The CTL Partners with Contemporary Practices to Discuss Student Belonging and Community Building

A white man holding a print inside a printmaking facility

By Matthew Roberts

Introduction

The week before the 2024–25 academic year began, Andy Hall, chair of Contemporary Practices (CP), invited the Center for Teaching and Learning to discuss how faculty can foster belonging in their classes. The conversation served as a prelude to the Ombudsperson and Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’s workshop on establishing community agreements. Community agreements create shared values that help us to learn and hold each other accountable for that learning.

Of course, belonging is not something that happens spontaneously. Instead, it names a process of becoming that you, along with your students, nourish in both time and space. This chart identifies key actions that can help you to sustain the work required to create such a learning environment.

Table 1. Actions that cultivate belonging in higher education classrooms.*
Category	Description of Action
Interpersonal Practice	Know students names and pronounce them accurately
Interpersonal Practice	Share that concerns about belonging are normal and fade over time
Organizational and Procedural Practice	Have clear expectations for what students will do in your class–and share with students
Classroom Community Practice	Make the introduction of students to their peers in the classroom a priority
Classroom Community Practice	Set expectations around the kind of classroom environment you want to create. Have students give feedback on where the class is in relation to those goals.
Attend to Social Context outside of the Classroom	Take a survey to know what your students are into outside of class and incorporate those interests into lessons and interactions
Attend to Social Context outside of the Classroom	Highlight societal and environmental applications of course materials

*The actions nearer the top of the table require less time to implement. The actions nearer the bottom of the table will require more time and consideration of context, course content, and pedagogical judgment.

Our meeting with CP (Faculty Voices Episode 9) is available for all faculty to watch at their convenience. For this entry, we want to focus on three categories of action that can help faculty create a more welcoming and inviting learning environment for their students.

Spotlight Students

The first category spotlights the individual interests or talents of students. To do this, build in time at the beginning of each class for students to represent something that is important to them, how they want to appear in class, or who they want to become. These actions can be related to the course content or not. The point is that students show the class something meaningful about themselves and share why it is important to them.

An example could be something that I call “the turn.” For this exercise, each student has an opportunity to bring in a song that they are currently listening to on repeat or that is particularly meaningful to them. They play it for their classmates and talk about its appeal. Fellow students describe the song’s musical properties or what they see as being of interest to the student. This can be an effective strategy since the music that students listen to during their college years is extremely formative for them as they mature.

The turn is a low stakes way for students to begin to represent their artistic interests and analyze the work of others through an activity that builds community. And in the end, the students will have created a course mix tape, which they can listen to in the future.

If you want to connect it to the course, just substitute music for any object, place, material, etc. that would relate to what you are teaching. You can utilize the activity’s form in a variety of ways.

Building Identity

The second category of activities are those that enable individual students to formulate their identity, particularly in relation to the course. For instance, implement a “free-zone” assignment. The idea is that students determine how they want to represent their learning as it pertains to a particular lesson or module. Then, students present what they made or did to their peers. Alternatively, invite students to develop their own course-based learning goals and outcomes. In both cases, students not only assume responsibility for their learning, but they also become more conscious of why and how they want to learn in the company of others. By building in opportunities for students to show up as their authentic selves, you also provide incentive for them to acknowledge and respect their peers.

Social-Emotional Learning

The third category of actions that can create a welcoming learning environment for students are those that promote social-emotional learning. According to the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning, such learning includes five key competencies:

Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social Awareness
Building Relationships
Making Responsible Decisions

There are many ways to encourage social-emotional learning and you do not need to introduce all of these competencies at once. Instead, you may consider developing an approach that facilitates them individually. However, if you want to include a more ambitious activity that encourages students to develop all, or at least many, of these key competencies, you can do so through an activity called the Human Library.

The Human Library originated in Denmark to challenge social stereotypes, stigmas, and assumptions. You can use the model to facilitate social-emotional learning. To implement the activity, divide the class into two halves: one group of students are “books” and the other are “readers.” Assign each book a reader who then spends the first 10 minutes of class ‘reading’ their book by asking them questions and/or engaging in dialogue. You may event want to begin the activity with scripted questions that specifically facilitate the skills associated with social and emotional learning.

Lead the activity at the beginning of each class for 3-5 sessions, or for a duration that you believe is sufficient. Then, allot a time for readers to share what they learned about their books. Once readers give a book report, allow time for the students to discuss the experience and then reverse the process so that readers become books and vice versa.

This approach gradually enables students to develop an in-depth appreciation of each other; however, it also situates them in a position that can be vulnerable. As a result, each student must become self-aware to become more conscious of who they are in relation to another. Practiced collectively, faculty can manage the risk associated with this activity to create an educational environment wherein students feel seen, heard, and understood. It also provides faculty with an opportunity to develop their own social-emotional skills as they relate to their students. This last part is crucial: faculty must model compassionate leadership to create a sense of mutual responsibility and accountability that promotes a more authentic and intentional educational experience.

Conclusion

Obviously, these are not all of the ways that faculty can create a welcoming learning environment. Moreover, no approach is without its shortcomings or limitations. For example, critics of social and emotional learning illustrate how it can exacerbate racial inequities or lead to practices that harm Black, Indigenous, or other students of color (Attaya and Hillard 1). Research also suggests that faculty must lead and model compassionate practices to transform their learning environment into a place of belonging for all students, particularly those traditionally marginalized in, or excluded from, higher education. Liz Bunting and Vikki Hill's extensive blog, "Belonging through Compassion," underscores this point and advocates for "belonging as pedagogic approach."

But perhaps the most obvious way to facilitate belonging in your learning place is to create opportunities for how and what you teach to reflect or engage who you teach. And one of the ways that you can do this is by asking students questions to learn how they receive and experience course content. In this setting, success comes by being open and responsive to the unknown, the unforeseen, and/or the uninitiated. This approach can be particularly effective when co-creating a learning space with students that models care, compassion, respect, and trust.

Additional Resources

For additional reading/viewing, please consult the following resources. This list is not exhaustive, but provides you with some additional information that may be useful as you promote belonging in your classroom or studio space.

Op-Eds

Websites

Videos

Web Articles

Journal Articles (Peer-Reviewed)

Miscellaneous Resources

For more information, or to partner with the Center for Teaching and Learning, please write to us!