Eilidh Soussi, Lindsay Gibson and Holly Lumsden (School of Education)
Clare Brown and Robert Imbur (Student Learning Development)
In the School of Education we are keen to identify ways to support our students so they feel they matter. Unlike the more prevalent idea of belonging, where there is an expectation on students to ‘fit in’, mattering is about institutions and staff treating students as valued, respected, and heard just as they are – as Savickaite (2026) notes in a recent reflective #LTHE post. This is particularly important in Education, as we require our student teachers to extend feelings of mattering to the pupils they work with. How can we expect them to enact this in the school classroom if we don’t model it in the university classroom?
Starting with no destination
To help us think this through, we teamed up with Student Learning Development (SLD) colleagues working in induction & transitions and peer learning to discuss the issues we were facing. We met a number of times, setting a new date after each meeting to help keep the conversation going. In this time, we shared our thinking and chatted through possibilities. We did not set out with a clear path in mind, but our time together led to a pilot peer buddying programme which we started this year.
We wanted to share our work with colleagues at the Learning and Teaching conference, not just as a finished product but as a process. Knowing that student wellbeing concerns everyone, we encouraged academic and support staff to think about how a ‘mattering’ approach might be modelled in their own settings.
Our session
At our session, delegates (50 of them!) spoke student wellbeing issues including anxiety about speaking out in seminars, finding it difficult to make friends, and struggling to navigate group work. These were universal issues, not tied to a particular school or discipline. We invited delegates to explore solutions by constructing their ideal wellbeing-focused learning environments – out of Lego.
Everyone was encouraged to move around, help themselves to pieces from other tables, and discuss their thoughts at the same time. They were then asked to identify barriers staff may face when trying to model mattering principles in their classrooms and add representations of these to their models. While we were nervous beforehand that participants might be reluctant to engage with the creative modelling, the energy and engagement in the room were fantastic for the whole hour.
Moving around the room, chatting about the different models and the ideas and concerns behind them, we were struck by how ‘playing with Lego’ can spark new ways of thinking about problems. The way we each imagine our students, our classrooms, our pedagogies is not always easy to express in a traditional format. With Lego, we show our workings and our metaphorical understandings differently, which is brilliant for creative conversations.
Representations included:
• Leadership learning outdoors (barrier: large cohort size)
• Relational spaces (barrier: time and resource pressures)
• Group work (barrier: students lacking friends and social connections)
• Creative classrooms (barrier: students struggling with failure)
From a student’s perspective
As our starting point was student mattering and peer support, we invited second year education students who are keen to take part in this pilot buddying scheme to join our workshop. They circulated, watching, listening and talking with participants, gaining insight into staff perspectives. They were also able to share their own perspectives of challenges they faced to feeling they belonged or mattered. One of the students, Holly, shared her reasons for volunteering to buddy the new first years.
“I joined the buddying scheme because I would have liked to have had the reassurance from someone like me, with a health condition and/or a disability, that I could succeed on the course.
I’ve learned a lot through my own journey at university, especially in balancing studies alongside my health (and how to navigate that) and I’d really like to share that experience with someone else who might benefit and feel less isolated.
I think it can make a difference just seeing someone, for example with a health condition, successfully managing the course. That kind of visibility builds confidence and self-belief, and it shows that it is possible. If I can give someone that reassurance and motivation to keep going, then that’s exactly why I wanted to be part of this scheme.”
Holly’s insights display the features of mattering that we wish to develop further within initial teacher education, a caring and thoughtful demonstration of understanding and desire to help others feel that they matter.
This session made it clear to us that these barriers are being faced by colleagues across the university setting and not just the School of Education
What about your own setting?
Our parting invitation for those in the room was to think about how they could break down the barriers preventing them from creating their own real-life mattering-focused classrooms. It’s easy enough to break down the ones built in Lego bricks but so much harder in the current real-life HE context, yet creative, student-focused solutions are still possible. Practical take aways include:
Be observant: what are the challenges in your setting? Find like minded colleagues, attend sessions like these, network, be prepared to collaborate and adapt, remember you don’t need to have all the answers!
Figure 1 A mattering classroom with an ideas cannon, a crystal ball, perspective windows and diverse students
Figure 2 An outdoor learning environment to promote business students’ wellbeing and develop their leadership skills
References
Savickaitė, E. (2026, February 13). #LTHEchat 354: It is not just about belonging, it is also about mattering. LTHE Chat. https://lthechat.com/2026/02/13/lthechat-354-it-is-not-just-about-belonging-it-is-also-about-mattering/