As belonging is contextually bound, we are interested in the entanglement of belonging with overlapping knowledge domains. On this page we explore three theoretical approaches that are key influences in how we understand compassion and belonging: posthumanism, trauma-informed education and pedagogies of care. We recognise the differences in ontology and epistemology, or what Prof. Karen Barad terms onto-epistem-ology – the study of knowing in being – and curate these together, interconnected in messy complexity.
Posthumanism
Posthumanism contests assumptions of what and who is considered human. Prof. Rosi Braidotti explains that ‘Humanity’ centres on the humanistic notion of Man as the measure of everything and therefore not everyone is equal. The concept of ‘humanity’ adheres to Eurocentric, heteronormative, ableist, racist and gendered norms. The posthumanist condition implicates us within the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Sixth Extinction – blurring boundaries between physical and digital in the context of ecological collapse or the challenges of the Anthropocene. Braidotti illustrates connected relationality in her use of the term ‘“we”-who-are-not-one-and-the-same-but-are-in-this-posthuman-convergence-together’. In her 2019 lecture ‘Posthuman Knowledge’ Braidotti offers a genealogy of Critical Posthumanities that critique the constitution of subjectivity; knowledge production and how we can respond through practice.
How can we think about belonging through posthumanism?
Dr Karen Gravett, Prof. Carol A. Taylor and Dr Nikki Fairchild explore mattering belonging in higher education. In their article, Pedagogies of mattering: re-conceptualising relational pedagogies in higher education, they explain the need for an ethically affirmative rethinking of belonging through a feminist posthuman lens.
In her talk, Posthumanism and Belonging, Dr Kay Sidebottom asked what can we learn from ‘more than human’ teachers and what might this mean for our understanding of ‘belonging’ in higher education. Kay disrupts traditional hierarchies and shares her resources on this padlet:
Dr.John Lupinacci and Dr Alison Happel-Parkins expand our ideas of de-centering the human to include what has typically been excluded or deemed ‘other’ as they encourage recognizing, respecting, and representing diversity as a form of difference and social justice. Posthumanism is indebted to indigenous epistemologies as it challenges hierarchies and dialectical binaries. Professor Robin Wall Kimmerer, member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, furthers ideas of belonging on her work on kinship (or kinning). Robin speaks of the intention and gratitude as a powerful sense of connection.
We are drawn to trauma informed educational as a compassionate praxis that supports sense of belonging. It offers an urgent response to collective traumas – pandemic, war and climate crisis – which are compounded by prior trauma histories for some staff and students within our educational communities. These might be racial, intergenerational, and adverse childhood experiences. When we speak of trauma, we refer to the definition by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), “an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”
Image: @Sharon Rosseels
Dr Janice Carello and Dr Phyllis Thompson explain that the aim of trauma informed education is to understand how trauma impacts us individually and collectively and to use that knowledge to address inequities that worsen trauma. It invites us to make a commitment to actively do no harm and enact compassionate strategies that nurture students in their learning journeys to respond to and prevent trauma.
This interview between the National Teaching & Learning Forum and Dr Mays Imad expands on the neuroscience and how this impacts on education:
Trauma is an individual experience with relational consequences. Dr Bessel van der Kolk discusses how trauma can lead to a persistent struggle to feel a sense of belonging. Trauma can be counterproductive to the relational formation of belonging as it damages trust and feelings of togetherness and can leave people feeling misunderstood. We can mitigate against these challenges by becoming trauma informed. This doesn’t require us to become mental health experts. As Dr Mays Imad attests, it’s about helping our students feel empowered, safe, connected and hopeful by centring our shared humanity.
Prof. Antonio Damasio writes that we are feeling beings that think, not thinking machines that feel. This can be likened to bell hooks vision of education as a communal space for healing. As Karen Costa reminds us, just one supportive, caring relationship can be transformational for a student.
You can read her reflective questions and ideas in the teaching checklist, hosted on OneHe:
An intentional focus on the wellbeing of staff must be included in conversations of practicing trauma informed education. This is just as essential as our interactions with students. As Dr Jan McArthur has noted, there is no social justice for students without social justice for staff. We need to build an ecology of support through policies and processes that enable educators to enact trauma informed care. To explore further, listen to this podcast on equity-centred trauma-informed education by Teaching In Higher Education with Alex Shevrin-Venet:
As caring relationships are integral to fostering belonging, we often turn to scholarship around pedagogies of care. Feminist scholars such as Dr Nel Noddings and Dr Carol Gilligan position care as an ethical obligation and ‘moral attitude’ underpinning education. It can be considered an approach to personal, social and political life based on the philosophical premise that being human is to care. Prof. Joan Tronto describes this as a ‘species activity’ for repairing the world. As such, education can be seen as playing a central role in the cultivation of a caring and just society.
As Dr Maha Bali and Dr Mia Zamora assert, we cannot and must not separate equity from care. To explore their concept of ‘socially just care’, we recommend reading The Equity-Care Matrix: Theory and Practice in the Italian Journal of Educational Technology.
Through a belonging lens, we gravitate towards Prof. Yusef Waghid’s critical conceptualisation of caring in Higher Education as an act of community. Shifting the notion of care away from deficit, hierarchical and paternalistic attitudes and roles, towards a reciprocal relational process in pedagogical interactions. He moves the conversation on from caring about and caring for to caring with. What he coins ‘rhythmic caring’. That of mutually enriching back-and-forth fluctuations, recognising our interdependence as both givers and receivers of care. This builds on Dr Nel Noddings concept of confirmational caring, which occurs within mutually trusting student teacher relationships that equally recognise one another’s achievements. We witness this in communities where people view others as having the ability to become. This mutuality in care for all staff and students in our institutions seems essential for cultures of belonging to grow and sustain.
The notion of care in Higher Education is without doubt sticky and complex. What kinds of personal relations and care are appropriate and achievable in Higher education? How should we model what it means to care, and give students opportunities to practice care? As Dr Nel Noddings highlights, it is challenging to know how to attend to calls for care without a set of principles or steps, but equally problematic to assume there is one way to care. Or indeed to suppose there is adequate support and capacity for caring relationships to be enacted.
Image: @Jana Knorr
Dr Maha Bali helpfully provides practical suggestions on pedagogies of care in this blog post:
Pedagogies of Care website by the authors of the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education book series from West Virginia University Press (collection editors Victoria Mondelli & Thomas J. Tobin), offers a wealth of open resources and strategies.
