The adult education sector, particularly Higher Education, is currently facing a myriad of challenges, amongst them, a more competitive landscape for student recruitment (and retention). For many students that I speak to, critical to this is feeling a sense of belonging. This, in turn, has implications for both the satisfaction rates of students and potential repetitional damage (both individually and institutionally). The classroom should be regarded as the ‘front line’ of this effort given here is where learners interact with the institution most acutely. However, a key concern for most teachers relates to their perceived lack of preparedness for enacting an inclusive pedagogy in classrooms with diverse groups of learners (Black-Hawkins & Amrhein, 2014; Symeonidou, 2017). This is concerning given “trust in HE for mature students is intrinsically fragile and always revocable” (Boronski & Hassan, 2015).
