Join us on Wednesday, 23rd of September at 8:00pm (GMT/BST) with our guest contributor, Francis Awolowo from Sheffield Hallam University, @ifawolowo.bsky.social. This #LTHEChat on BlueSky will consider “What might higher education look like if belonging were not an accidental outcome, but an intentional part of how we teach?“

Introduction

Students can be admitted to university, attend our lectures, submit assessments, achieve good grades, and graduate, yet never truly feel that they belong.

That thought has stayed with me throughout my career as an educator.

Higher education has rightly invested considerable energy in widening participation, inclusion and student success. But I increasingly find myself asking a different question: is being included the same as belonging?

I do not think it is.

Access gets you through the door. Inclusion gives you a seat at the table. Belonging is knowing that your presence at that table matters.

For me, belonging is not simply about feeling comfortable. It is about being seen, valued and taken seriously. It is being able to bring something of yourself into a learning space without constantly wondering whether you need to become someone else to succeed.

My thinking about this has been shaped profoundly by my work with Black students and, particularly, through leading the ASPIRE programme, which sought to widen access to doctoral education. Again and again, I saw extraordinarily talented students whose challenge was not a lack of ability or ambition. Sometimes what was missing was access to relationships, networks, encouragement and that important voice saying: you can do this, and there is a place for you here.

This matters because belonging is linked to students’ engagement, persistence, and academic experiences. It is also deeply relational. Research on compassionate and inclusive pedagogy similarly reminds us that caring interactions can create psychological safety, strengthen engagement and nurture belonging.

But perhaps we need to go further.

From belonging to teaching for belonging

I am increasingly interested in what African philosophies might contribute to this conversation.

Ubuntu is often captured through the expression “I am because we are.” At its heart is an understanding of humanity as relational: who we become is shaped through our relationships with others. Educational scholarship drawing on Ubuntu has therefore emphasised interconnectedness, humaneness, social responsibility and attentiveness to others.

This challenges one assumption that can quietly underpin higher education: that success is primarily an individual endeavour.

What if learning is also something we accomplish with and through one another?

Ubuntu pedagogy offers possibilities for classrooms characterised by solidarity, cooperation, respect and coexistence rather than simply individual performance. Alongside this, I draw on Omoluabi, a Yoruba philosophical idea concerned with character, dignity, responsibility and what it means to be a good person in relationship with others.

Together with compassionate pedagogy, these ideas lead me towards a simple proposition:

Perhaps our responsibility as educators is not only to teach students what they need to know, but to create the relational conditions in which they can become who they have the potential to be.

That does not mean lowering standards.

Compassion is not the opposite of rigour.

Care is not the absence of challenge.

Belonging does not mean making students comfortable all the time.

Indeed, good education should sometimes unsettle us. It should challenge assumptions, invite disagreement and require intellectual struggle. But there is an important difference between being challenged within a community and feeling that you are constantly required to prove your right to be part of that community.

The question, then, is not whether universities should care about belonging. The more difficult question is what we are prepared to change because we care about it.

Our curriculum?

Our assessment?

Whose knowledge we recognise?

The relationships we build with students?

The way we give feedback?

How we understand academic excellence?

Or perhaps even how we understand our role as educators?

Recent work on Ubuntu continues to argue for its potential to create learning environments centred on interconnectedness and community, while work on compassionate pedagogy has similarly highlighted the challenge of translating an ethos of care into everyday institutional practice.

So, for this #LTHEchat, I would like us to imagine something together.

Not simply a more inclusive university.

But a university in which more students can genuinely say:

I am here.
I am seen.
I matter.
I belong.
And I can thrive here.

What would we have to do differently to make that possible?

Biography

Dr Ifedapo Francis Awolowo is a multi-award-winning educator, researcher and Senior Lecturer in Financial and Management Accounting at Sheffield Hallam University. A National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of Advance HE, his work explores belonging, compassionate pedagogy, racial equity and widening access to doctoral education. He is the project lead of ASPIRE, an award-winning programme that has supported Black students to develop research confidence, networks and pathways into doctoral study. His approach to education is informed by the African philosophies of Ubuntu and Omoluabi, placing relationships, humanity and collective flourishing at the heart of learning.

He is the author of Breaking Barriers to Doctoral Education: The ASPIRE Model for Mentorship and Racial Equity and is passionate about reimagining higher education as a place where every student can not only participate, but genuinely belong and thrive.