Building Belonging

This project comes from a deep love of the idea of creating cultures of belonging, originating from my own relationship with community, in which my life was saved by the loving generosity of the 12-step community. This connects to contemporary research on both the nature of, and need for, a sense of belonging to something bigger than oneself. This project begins with a review of current literature on the experience of belonging in the workplace, and the influence that feeling a sense of belonging within one’s organization has on well-being. It then goes into an exploration of current interventions that can be utilized to create cultures of belonging, most notably high-quality connection (HQC) building and appreciative inquiry. The remainder of the paper is a collection of suggestions for interventions and next steps to take when seeking to create a more comprehensive culture of belonging in the workplace. This work helps to drive deeper the importance of having organizational community and healthy interpersonal dynamics in the workplace. The broader implication is that belonging in the workplace is becoming more of a necessity for organizations, and this work helps to guide organizations on their first steps towards a more nourishing workplace community and a culture of belonging

Building Belonging Into the System

This design case documents how a K-12 district took steps to systemically support virtual student wellness and belonging. Plans for course design to support social-emotional-academic learning (SEAL) competencies, increase perception of belonging, and create safe, predictable learning environments characteristic of a trauma-informed approach to teaching and learning are shared. The assumption virtual learners are not looking to experience belonging and cannot be successful unless they already have strong SEAL skills is challenged. Rather, the positioning of SEAL competencies as learning objectives rather than necessary prerequisites to access online learning proved to contribute to more equitable learning opportunities

Incarceration, Relationships, and Belonging: Insights into the Experiences of Two Male Youth Recently Released from Custody Facilities

This paper explores the family, school, and community experiences of two male youth who had recently been released from custody facilities and how these experiences contributed to their sense of belonging and self-esteem. Addressing the limited literature on self-esteem and belonging of young men who had been incarcerated, the exploratory study considers key themes of trust, family, friendships, and perceptions of belonging and self-esteem which emerge from interviews and guided journal writing sessions. A key finding is that alternative literacy programs, such as journal writing, provide mechanisms to engage young men in building their self-esteem and sense of belonging. The paper concludes with recommendations for teachers, community program facilitators, and social workers to support marginalized youth after having been released from incarceration as they re-enter family and community life

‘Without occupation you don't exist’: Occupational engagement and mental illness

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.This phenomenological study explores the meanings of work for people living with severe and enduring mental health conditions. The participants were three women and seven men who were attending a mental health day centre. Data were collected through up to three depth interviews with each participant over 18 months. The interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed according to phenomenological principles. Two overarching themes were identified. Building and maintaining an occupational identity expressed the ways in which participants used occupations as the building blocks of an evolving identity. Most of the participants wanted to work, and participation in occupations was seen as essential to recovery from mental ill-health. Work and other ways of belonging encapsulated the need to feel connected to others. Many of the participants envisaged working as a way of achieving this. The longitudinal nature of the study facilitated engagement with the developing narratives and exploration of the changes and consistencies in the participants' meaning making about their occupations. Implications for understanding individuals' occupational participation which enhances a sense of self and promotes feelings of belonging are identified

The well at Musov - technical and technological aspects of the construction project dating to the beginning of the common era

Archaeological excavation at the site Musov - Neurissen conducted between 1993 and 1994 revealed a well belonging to the building with the apse. Both archaeological features were part of the Roman military camp from the Augustan era. The well remained unfinished, however its dimensions (10 x 10 Roman feet (2.96 x 2.96 m) and expected depth of up to approximately 16 m) suggest that this location was chosen intentionally for a realisation of a demanding construction project

Kundera and Ionesco on the Unmistakable Awareness of Being Minor

Deleuze and Guattari’s 1975 text, Kafka, pour une littérature mineure, posited a theory concerning some groups of literary texts including those of Franz Kafka. Their theory was nevertheless highly connected to their own historical and geographical context in France, and much less so with that of Kafka who had himself previously attempted to theorize small literatures. By looking at the context of Kafka and of two other writers who might be considered as belonging to minor literary contexts, I argue that theorists of minor literature tend to view minor literature in a positive way when their own cultural context is further from nation-state building. On the other hand, those writers who are writing from inside nation-building contexts tend to emphasize minor literature’s limits on literary production. Interestingly, Milan Kundera and Eugene Ionesco who had first-hand experience of nation-building contexts, but then moved to France and wrote in French, take more nuanced views of minor literatures as they are further removed in time and space from their original minor contexts

Operator ordering for generally covariant systems

The constraint operators belonging to a generally covariant system are found out within the framework of the BRST formalism. The result embraces quadratic Hamiltonian constraints whose potential can be factorized as a never null function times a gauge invariant function. The building of the inner product between physical states is analyzed for systems featuring either intrinsic or extrinsic time.Comment: 4 pages. Talk given at the Third Conference on "Constrained Dynamics and Quantum Gravity" held in Sardinia (Italy), September 1999. Journal reference:Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl.) 88 (2000) 322-32