Textbook in PDF format

Our goal for this book is to celebrate, promote and provide a critique of belonging in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) higher education. We offer 17 chapters, a compilation of theoretically grounded empirical research, conceptual analysis and case study contributions, to explore what is unique about STEM educational environments. Leading scholars, teachers, practitioners and students explore belonging and identity in STEM fields, and how these are impacted by wider sector and disciplinary changes and by the post Covid-19 pandemic higher education context. The book explores the role of STEM pedagogies in facilitating belonging, variable impacts across student characteristics, and the particular experiences STEM students face in their higher education studies. Three parts explore the notion of belonging (and what it is not to belong), address the role of student identities in supporting and challenging belonging, and present evidence-based findings on how belonging and inclusive excellence can be supported in STEM fields. The book is grounded in offering examples from research to apply in practice for teachers, academics, students and those leading and supporting STEM higher education
Introduction
Part I: What is, and is not, belonging?
STEM ways of thinking: belonging and identity
Hospitality and belonging: insiders and outsiders in STEM higher education
Belonging and engaging for successful transition to university
Is belonging always positive? Cultivating alternative and oppositional belonging at university
Inclusive excellence in STEM higher education
Part II: Identities and belonging in STEM
Understanding the sense of belonging and social identity among STEM students during the Covid-19 pandemic
Inside(r) out(sider): building belonging and identity in the non-disciplinary classroom
Barriers to belonging for racially minoritised students in STEM higher education
Stereotypes and their influence on belonging in UK physics
An intersectional lens on the formation of STEM identity: beyond gender
Higher education teachers’ identity development and sense of belonging
Part III: Supporting belonging and alternative ways of engaging
Active learning and Japanese students’ belonging in mathematics, physics and chemistry
Belonging in the ecotone: a case study from a STEM higher education context
Can science be inclusive? Belonging and identity when you are disabled, chronically ill or neurodivergent
Exploring students’ sense of belonging to engineering in authentic interdisciplinary project-based teamwork
How to meet students’ need for belonging during undergraduate research engagement: a case study within medicine
Fostering belonging through student–staff research partnerships