Building Belonging

Belonging is a key part of the student experience, contributing to student retention, attainment and wellbeing. Belonging is a multi-faceted concept, encompassing inclusion and diversity, community, academic confidence and feeling that you matter and are valued. It is often at the level of the course or programme that students’ sense of belonging is most localised, and in which a holistic approach to belonging can be best integrated and embedded.

Everyone involved in delivering and supporting teaching and learning has a role to play, from programme and module leaders to lecturers, seminar or lab teaching assistants, personal tutors, professional and student services colleagues and peer mentors.

This collaborative project offers an opportunity for teams at school or programme levels to start to define the concepts of ‘belonging’ and ‘building’ both personally, collaboratively and with a local identity. This will be an important element of the project since being able to define belonging will enable teams to begin to build this in their contexts and approaches from induction forward, using learning and shared practices from the project to inform and support.