Creating Welcoming Peer-Learning Environments
What makes a learning environment feel welcoming to all? When have you felt truly included in a class, group project, workshop, or other learning setting – and what were the qualities that helped you feel that way? Have you ever had a conversation with somebody else about their feelings of belonging in a learning setting?
Belonging is the feeling that the space (physical or virtual) is shared by you and every other person in that environment. We know that this feeling of belonging in students' experiences and outcomes in college. To break this down, a sense of belonging can mean
- Believing that other people value your presence in the environment
- Comfort in being yourself in the environment, without feeling you need to adjust significantly to match others’ expectations
- Seeing your own values and experiences reflected, at least to some degree, in the content of the learning materials, class discussion, and other course activities
- Knowing that others in the environment want to support you in doing your best
Your role as a student
Instructors set the stage, but students themselves also contribute to shaping the experiences of others in the classroom.
Whether you are in a formal leadership position (peer tutor, peer mentor, group leader, etc.) or are a participant (class member, project group member, etc.) in a learning space, your contribution matters. Your words and actions make a difference for your fellow students, and you serve as a model for others. The best way to develop your inclusive leadership skills is to reflect on and notice the assumptions you might make, and the actions that might follow. Consider, for example:
- We don’t all come into college with the same level of “insider knowledge” of how a university operates. The so-called – the set of unspoken rules that allows you to smoothly navigate a university system – is “hidden” because it’s not automatically visible to everybody in the community. For instance, a student with close relatives who have graduate degrees is likely to enter college already understanding how to work effectively with an advisor, how faculty office hours work, how to communicate their needs to instructors, and so forth. For other students who have not yet had that kind of exposure, it might take a while to figure these things out.
- We don’t all have access to the same set of resources or opportunities – and it’s . Imagine that a student in your study group says that they never encountered particular chemistry material in high school, to which another replies, “Really? You never studied this?” Comments like this one can contribute to the that many students experience. Another example: One student says that he is discouraged because he doesn’t have anything lined up for summer work, to which another replies, “Can’t your parents help you get an internship?” The question assumes that everybody has parents with means or connections to find this kind of opportunity. An alternative approach would be to engage with curiosity: What are you hoping to do? Who (whether at home or at Â鶹´«Ã½) might be able to help you explore possibilities?
- It’s easy to make assumptions that blame the individual, framing a problem as a deficit in the person rather than a result of external factors in the broader environment. A student who arrives late for a group project meeting, seems tired, and doesn’t participate much (easy to assume she is checked out) may have been sick, up late with a family crisis, or struggling with mental health challenges. Likewise, a student who seems behind in understanding class material (easy to assume they are either not smart enough or not working hard enough to do well) may be extremely bright and working very hard, but not have had exposure to the background material in high school.
- We often overlook the strengths others bring when those strengths are not the ones most highly valued in a given environment. It’s not just the person with the greatest technical expertise in a group who contributes value. In fact, can help teams function more effectively. The person who asks thoughtful questions that get the group to think, or who brings in alternative viewpoints that expand the group’s perspective – these individuals will benefit the group’s processes and outcomes in ways that can be hard to measure but which can improve a group’s outcomes significantly.
- Exclusion happens all around us. Paying attention to small interactions, such as who speaks and who or in physical space, can bring to the fore some of the hidden ways in which power and inclusion get distributed in everyday life. If you feel comfortable in a given space, simply recognizing that there may be others who feel less sense of belonging can help you become more aware of actions you can take to promote a welcoming feel.
- We may tend to give our attention to those who reflect traditional forms of authority, in terms of both their current roles and in their personal qualities (extraversion, for example, has traditionally been ). People who do not match expectations are often or . Consider: Do you notice that you tend to listen more when particular people speak? Why is that? Whose perspectives might you be missing out on?