‘Relationship-Rich Education’: Promoting Student Belonging for Success

Synopsis

A sense of belonging and personal connection can be argued as essential for both staff and students alike regardless of the learning context. In this pandemic era, ‘Relationship-rich education’ philosophies for universities are considered more vital than ever due to increased online learning (Felten & Lambert et al., 2020). To-date, higher education students’ sense of belonging is a concept that has not been adequately conceptualised. The current literature on ‘sense of belonging’ spans a number of disciplines, with no apparent consensus on definition between these, complicated by the fact that sense of belonging is temporal and context-sensitive such as during COVID-19. Whilst there has been recent studies outlining the student experience of belonging in the online space (Peacock et al., 2020), investigation of teacher/educator experiences have been relatively overlooked. This presentation will present interim findings from the SoE CSSP that explored students’ sense of belonging to their education units.

Uplift Element

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

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