Author: Phil Banks
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The Song of Belonging.
Ever since I can remember, I have loved music. That’s not unusual, we all have a deep, primal connection with sound and rhythm. It’s in our DNA, our neural systems are wired for sound. The music we like however, and the music that we don’t is more inspired by our history and experiences than our…
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Belonging and the new Ofsted Framework.
As I am sure you will be aware by now, the UK Ofsted Inspectorate have been working on a new framework for some time now, well possibly not enough time for their own staff to feel that it is well researched and steeped in evidence based practice, but certainly long enough for a couple of…
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The Language of Belonging
In my last blog, I talked about using a language of Love over Respect and Tolerance. Since then, I have been reflecting on the language of belonging in a more general sense. In schools, and life, every interaction we have, and the language we use to frame that interaction, has an impact on our feeling…
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Why I’m no longer talking about Respect (or Tolerance.)
The value of Respect is one that you will find across cultures, across institutions and across countries. The United Nations identified it as one of the top 10 values shared across cultures and Gocke (2021) identified it as fifth in the core values necessary in education, as identified by future educators. But why? What does…
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Belonging as the Key Agent in Social Justice.
Last week, The Times ran a particularly interesting article on student belonging at Edinburgh University. The article, linked here, reports that the university has written to all of their students asking them not to ridicule their peers that may have come to University from poorer backgrounds. Their more privileged students, who are in the majority,…
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The Dark Side of Belonging
Helping students to find their sense of belonging is not all about test scores and performance outcomes. It is proven to impact these, as outlined in my previous blog The Belonging Bonus, but this should not be the reason for our focus. If belonging is something that we all seek, (Maslow 1943) and we don’t…
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Belonging and Cognitive Load Theory.
When I first started this blog page, I had a great response from the brilliant Aimee Tinkler asking how I thought belonging might affect the learners brain in the classroom and whether developing a strong sense of belonging in our students might release additional mental capacity for learning? This is a great question, and one…
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My Best Bets for Belonging .
As the new term begins, it is vital that we get off on the right foot, making sure that from day one, all of our students, old and new, feel a connection with us that will activate their sense of belonging. By doing this, we can make sure that our schools are a positive environment…
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Taking the pulse of belonging.
Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it. H. James Harrington. Having established in my blog, The Belonging Bonus that increased sense of…
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Why seems a great place to start.
Simon Sinek said ‘Start with the Why.’ so here we go. Why Belonging, why The Belonging Collective, Why a blog? All very good and valid questions. It seems that Belonging is on every presentation I attend currently, whether it is on behaviour, attendance, educational engagement or special educational needs. In one of her final speeches…
The Belonging Collective 