to experiment with alternatives to support students to belong, and some were successful. What I did find was that there were many unknowns about the nature of student belonging.
We formed what we colloquially termed the Belongingness Taskforce, bringing together a group of experts to consider what we actually know of belonging. There seems to have been, from my reading, three key approaches: interpersonal, identity, and place.
Using the full stable of the national Student Experience Survey (SES) data up until COVID-19 (i.e., 2013-2019), we began to ask what, of the information available (and using machine learning), actually predicts belonging. The national SES spans 1,159,768 students. We published our findings as open access in Studies in Higher Education.
We found that it meant a great deal to students’ belonging to be:
Connected to their peers
Provided with settling-in supports, like inductions, welcomes, and orientations
In quality informal spaces outside of class.
These three were not exhaustive, and we were limited by the items in the national survey, but they do tell an important story about how we foster belonging. These elements were much more important than any demographic difference. In supplementary analysis (see Figure 1), we found that student experience factors (individually and as subscales) were much more important than demographic features, although modality, year of study, student age, and language were contributors.
Figure 1. Eight most important features of belonging (generated by Sanders and Parker)
What this means for students?
I reflect on the findings of our first major look into student experience and belonging, and theorise that perhaps experiences of belonging may offer a critical equaliser in the student experience. That, when diversity, equity, and inclusion are achieved, belongingness may be an outcome.
[The First Year Experience] should foster a critical sense of belonging and student identity, through involvement and connectedness with the student’s university and discipline experiences – (Kift, 2015, p. 54).
What we did find interesting was that, for students to belong, it was less about the discipline experiences and skill development, and much more about connectedness with other students.
A Universities Accord for belonging?
The Universities Accord interim report states universities have an “obligation to students to foster belonging”. Given belonging is regularly one of the lowest scores on the national survey, it ought to be a core future success measure that universities ensure an environment is created where diverse populations flourish.
Our study speaks to student belonging pre-COVID-19. Now, we begin our analysis of the changes since COVID-19. And others from UTS and Elon University (U.S.) comment on the need for greater belongingness analytics. Such critical foci are yet to transition to policy. They should, and the HESF may be a good place to embed the requirement to foster and monitor belonging.
To date, Australian universities have not, at least using the measures in the SES as proxy, fostered an effective sense of belonging in aid of quality teaching and student experiences. The Universities Accord offers us the opportunity to reprioritise our approach to learning to one that is human-centred and built on aspirations of flourishing through learning.
Acknowledgements
The individuals who formed the initial Belongingness Taskforce for the first paper were Dr Joseph Crawford (UTAS), A/Prof Kelly-Ann Allen (Monash), Taren Sanders (ACU), Roy Baumeister (UQ), Philip Parker (ACU), Cassandra Saunders (UTAS), and Dianne Tice (Brigham Young, U.S.).
Dr Joseph Crawford, University of Tasmania. Editor in Chief, Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice.