Symposium on Belonging and Teacher Practices – 15 may

Utrecht University’s Dynamics of Youth (communities Youth Education & Life Skills and Becoming Adults in a Changing World), together with Representing Europe are organizing a joint seminar to discuss belonging in education. Belonging has long been part of the education discourse of policymakers, educators, and researchers due to its key role in supporting academic and social wellbeing of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. During this symposium, we particularly explore the role of teacher practices and teacher education in fostering belonging in schools.

Below you will find the program and registration to attend the seminar on location.

Programme

19.15 Doors open

19.30 Welcome & introduction by Bjorn Wansink (Utrecht University)

19.35 Short presentation by Dynamics of Youth communities

19.40 Presentation by Zehra Çolak & Bjorn Wansink (Utrecht University): Relational and pedagogical practices of belonging among racialized minority youth in an urban secondary education school 

19.55 Presentation by Simone Polderdijk & Lotte Henrichs (Utrecht University): Warm and Demanding from an Interpersonal perspective: A Qualitative Synthesis of Culturally Responsive Teaching in Urban Classrooms

20.10 Coffee/tea break

20.30 Keynote talk by Melanie Acosta (Florida Atlantic University): “Motherwit”, Or The Praxis of Black Migrant Women Belonging: Wisdom For Teaching & Teacher Education in black and white

The responsiveness of Black Migrant women the world over signifies a living word energized and structured by ancestral memory. Following the intellectual tradition of African skywatchers, Melanie contours the constellation of Black Migrant Womens’ knowing in the Netherlands to offer a Black ontological platform for reasoning together about belonging that can color the black and white discourse of schooling.

21.00 Q&A  

21.30 Concluding remarks by Bjorn Wansink (Utrecht University)

You are very welcome to join us in the Academy Hall, in the Belle van Zuylenzaal (Achter de Dom 7, 3512 JE, Utrecht). Please register by filling out the online registration form.

More information about the other presentations of the symposium

Zehra Çolak & Bjorn Wansink 

Relational and pedagogical practices of belonging among racialized minority youth in an urban secondary education school 

Removing barriers to belonging of students from disadvantaged backgrounds has become a fundamental thread within education research and practice. However, dominant conceptualizations of belonging tend to view it as a uniform and universal experience that can be achieved rather than a situated practice shaped by factors such as race, class, and gender. This paper seeks to go beyond the static and binary logic of belonging vs not belonging by tracing relational and pedagogical practices of belonging from the perspective of racialized minority students in a pre-vocational secondary education school. In this presentation, we will share some preliminary results from our ongoing research and discuss their implications for teaching practices that have the potential to generate transformative possibilities in urban school contexts. 

Simone Polderdijk & Lotte Henrichs 

Warm and Demanding from an Interpersonal perspective: A Qualitative Synthesis of Culturally Responsive Teaching in Urban Classrooms

As a teacher in an urban classroom myself – characterized by high ethnic cultural diversity and lower ses backgrounds – I know how challenging it can be to feel responsible for students’ learning and therefore disapproving students’ misbehavior while maintaining a positive teacher-student relationship. In this presentation we will highlight the background, findings, and implications of our study: Warm and Demanding from an Interpersonal perspective: A Qualitative Synthesis of Culturally Responsive Teaching in Urban Classrooms. We have used the Interpersonal Circle-Teacher (IPC-T) to map the interpersonal behavior of 26 Warm Demanders who are described in nine different US based case studies. One of the articles that we have analyzed is the paper Becoming Warm Demanders: Perspectives and Practices of First Year Teachers of which Melanie Acosta was a co-author. The main result is that warm demanders show high levels of communion and agency during daily interactions and when talking about their relationship with students. But during daily interactions, their behavior was also frequently coded as low on communion (and high on agency). We are very interested in Melanie Acosta’s reflection on the implications of these findings for teacher education. And which thoughts arise when we sketch the diversity of students in urban classrooms in The Netherlands compared to urban classrooms in USA? What does this mean for the translation of warm and demanding teacher behavior to different cultural educational settings?