belonging – Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Currently reading about relational pedagogy, belonging, and engagement

mglessmer — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 08:42:08 +0000

I love it when Christmas text messages from colleagues are recommendations for great papers, thanks, Rachel! :-D Gilani (2025) does a longitudinal investigation of student sense of belonging which, in contrast to most other belonging studies that typically only capture a snapshot, investigates how belonging develops over time, and what students do to develop it. […]

Source

Currently reading Hamshire et al. (2025) on moving on from belonging, to mattering and trust

mglessmer — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:10:35 +0000

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 that “[w]hilst seemingly well-intentioned, these assumptions [about how if student only feel belonging, they will come to class and learn] don’t always engage with wider […]

Source

Listening to “teaching from the same side” on one of my favorite podcasts, Tea for Teaching

mglessmer — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 13:25:41 +0000

I am sitting on the ferry sailing towards Germany, with new-found appreciation of the Öresund bridge and its harp-style carrying cables… And I am listening to a conversation with Michelle Miller on one of my all-time favorite podcasts, Tea for Teaching, on “teaching from the same side” (what a nice, figurative bridge to the featured […]

Source

Currently reading Meyerson & Scully (1995) on “Tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change”

mglessmer — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 19:48:44 +0000

I really had a hard time getting started with this article by Meyerson & Scully (1995) on “tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change“. They introduce that ““Tempered Radicals” are individuals who identify with and are committed to their organizations, and are also committed to a cause, community, or ideology that is fundamentally different […]

Source

Currently reading Hoan et al. (2025) on “With or Without You? People Feel Less Autonomous During Social Interactions, Except With Close Others”

mglessmer — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 06:51:53 +0000

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, we try to give students opportunities to experience both autonomy and relatedness, and for feelings of relatedness/belonging, we force/encourage students to work with people they […]

Source

Now published: Hammarlund et al. (2025) “Understanding student sense of belonging in introductory STEM courses”

mglessmer — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 11:50:57 +0000

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 context, but for the first time investigated in a Scandinavian culture with generally high gender equality — that women report significantly lower sense of belonging […]

Source

Rethinking student belonging and well-being at universities

mglessmer — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 18:34:20 +0000

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! First: It was really nice to see that there were 100+ attendees in the live event! So cool that so many people were not only interested […]

Source

Thoughts on belonging, not-belonging, and teacher identity

mglessmer — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 08:37:16 +0000

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 an attempt to manage work load while still reading most of what I want to read, I picked the two chapters that had the most […]

Source

Connections are everything! (Currently reading: Felten et al., 2023)

mglessmer — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 05:40:29 +0000

Just a quick post to recommend a book: “Connections Are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education” by Felten et al. (2023), which is available as a free e-book, so no excuse for not reading it! You might remember that I wrote about the “Relationship-Rich Education” book (Felten & Labert, 2020) a while back, and […]

Source

Planning a seminar on relationships in the classroom

mglessmer — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 12:24:03 +0000

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. Would love some feedback! My goal with this seminar, or Intended Learning Outcomes I hope that after this module is finished, participants can explain how […]

Source