The Other Side of Belonging

Abstract

It is generally accepted that all humans have a profound need to belong and that a sense of 'belonging together' is a prerequisite for creating political communities. Many of our existing models for this 'first person plural' fail to fully account for the increased global mobility of persons which can all too often result in serial attachments at a superficial level or the problems that can arise with a growing fragility of all belonging. This article looks at the other side of belonging: failure to belong-either through the loss of a sense of belonging (not-belonging) or the removal of membership belonging (unbelonging)-and the resulting damage that might occur. This can have profound implications for what happens in schools where one of the accepted major functions has always been to develop and nurture belonging in children: to each other, to the school and within the wider society. However, the general assumption that most children enter schools at a neutral stage on the belonging spectrum ready to be developed and nurtured towards citizenship belonging may no longer hold and we may need to explore new ways as to how this might be achieved.

How Does a Mathematician Fit in? A Mixed-Methods Analysis of University Students’ Sense of Belonging in Mathematics

“…Also, the conceptualisation of sense of belonging as a relational construct acknowledges that not all students want to belong to the mathematics community due to belonging to other communities (Pascale 2018). In this study, we applied Healy's (2020) distinction between non-and unbelonging to the context of university mathematics by understanding the spectrum of different ways of not belonging to the mathematics community. Even though students would want to non-belong, educators might still have the responsibility to promote collaboration and sense of belonging, since the students' own will might not always represent what is best for them (which goes back to the core of what is meant by education -educators also want to correct unfunctional study strategies, for example).…”

“…Healy (2020) separates between non-belonging (loss of sense of belonging) and unbelonging (removal of sense of belonging), reminding that conscious non-belonging might even boost one's energy. However, they continues that unbelonging might have serious consequences in educational settings (Healy 2020). Therefore, it is important to understand both various ways of belonging and not belonging in the university mathematics context.…”

Politicising inclusive learning environments: how to foster belonging and challenge ableism?

“…An important aspect of this endeavour is understanding the productive aspects of non-belonging: Not all university students want to belong to the university setting, nor take part in the social learning environments (Lahdenperä & Nieminen, 2020). Healy (2020) separated between non-belonging (loss of belonging) and un-belonging (removal of belonging), reminding us about the productive affordances of non-belonging to one's well-being. Students share multiple communities, and the university context might be far from the most important setting for one to belong to (Solomon, 2007).…”

Belonging in England today: Schools, race, class and policy

“…The 2015 Prevent Duty explicitly brought schools into this matrix by enshrining a legal responsibility of public organisations to have ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ (Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 part 5, chapter 1, s.26). As a result, teachers have compulsory training in order to fulfil their duty to identify and report any colleagues or pupils displaying signs of being ‘at risk’ of ‘being drawn into terrorism including support for extremist ideas that are part of terrorist ideology’; ‘extremism’ is defined as ‘vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values’ (Home Office, 2015: 6). Later versions of Prevent have invoked far-right radicalisation as well as Islamist extremism.…”