A Sense of Belonging From an Educational Cultural Perspective – A Review of Research

Abstract

Students who come to study in the UK from abroad try to adjust to the British educational culture where teaching and learning currently takes place. In the language classroom, teachers also bring and influence their mother tongue language educational culture and their teaching pedagogy to their students. This paper begins how group concepts are viewed by the individualist and collectivist cultures and provides some background knowledge of educational culture. Then, the first part of this article explores what a sense of belonging means and the difference between a sense of belonging and relatedness. It also considers a sense of belonging from individualist and collectivist cultural perspectives. The latter part of the paper aims to answer the question 'Is there any other benefits accompanying a sense of belonging?' The review is based on over 50 studies. Various positive constructs are collected, which becomes evidence that sense of belonging has many benefits. Taking account of educational culture of both language teachers and their students in a classroom, the paper concludes on the recommendations regarding how language teaching practitioners can produce or promote a sense of belonging considering their educational cultural background where they were brought up and the place where they are currently teach.