Currently reading about relational pedagogy, belonging, and engagement
I love it when Christmas text messages from colleagues are recommendations for great papers, thanks, Rachel! :-D
Search: belonging
Currently reading Hamshire et al. (2025) on moving on from belonging, to mattering and trust
While I have worked on student sense of belonging myself, I have also long been wondering if it is not much more complicated than that. Hamshire et al. (2025) write…
Now published: Hammarlund et al. (2025) “Understanding student sense of belonging in introductory STEM courses”
In this article, we investigate sense of belonging of students in STEM courses at the University of Bergen, Norway. We find — as expected from studies in mostly a US…
Rethinking student belonging and well-being at universities
A couple of days ago, I attended the workshop “Rethinking student belonging and well-being at universities” (recording available here) organised by the Erasmus+ project BELONG. Here are some thoughts!
Thoughts on belonging, not-belonging, and teacher identity
The book Belonging and Identity in STEM Higher Education, edited by Howson & Kingsbury (2024) has been opened on my desktop literally since the day it was published. And in…
STEM students’ sense of belonging and test anxiety in in Bergen (quick summary of work with Emily M. Christiansen, Sehoya Cotner, Robin Costello, Sarah Hammarlund, & Madeline Kate Kiani)
In my series of things-I-want-to-say-in-an-upcoming-workshop-but-suspect-I-might-skip-to-make-time-for-participants’-topics, here is a quick summary of work I did with Emily M. Christiansen, Sehoya Cotner, Robin Costello, Sarah Hammarlund, & Madeline Kate Kiani on STEM…
Reading about a sense of belonging, and how it is more complicated than we might think
Belonging is a tricky concept and there is no consensus on how to measure it. And belonging can be in the university environment, in a course, in a discipline, with…
Fostering student sense of belonging in a large online class (after Lim, Atif, Farmer; 2022)
When we talk about fostering student sense of belonging, it is easiest to think about in-person interactions. However, a lot of our teaching these days is online, and in high-enrolment…
Currently reading: JUTLP special issue on belonging in an anxious world (articles 1-7)
In response to my blog post about belonging, I was made aware of the current issue of the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice (JUTLP) on “Pedagogies of belonging in…
Students’ sense of belonging, and what we can do about it
Last week, Sarah Hammarlund (of “Context Matters: How an Ecological-Belonging Intervention Can Reduce Inequities in STEM” by Hammarlund et al., 2022) gave a presentation here at LTH as part of…
Currently reading Harvey et al. (2026) on “What is good academic development practice? Introducing Australasian standards”
I just saw that Kjersti, Cathy’s and my article has been replaced as the latest publication on IJAD’s website, and that “What is good academic development practice? Introducing Australasian standards”…
Currently reading Robnett et al. (2022) on “Are synchronous chats a silver lining of emergency remote instruction? Text-based chatting is disproportionately favored by women in a non-majors introductory biology course”
Encouraging active participation in class is often a goal since it is correlated with better learning outcomes, but that became a lot more difficult when teaching had to suddenly move…
Currently reading Kahn et al. (2025) on “Teacher agency and generative artificial intelligence: teaching in higher education as a responsive, cultural activity”
The wide availability of GenAI has introduced challenges to relationships between teachers and students and within the respective groups (see for example Rachel’s and my work on that!). GenAI being…
Stress, overwhelm, burnout and how to cope (maybe?)
This blog post contains the second part of the summary of the Hamann et al. (2025) book on “The Psychology of Collective Climate Action: Building Climate Courage” (summary of Part…
Currently reading “The Psychology of Collective Climate Action: Building Climate Courage” by Hamann et al. (2025), Part 1
I read this book on my vacation and loved it! It is written for activists (that aren’t actually called activists, so that everybody can feel included whether they identify as…
Currently reading Hoan et al. (2025) on “With or Without You? People Feel Less Autonomous During Social Interactions, Except With Close Others”
This is quite an intriguing article! Feeling more related (more belonging?) might make us feel less autonomous (except with people we are super close with)? If, motivated by self-determination theory,…
Currently browsing “Academic Teaching” by Elmgren and Olding (2025)
We are using the book “Academic Teaching” by Elmgren and Olding in our “Introduction to Teaching and Learning” course. They came out with a new edition this year (2025; and…
Currently reading Stirling (2019) on “Engineering and Sustainability: Control and Care in Unfoldings of Modernity”
I have been reading a lot about care in teaching as the focus moved away from control and past belonging and mattering, so it was quite interesting to read a…
Does disclosing intention make it less likely that we act on it? No answer (yet), but a lot of reading…
Today I fell into this really weird rabbit hole on intentions and self-completion. My interest was first sparked by an article by Gollwitzer et al. (2009) on “When intentions go…
“Walking Through the Future in the Present”, inspired by Wilson et al. (2025)
I’m totally appropriating half of the title of Wilson et al. (2025)’s article, “Walking Through the Future in the Present”, as the name of an activity that I want to…
Watching the presentation “accessibility and inclusion in digital learning” by Marie Leijon
I was super excited to get the notification that a recording of the presentation “Accessibility and inclusion in digital learning” by Marie Leijon had been uploaded to our Learning Management…
Currently reading Ajjawi (2019) on “Persisting students’ explanations of and emotional responses to academic failure.”
What makes some students persist until they get a degree, despite experiences of failure, while others drop out? Typically, student persistence is explained with feelings of self-efficacy, experiencing a sense…
Currently reading Orr (1991) on “what is education for?”
In response to my post summarising Biesta’s purpose of education, my friend Terese sent me a speech David Orr gave in 1990 with a very similar vibe. Even though the…
Gert Biesta on 3D chess and the importance of asking ourselves what we are going to do with our freedom
Last night, I watched Gert Biesta on the Talking Teaching podcast (youtube video embedded below, above some wave watching pics! ;-)) and it is giving me language and images to…
Smile! And the world smiles back. Or something like that. Currently reading Beaudry et al. (2024)
A good relationship between teachers and students helps students learn better, but it is very unclear what exactly makes a good relationship. Is it trust as we recently investigated, or…
Published! “STEM Students Prefer Assessment Practices Known to Reduce the Impact of Test Anxiety” by Costello et al. (2025)
Back in 2022, I worked on a really cool study on belonging and test anxiety together with the awesome colleagues you see in the featured image: aside from me taking…
More reading about mattering and care in higher education, inspired by the work of Gravett, Kinchin and others
I really enjoyed reading the Gravett & Ajjavi (2022) article on “belonging as a situated practice”, especially since I see a connection with other thoughts I am having on place-based…
Striving for accountable spaces (instead of safe or brave ones)
Hearing promises of “safe spaces” is usually a quick way to get me very angry. Safe for whom? And safe from whom? Probably not safe for minorities from dominant discourses……
“Why students trust teachers, and what we can do to increase their trust”. Keynote at the Lund University conference on inclusive teaching, with Rachel Forsyth and Peter Persson
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of giving a keynote at the “Inclusive Lund University” conference, together with my colleagues Rachel Forsyth and Peter Persson. We talked about our recent study…
“The importance of the room” — thoughts on a presentation by Marie Leijon today
Today, I spent my lunch break in an online presentation on “the importance of the room” given by Marie Leijon from Malmö University as part of the “Accessibility Tuesday” series…
My summary of a seminar about learning support for students with disabilities at LU
This afternoon, we had the second seminar in the “Inclusive Classroom” course, this time on “learning support for students with disabilities at LU”. Emma Carlsson and Philip Johansson visited us…
Thinking about Maria Weurlander’s seminar on “When learning becomes difficult: Emotional challenges in education”
Yesterday I was one of those annoying people on their laptop during a seminar, taking notes during Maria Weurlander’s presentation on “When learning becomes difficult: Emotional challenges in education”, and…
Listening to podcasts on DEI, conspiracy theories, and micro motivation
I’m back to listening to podcasts! I don’t know why it goes in such waves, but here we go with some recommendations from what I listened to in the last…
Currently Reading “Advancing Student Engagement in Higher Education: Reflection, Critique and Challenge” (Lowe, 2023)
Students can engage in higher education in different ways: behavioral, emotional, cognitive, or in any combination of those. Traditionally, this is seen as engagement with the curriculum inside the classroom,…
Summarizing more literature on trust between students and teachers
The assumption that teacher-student relationships are important has been around for a long time and is probably uncontested. But when it comes to describing what exactly makes a good relationship,…
Planning a seminar on relationships in the classroom
In April, I will be teaching one afternoon in a course on “developing and leading courses at LTH”, on what we traditionally called “belonging”. Here are my thoughts so far.…
Thinking about my positionality as a teacher and researcher in academic development
Kirsty “gave me the task” to (that sounds harsher than it was — she pointed me to a super interesting article and we agreed to both) do a concept map…
Currently reading Part II of the book “Sustainable Development Teaching – Ethical and Political Challenges”, edited by Van Poeck, Östman, Öhman (2019)
Following up on “PART I: Education and the challenge of building a more sustainable world” that I summarized here, here comes PART II: Choosing teaching content and approaches
Teacher-student relationships (Hagenauer et al., 2014 & 2023)
You might have noticed that I am exploring different concepts of what makes a good teacher-student relationship recently: belonging, caring, and most recently, trust. Why am I not just picking…
Playing with Microsoft Reflect, “a well-being app to support connection, expression, and learning”
Yesterday, a colleague pointed me to Microsoft Reflect, “A well-being app to support connection, expression, and learning”, and I had a quick play. It’s a tool to support reflection in…
Currently reading: “Ten simple rules for successfully supporting first-generation/low-income (FLI) students in STEM” by Peña et al. (2022)
As a very privileged continuing-generation student, I did occasionally notice how it helped when, during my studies, people in key positions at the university recognised my last name, or when…
Tips for creating inclusive classrooms at LTH (based on an article to be presented at LTH’s pedagogical conference this December)
I have been part of running a course called “the inclusive classroom” this fall. I learned a lot of new things both from other instructors (for example Louise’s excellent “office”…
Currently reading about cooperative & collaborative learning (Oakley et al., 2004; Møgelvang, 2023; Wieman et al., 2014)
iEarth’s current journal club paper deals with collaborative exams as learning opportunities, and this fits perfectly with Anja Møgelvang’s recent article on cooperative learning, where we can find inspiration for…
Just three emails to improve student grades and retention? Yes, please!
Sitting on the ferry back to Sweden, I listened to one of my favorite podcasts, “tea for teaching“. The episode was on the role of faculty engagement, specifically showing students that…
Currently reading: “Building Trust in the Classroom: A Conceptual Model for Teachers, Scholars, and Academic Developers in Higher Education.” by Felten et al. (2023)
Last summer, I sat in the botanical garden with Rachel Forsyth and had a super interesting conversation about the importance of trust between teachers and students, and what I do…
How to show students that they matter, inspired by episodes of two of my favourite podcasts
Yesterday I went on a lovely after-work walk with one of my favorite podcasts (check them out, all highly recommended!), and I want to mention two podcast episodes Iistened to recently,…
Currently reading “How well-intentioned white male physicists maintain ignorance of inequity and justify inaction” by Dancy & Hodari (2022)
This article has repeatedly been making waves in my circles over the last couple of months: “How well-intentioned white male physicists maintain ignorance of inequity and justify inaction” by Dancy &…
Currently reading: Relationship-rich education (Felten & Lambert, 2020)
I read the book “Relationship-rich education. How human connections drive success in college” by Felten & Lambert (2020) almost a year ago and found it super inspiring, but also very…
Emotionally-responsive teaching
When I was recently thinking about emotions and teaching about sustainability, I came across the term “emotionally-responsive teaching” that really spoke to me, even though I did not really know what…
Reading about connections between theory and practice in teaching, metaphors for learning, and academically-supportive friendships
We recently ran a round-table discussion on “How to teach students who are not “mini-me”s (and don’t want to be)” at the Lund University Teaching and Learning conference last year,…
Teaching sustainability: Reading about how to turn frustration into action
One reoccurring topic in all discussions around how to teach sustainability is how we can turn frustration into constructive action. I haven’t found a comprehensive answer, but I’ve been reading!
Identity and emergency intervention (Currently reading: Levine et al., 2005)
The German NGO “Streitgut” recently posted a youtube video with a reference to an article on how activating different identities influences willingness to help, that I then had to check…
Currently reading Janke et al. (2017) on social identification with academia
After all the thinking about belonging I’ve done recently, I came across the article by Janke et al. (2017) today that measures “social identification with academia” as Venn-diagram with varying…
A quick introduction to Cooperative Learning (summarizing Anja Møgelvang’s workshop)
Yesterday morning, we had a very interesting “teaching breakfast” as part of #CoCreatingGFI: Anja Møgelvang introduced us to Cooperative Learning. Anja is a PhD student at the Center for Excellence…
Currently reading Flett et al. (2022) on “anti-mattering”
As we are continuing working on our “sense of belonging” project at UiB (read more about my thoughts on students’ sense of belonging and what we can do about it here;…
A red thread in my career: Being intentional about building community
Today is my blog’s 9th Birthday! How incredible is that? I’ve published 1,300 blog posts (this one is, in fact, exactly number 1,300!). Who would have thought that this would…
Currently reading: “Small teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning” by Lang (2021)
On the “tea for teaching” podcast episode on trauma-aware pedagogy that I wrote about here, the book by Lang (2021) on “Small teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning” was recommended.…
Trauma-aware teaching: Listening to Karen Costa on the “tea for teaching” podcast
Today was the first time in half a year or so that I listened to a podcast (other than the Academic Imperfectionist, where I make sure to not miss an…
Microaggressions: How intent and impact don’t always go together.
I’ve recently started including the topic of microaggressions in my academic development workshops, and here is one reflection on the topic (including the super helpful sandals&boots-analogy by Presley Pizzo). I…
My notes from last week’s ICED22 conference
Starting out with a wave watching picture from my walk before the first day of the conference. When in Aarhus, I had to get in the 90 minute walk before…
Reducing bias and discrimination in teaching: an annotated, incomplete — WORK IN PROGRESS! — list of references
Already at the time of posting, I have added to my to-read list for an updated version of this post. Please let me know of any additional literature I should…
Our presentation at #FieldWorkFix: “An interactive mobile adventure on coastal protection”
This summer I had a fun little side project: I was co-supervising a Bachelor thesis in geography at Kiel University! Janina Dreeßen, with Katja Kuhwald as her main supervisor, did…
A personal story about why I am reluctant to start a class with an intervention
The first lecture I attended as a student wasn’t actually a regular lecture, even though I did not know that at the time. It was an intervention. Together with about…
