Situating Belonging in Community Participation: Advancing a Framework for P12 Teacher Practice

• In Event: Roundtable Session 9
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Teacher education: Diversity, participation and motivation

Proposal

This conceptual research relates to the CIES 2023 theme of Social Justice and Inclusion and the need for education to enable an awareness of inter-being, togetherness, compassion, understanding, and a cooperative future in combating a social, economic, and political injustice. It also concerns a curricular need that improves learning and teaching in formal settings. In her CIES 2022 Presidential address, Monkman (2022) highlighted belonging in changing educational spaces by posing a series of questions: How well do we take into account how people, children, and adults make sense of their worlds their experience including their educational histories? How are they finding their own spaces? Do they feel like they're fitting in?
Her queries spurred further questions and exploration within a cycle of an ongoing design research project and curriculum development that guides P12 teachers’ ability to engage students in community participation (Author, 2018).

Belonging is a complex and ill-structured construct. As Bacon (2012) lamented, “We all seemingly understand it, but many of us struggle to describe it in words” (p. 5). The literature on belonging in education settings typically focuses on teaching and creating environments for belonging (e.g., Bjorklund Jr. et al. 2021; Goodenow & Grady, 1993; Lalas et al., 2019; Polat & Karabatak, 2022). However, there is a lack of scholarship and guidance to inform P12 teachers on how to teach about and facilitate experience with belonging in explicit and concrete ways that extend beyond the classroom walls. This presentation seeks to address this lack in the literature.

McMillan and Chavis, (1986) characterized belonging as a “feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (p. 9). Members gain a sense of identity and belonging through common interests and community (Pawar & Cox, 2004). Yet, it is not simply membership that generates community and a sense of belonging; it is the interactions and participation among the members in some kind of activity (Bacon, 2012; Wenger, 1998). Thus, belonging is situated in community participation.

As part of a multicycle design research project, a framework used by marketers and online community managers (Millington, 2012) was identified and adapted as a design solution to support P12 educators’ ability to design for and teach about community participation. The P12 Community Participation Framework integrates community types and definitions, goals of participation, unique behaviors that characterize participation within each type, and activities that connect to real-world community participation. The framework has been enhanced with explicit attention to belonging with connection to prosocial behaviors, actions that benefit others or build harmonious relationships (Bergin, 2020), and digital citizenship (Ribble, 2017) as concrete aspects that foster feelings of belonging and emphasize a positive physical and digital environment.

The P12 Community Participation Framework serves as a guide for teaching about and experiencing belonging. It adds purpose and concreteness to support classroom practice. The use of this framework has implications for curriculum development in teacher education and teacher professional development.

Author

• Dawn Hathaway, George Mason University