Ford School hosts the Education Policy Speaker Series with Jamaal Sharif Matthews

About 100 students and faculty gathered in Weill Hall Monday afternoon to listen to Jamaal Sharif Matthews, an associate professor at the Marsal Family School of Education, discuss the importance of belonging in education. 

Nicole Wagner Lam, associate director of the Education Policy Initiative at the Public Policy School and organizer of the event, highlighted the relevance of discussing the topic at all education levels.

“Jamaal may be focusing on the feeling of belonging in the K-12 schools, but given that we are a university I think the topic of belonging is pertinent at the higher education level as well,” Lam said.

Matthews began by tracing the history of research on belonging, explaining how psychologists such as Carol Goodenow and Kathleen Grady,  have defined belongingness as the extent to which students feel accepted and supported by others. Matthews emphasized that belonging impacts students beyond K-12 education, extending into higher education and faculty experiences.

“It seems that every person in this room has personally felt the power that can come from belonging, but at the same time the suffering that can come from its absence,” Matthews said. “However, it could be because of this universal desire to belong that many times we often assume that belonging means the same thing for everyone, neglecting the potential for belonging to have a height of significance for students who have rarely had the opportunity to belong.”

He then discussed how critical race theory can be used to analyze the developmental patterns relating to a sense of belonging for racially marginalized youth.

“The first is critical race theory in education positions, and how race and racism as social constructs permeate all aspects of our institutions and systems in ways that perpetuate a socially unjust social order, or racially unjust social order,” Matthews said. “Our nation’s educational institutions, although they’re often framed as neutral or color evasive, they insidiously reproduce and maintain inequitable opportunity gaps for already marginalized people.”

Matthews also discussed the optimal distinctiveness theory, which describes the balance between wanting to feel a sense of belonging and wanting to feel unique. Matthews said the optimal distinctiveness theory can fluctuate between students from different backgrounds. 

“I used optimal distinctiveness theory, which underscores how a sense of belonging may entail more than students desire to just fit in or integrate into the dominant culture,” Matthews said. “But OET conveys this idea that youth seek an optimal balance between fitting in and standing out, so in other words, most people don’t simply just want to be like everyone else within their environment, but they want to balance that lightness with being seen and known for the things that make them uniquely individual.” 

Through research into the sense of belonging, Matthews discussed an important trend in school belonging research –– recognizing the social and cultural barriers that can hinder a sense of belonging for marginalized students. 

“When we peek underneath the hood of what this trend is really saying, it suggests that the solution to belonging concerns and the achievement disparities for marginalized students reside in adapting their thinking and social perceptions that emulate the psychology of their more privileged, and usually their more white peers,” Matthews said.

LSA senior Lauren Lier said in an interview with The Michigan Daily that she attended the speaker series event because she is interested in education policy.

“I believe that education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world, like Nelson Mandela said,” Lier said. “I’m here because I want to learn more about what I can do to uplift, empower and inspire our younger generation of scholars.”

In an interview with The Daily after the event, Matthews discussed his gratitude for the opportunity to share the belonging research and what he believes is the most important takeaway from the speaker series. 

“I really appreciate the opportunity to share some of the work that we’ve been engaging in over the last couple of years,” Matthews said. “I want people to understand that belonging can mean different things for different types of students, and it is an idea and a construct that is racially mediated and has been inequitably afforded.”

Daily Staff Reporter Halle Pratt can be reached at hallehap@umich.edu.

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