Building a Community of Sessional Teachers: A Workshop on Mattering, Integration, and Justice

This workshop, offered by the Capacity Building SIG, explored practical ways to develop effective and inclusive communities for sessional teaching staff through the framework of Mattering, Integration, and Justice (MIJ; Plumb & Di Benedetti, 2025). Drawing on a professional development model from the University of Sheffield, participants actively reflected on the distinct challenges and opportunities that sessional teachers, such as Teaching Assistants (TAs), face in tutorials, seminars, labs, and other small-group teaching contexts. Recognising that understandings of MIJ principles may differ across cultural and institutional contexts, the session invited a diversity of perspectives that enriched collective learning. Through structured activities and collaborative dialogue, participants explored how the MIJ principles can be embedded in practice, identifying strategies that promote recognition, inclusion, and institutional support. The session closed with individual and group reflection on how to translate ideas into context-specific action. Attendees left with a set of practical, principled next steps to advance support for sessional teachers in engineering education.