A Conceptual Model on the Impact of Mattering, Sense of Belonging, Engagement/Involvement, and Socio-Academic Integrative Experiences on Community College Students’ Intent to Persist

Abstract

Community colleges continue to experience high levels of student attrition and low degree/certificate completion rates. Given extant literature, there appears to be a need to reexamine how interactions between students and the institution, and students and institutional agents are taking place, with the aim of identifying institutional practices that deleteriously or positively impact degree completion and thus guide colleges to develop action plans to improve conditions for student success.This study examined how factors such as institutional commitment to students, mattering, sense of belonging, interactions with diverse peers, perceptions of the campus climate, engagement/involvement, socio-academic integrative experiences, and goal commitment collectively affected community college students' intent to persist to degree completion. The proposed model tested the tenability of seven propositions examining how the above constructs interact to influence intent to persist.The sample consisted of 2,088 multiply diverse community college students. The conceptual model was grounded on Astin's (1991) Input-Environment-Outcome model and was tested in the context of structural equation modeling. Multiple group invariance analyses for race/ethnicity were conducted. The conceptual model explained 28% of the variance on intent to persist for Asian students, 21% for White students, and 19% for Latino/a students.Results indicated that transition support from family/friends exerted the highest effect on intent to persist across all racial/ethnic groups, followed by engagement/involvement, perceptions of mattering, interactions with diverse peers, GPA, goal commitment, and socioacademic integrative experiences, albeit varying by group. This study was the first in the literature to empirically demonstrate a causal effect between institutional commitment to students and perceptions of mattering. Mattering, in turn, exerted a moderate to strong influence on engagement/involvement, socio-academic integrative experiences, sense of belonging, and indirectly on intent to persist. Evidence in support of an omnibus "student development and success" construct, as alluded to by Wolf-Wendel, et al. (2009) is also presented. Of import to these findings is that while this construct explained a significant proportion of the variance for engagement/involvement, belonging, mattering, and interactions with diverse peers, the individual factors exerted an independent effect on intent to persist. Implications for theory, research, and practice are also discussed.v Dedication To the institutional agents (instructors and counselors) who made a difference in my life.Thank you for making me feel like I mattered! vi Acknowledgements

Through the Eyes of Students

“…Believing in one's ability to successfully complete a particular course of action, though essential to persistence, does not in itself ensure persistence. What is also required is that students come to see themselves as a member of a community of faculty, staff, and other students who value their participation, that they matter and belong (Bean & Eaton, 2000;Bergen & Milem, 1999;Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt, 2005;Stebleton, Soria, Huesman, & Torres, 2014;Strayhorn, 2008Strayhorn, , 2012Tovar, 2013). The result is a bond, often expressed as a commitment, which serves to bind the individual to the group or community even when challenges arise (Tinto, 1987).…”

The Role of Faculty, Counselors, and Support Programs on Latino/a Community College Students’ Success and Intent to Persist

“…Having the support of family and friends, family and work responsibilities, and experiencing financial difficulties impact Latino/as' college attendance (Nora, 1990;Nora & Rendon, 1990). Experiencing a challenging transition to college negatively impact students' decisions to remain enrolled, albeit having institutional support may facilitate their adjustment (Tinto, 1993;Tovar, 2013).…”

Developing the Inclusive Course Design Tool: a tool to support staff reflection on their inclusive practice

“…The tool project team synthesised the findings and distilled them into the early drafts of the tool questions. The project team explored literature about intercultural education (Salkind, 2008;HEA, 2014;Advance HE, 2013;Sian, 2017), ethnicity and attainment (Cotton et al, 2013;Stevenson, 2012;Smith, 2018;Miller, 2016;Hoffmann et al, 2002) and students' sense of belonging (Ahn and Davis, 2019;Hausmann et al, 2007;Woodyat and Brooker, 2019;Tovar, 2013) to give context to the key issues. Then, literature relating to teaching excellence (Pickford, 2018;Palmer et al, 2014), cocreation of curricula (Bovill et al, 2016) inclusive feedback (Thomas and Jones, 2017;) placement practice (Jones et al, 2017) and institutional racism and microaggressions (Sue et al, 2007;Pilkington, 2013) was used to identify best practice.…”