Session Outline

The development of supportive, humanising relationships is central to student engagement, and personal tutors play a critical role in enabling these connections. Within UK higher education, personal tutoring and academic advising models remain widely used as mechanisms for guiding and supporting students (Van Hooff & Westall, 2016). Yet, persistent challenges continue to shape how these systems are experienced by both staff and students. Research highlights uneven engagement from tutors, often linked to perceptions that pastoral or relational support sits outside the academic role, coupled with the difficulty of balancing research, teaching, and administrative responsibilities (Wilcox et al., 2005; Wingate, 2007).

Recent work by Wakelin (2023) reinforces these concerns, showing that personal tutoring is frequently experienced as unclear in purpose, inconsistent in delivery, and constrained by time pressures. For students, this often results in relationships with tutors that feel distant or transactional; many perceive tutors as too busy, uninterested, or inaccessible, and may feel guilty about seeking support (Stephen et al., 2008). Additionally, students may recognise that a personal tutor exists but remain uncertain about the type of support offered or the purpose of tutoring meetings (Yale, 2019). Such perceptions undermine tutoring’s potential to cultivate belonging and mattering - affective experiences strongly linked to retention, confidence, and academic success.

This workshop invites participants to examine their tutoring or advising practice through the lens of belonging and mattering. The session creates a structured and reflective space to explore how tutoring systems can help students feel known, expected, supported, and valued - four relational indicators associated with strong belonging.

The workshop is organised into four interactive components:

1. Why Belonging & Mattering Matter (15 minutes)

A brief interactive presentation highlights links between belonging, engagement, and retention, and discusses institutional challenges such as fragmentation, inconsistent roles, and transactional advising. Participants consider what tangible signs of belonging look like within their own context.

2. Identifying Gaps in Current Practice (20 minutes)

In small groups, participants create a “Belonging Map” of student touchpoints where tutors/advisors influence experience. They explore questions such as: Where do students fall through the cracks? What relational signals are missing? What actions matter most in the first 2 or 6 weeks?

3. Designing a Personal Action Plan (10 minutes)

Participants identify one change to their communication, one relational practice to adopt, and one structural improvement to explore within their team or institution. They also consider how they will evaluate whether students feel they matter.

4. Closing Reflection (5 minutes)

Participants complete the sentence: “I will help students feel they matter by…” to commit to a practical takeaway.

The workshop uses collaborative tools - including post-it notes, flipchart discussions, and shared digital capture - to support dialogue and enable institutional and cross-disciplinary learning.

By foregrounding relationality and drawing on contemporary research, this workshop aims to empower participants to strengthen their individual tutoring practice while contributing to more consistent, student-centred institutional approaches.

Learning Outcomes

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