Images/Research
Our data surfaced how participants experienced belonging and non-belonging in multiple, fluid, and shifting ways. These included belonging as micro level interactions, as well as belonging on a broader, macro, level. Students described different experiences of belonging in different times and spaces. The materiality of belonging permeated our data. Students told and showed us the significance of space, objects, and the senses, to their conception, curation and enactment of belonging. Engaging in the different spaces and material settings was often described as a purposeful act of belonging. Other students described the benefits of routine and regularity in purposefully creating belonging in specific spaces and times. Often these curation practices were also connected with feelings of safety and comfort.
For students, belonging was imagined multiply − as both an internal and an external experience. Typical assumptions around spaces of belonging were uncomfortable for some students, and many students spoke of the deliberate choice to not belong or recounted their experiences of experiencing belonging in some spaces and not others. For some students, focusing upon the notion of belonging was a source of particular discomfort, that could even destabilise notions of inclusivity. For other students, a sense of belonging was something that was experienced as temporal, fleeting and flickering. Our data surfaced how students conceptualise belonging in multiple and divergent ways. Multiple senses of belonging were depicted, and belonging was shown to be complex, fluid and affective. Belonging flickers and is in flux, it may stick, slip and slide in different times and spaces.
Images
The images exhibited on this page bring to life how students conceptualised the idea of belonging. On the back of each card are questions to consider, and direct quotations from our research, to prompt discussion. Please feel free to download these and use them in your work.
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I. Belonging
As curatorship
II. Belonging
As safety
III. Belonging
As purposeful. About contributing
IV. Belonging
As an active choice
V. Belonging
As flickering and multiple
VI. Belonging
As a feeling of being part of something larger
VII. Belonging
As an excitement: an energy about learning
VIII. Belonging
As micro-moments
IX. Belonging
As flexibility
X. Belonging
As academic discipline
XI. Non-Belonging
Because of exclusionary practices/groups
