Race and Belonging in School: How Anticipated and Experienced Belonging Affect Choice, Persistence, and Performance

Abstract

Background/Context A sense of belonging in school is a complex construct that relies heavily on students’ perceptions of the educational environment, especially their relationships with other students. Some research suggests that a sense of belonging in school is important to all students. However, we argue that the nature and meaning of belonging in school is different for students targeted by negative racial stereotypes—such as African American, Latino/a, Native American, and some Asian American students. Our conceptual framework draws upon stigma and stereotype threat theory and, specifically, the concept of belonging uncertainty, to explore how concerns about belonging in academic contexts may have different meaning for—and thus differentially affect the academic outcomes of—White students compared with underrepresented racial and ethnic minority students. Purpose/Objective Although feelings of belonging are important to all students, there are reasons to believe that students from stigmatized racial and ethnic groups may have especially salient concerns about belonging in school because their social identities make them vulnerable to negative stereotyping and social identity threat. Three studies examined how college and middle school students’ feelings of belonging at school relate to their academic aspirations, motivation, and performance. Research Design One experiment (Study 1) and two longitudinal studies (Studies 2-3) examined the influence of belonging among students in different educational settings. Study 1 examined first year college students’ social representations of the kinds of students that comprised various majors on campus and their self-reported sense of belonging in those majors. Study 2 examined middle school students’ self-reported sense of belonging and how it related to their educational goals and efficacy. Study 3 examined college students’ belonging and its relationship to academic performance one year later. Setting The settings for the three studies varied. The setting for Study 1 was a large, urban, public university in a major Midwestern city that is racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse. The setting for Study 2 was Prince George's County, a predominantly African American, largely middle-class county near Washington, DC from which the student sample of middle school students was drawn. The setting for Study 3 was a large predominantly White “flagship” university located in a Midwest college town. Data Collection and Analysis Findings revealed that college students’ anticipated sense of belonging in various college majors was predicted by their social representations of the students that comprised those majors. Both White students and students of color anticipated more belonging in majors where they perceived their group to be represented. In Study 2, middle school students’ self-reported belonging in school predicted educational efficacy and ambitions of African American middle school students, but not of White students. Finally, in Study 3, self-reported feelings of belonging in the first weeks of college predicted second semester grades (from university transcripts) among stigmatized college students of color, but not White college students (Study 3). Taken together, we suggest a more nuanced understanding of belonging is essential to creating supportive schools for everyone.

The Relationship between Bicultural Identity Integration, Self-Esteem, Academic Resilience, Interaction Anxiousness, and School Belonging among University Students with Vocational Qualifications

“…Furthermore, students who majored in the Social Science discipline had significantly higher self-esteem and school belonging levels. This result supports the finding that students’ sense of self-esteem and school belonging is associated with their willingness to consider majoring in a discipline [ 70 ], yet it is contrary to the conclusion that there are no significant differences in the fields of self-esteem and school belonging among university students [ 71 ]. This result may be due to the type of university they are currently attending, which is well known for Social Science disciplines.…”

Does my professor think my ability can change? Students’ perceptions of their STEM professors’ mindset beliefs predict their psychological vulnerability, engagement, and performance in class.

“…Students self-reported their gender (0 = male, 1 = female) and race/ethnicity, which we then coded to denote underrepresented racial minority (URM) group membership (0 = White, East Asian, and Southeast Asian students; 1 = Black, Hispanic, Indian Subcontinent, Native American, Mixed race, Middle Eastern, and Other race students). Because previous research has found mean-level differences in students’ belonging and evaluative concerns in STEM settings based on their gender and race (e.g., Murphy & Zirkel, 2015; Rudolph & Conley, 2005), we coded and controlled for these factors in our analyses so that we could observe the effect of faculty mindset above and beyond these potential group differences.…”

“…To assess students’ anticipated psychological vulnerability in the professor’s class, we measured their anticipated feelings of belonging using five items adapted from Murphy and Zirkel (2015; e.g., “How much would you feel that you ‘fit in’ during this class?”; α = .88). We also measured their anticipated evaluative concerns using five items adapted from Wout, Murphy, and Steele (2010; e.g., “How much would you worry that you might say the wrong thing in class?”; α = .90).…”

“…Specifically, we predict that when students perceive that their professor endorses more fixed mindset beliefs, they may feel that they do not belong in the classroom (Murphy & Zirkel, 2015) and may experience greater evaluative concerns such as being afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing lest they risk being outed as one of the students who is not “naturally intelligent” (e.g., Frost, Heimberg, Holt, Mattia, & Neubauer, 1993). Students may also worry about being discovered as an imposter if they struggle with the material or are unable to answer questions in class (e.g., Clance & Imes, 1978).…”

Is diversity enough? Cross-race and cross-class interactions in college occur less often than expected, but benefit members of lower status groups when they occur.

“…In the present research, we examine two aspects of inclusion: Sense of belonging and social identity threat. While sense of belonging captures more diffuse feelings of inclusion, social identity threat captures the extent to which students feel that their particular social groups are accepted in their college environments (Locks et al, 2008;Murphy & Zirkel, 2015). We consequently hypothesize that Hypothesis 3: Cross-race interactions will improve students' academic performance (i.e., college GPA), and they will do so by increasing students' feelings of inclusion in their universities (i.e., increase sense of belonging and decrease social identity threat).…”