Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 18th February at 8pm GMT with guest Jacqui Thijm to discuss how can we empower students to be part of a larger university ‘It is not just about belonging, it is also about mattering’
In recent years, belonging has become a central concept in UK Higher Education, with an increase in research on the topic, particularly over the last 5 years (Gilani and Thomas, 2025).
It is commonly presented as a key driver of retention, engagement, student success, and, more recently, linked to mental health. This is grounded in the idea that when students feel part of their university, they are more likely to persist and thrive.
This shift was an important one. It moved attention away from framing retention and attrition as individual student failings and towards recognising that institutions play a role in shaping students’ experiences. As a result, many universities have invested heavily in initiatives designed to “build” students’ sense of belonging.
However, belonging is often positioned as something that institutions do to students: something that can be provided, measured, or fixed. When students do not appear to belong, the assumption can be that something is lacking in the student—their confidence, engagement, or willingness to integrate. Looking at belonging in this way can miss how power, expectations and university systems affect a student’s sense of belonging.
Much of the current thinking around belonging also reflects a narrow image of the “traditional” student: young, campus-based, and visibly engaged in university life (Joseph et al., 2024). This does not reflect the realities of contemporary Higher Education, where many students study online, commute, work alongside their studies, or balance caring responsibilities. For these students, engagement may be quieter, less visible, and shaped by everyday interactions rather than campus presence.
This is where mattering offers a useful alternative lens. Mattering shifts the focus away from whether students have successfully integrated into institutional expectations and towards whether they feel noticed, valued, and taken seriously. Importantly, mattering is not something students must achieve. It is something that staff and institutions do through their everyday practices.
Mattering is shaped in small but significant moments: how a question is responded to, whether a student’s circumstances are acknowledged, how feedback is framed, or whether a student feels their contribution carries weight. In this sense, mattering can be understood as a relational pathway into belonging, rather than an outcome students are expected to reach independently.
When students feel that they matter in educational settings, this is reflected by both their peers and the staff with whom they interact; they feel they are important and valued by others, and this creates conditions where they belong in that space, be that a classroom, an academic advising space, or a peer group session.
Belonging and mattering are closely connected, but they are not the same. A student may formally belong to a programme or institution and yet still feel invisible or peripheral. Paying attention to mattering helps shift the focus from student deficit to staff responsibility and relational practice.
By creating mattering and caring moments in the spaces where, as university staff, we meet, connect, and build relationships with students. This is in our day-to-day interactions in lecture halls, the library, online spaces, and in pastoral and student support conversations.
In a sector increasingly driven by metrics, benchmarks, and belonging frameworks, this perspective offers a timely reminder: students’ experiences are shaped less by abstract concepts and more by how they are treated in everyday encounters across teaching, assessment, and support.
Mattering is shaped by what staff in higher education do through the relationships we form with students—sometimes intentionally, and sometimes in ways we may not even realise. These interactions, whether small or significant, can have a lasting influence on a student’s university experience. By framing our everyday interactions as acts of mattering rather than measures of belonging, we can be more intentional about creating caring environments where students are supported to thrive.
Belonging matters, but it does not happen on its own. Mattering shifts the focus from whether students fit in to how they are treated. It reminds us that feeling valued is created through everyday staff actions, not student effort.
It is in small moments—how we respond, listen, and acknowledge—that students learn whether they matter. When staff focus on mattering, we create the conditions for belonging to grow.
So, rather than asking whether students feel a sense of belonging, should we ask whether they feel they matter, and what can we, as university staff, do to foster a sense of mattering? -change/
Reference List
Gilani, D. and Thomas, L. (2025) ‘Understanding the factors and consequences of student belonging in higher education: a critical literature review’, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (34).
Joseph, C., Kelly-Ann, A., Taren, S., Roy, B., Philip, P., Cassandra, S. and Dianne, T. (2024) ‘Sense of Belonging in Higher Education Students: An Australian Longitudinal Study from 2013 to 2019’, Studies in Higher Education, 49(3), pp. 395-409.
Speaker Bio
Jacqui Thijm is a doctoral researcher in Higher Education whose work examines student engagement, belonging, and mattering in contemporary HE. Alongside her research, she is an experienced lecturer and academic adviser, with a strong interest in inclusive pedagogy, relational student support, and research-informed practice.
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