Small Steps, Big Impact Episode 8 – Sense of Belonging
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Our guests today are Dr. Beverly Faircloth, Associate Professor of Teacher Education, and Dr. Laura Gonzalez, Associate Professor of Higher Education, both within the Department of Teacher Education & Higher Education here at UNCG. Our conversation today focuses on the importance of understanding a sense of belonging for our students navigating Higher Education environments.
Link to full transcript here.
Music, A Short Walk, from Zapsplat.com
Quote from the Episode
Not just saying “thou shalt belong.” I think it’s more of letting them come into the space and rearrange the furniture a little bit.
About our Guests
Dr. Laura M. Gonzalez
Laura M. Gonzalez is a faculty member in the School of Education at UNCG. While she currently teaches in the Higher Education program, her degrees are in Women’s Studies, College Counseling and Student Development, and Counselor Education. Thus, her work focuses on supporting positive and inclusive human development within educational settings. In particular, Dr. Gonzalez’s research revolves around supporting postsecondary access for students from Latinx immigrant families.
Dr. Beverly S. Faircloth
Beverly S. Faircloth is an associate professor of Educational Psychology at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Her research interests address the ways that adolescents’ (particularly marginalized youth) identities, cultures, communities, and voices can be used to allow them to leverage a sense of “rightful presence” in their various contexts. In The Belonging Project, she has formed research practice partnerships with teachers, community leaders and adolescents at diverse, high-poverty, high-needs middle/high schools and communities for fifteen years. To accomplish this, partnerships have harnessed models such as ethnic studies, counternarratives, critical consciousness, making present practices, and other strategies that center the voices of youth and their communities to dismantle barriers to belonging.
Resources from the Episode
Resisting Barriers to Belonging: Conceptual Critique & Critical Applications (Book) – also available as a UNCG eBook (requires UNCG credentials to access)
The Right to Belonging: A Critical Stance
Faircloth, B. (2021). The Right to Belonging: A Critical Stance. In Faircloth, B., Gonzalez, L. &
Legal Status and Belonging: Critical Humanist Perspective.
Campus Spaces and Organizations mentioned in the podcast include:
