Improving Student Belonging and Success Through Co-Created, Decolonized Pedagogies and Anti-Racist Practice

For decades, the higher education sector has failed to address differential outcomes for students from racialized backgrounds, such as poor retention and the awarding gap. At the same time, there continues to be challenges for students of any background in developing a sense of belonging at university and feeling connected to the institution, their peers and curriculum. Collectively, these issues can negatively impact retention, achievement, and well-being for all students, irrespective of race. This thesis sets out how using a co-created pedagogic approach to learning and teaching, through a decolonized and anti-racist lens, can improve both success and belonging for all students. The research was undertaken over a four-year life cycle to investigate the long-term outcomes of such work, using mixed methods to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from students. The research design involved two phases: phase one comprised the design and implementation of the co-creation interventions and phase two, evaluation of the interventions and how both impacted student attainment and sense of belonging. The interventions set out to improve outcomes not only for students involved in the interventions, but also the wider student community. Findings presented in this thesis reveal there are causal mechanisms supporting raised student attainment and student sense of belonging as a consequence of the co-creation interventions. Based on my findings, I argue that co-creation is a causal mechanism which can support student success and belonging. However, encapsulated within co-creation to build belonging and support student attainment, there must be safe spaces, coaching, respect, intersectional understandings, friendships, positive relationships with staff and role modelling, anti-racist theory, a decolonized curriculum, and teaching with love, which are causal mechanisms or active ingredients. As such, I argue that there is a relationship between co-creation and both anti-racism and decolonization which, all together, has the potential to raise student attainment and foster a sense of belonging.