What promotes adolescents’ sense of school belonging? Students and teachers’ convergent and divergent views

Abstract

In this study, which endeavored to identify school climate factors and their influence on adolescent students' feelings of school belonging, it became evident that a new conceptualization thereof is needed. Quantitative data from 443 male and female 11 th graders and 264 of their teachers and qualitative data from 16 students and eight of their teachers in Al Ain public school district were collected. The findings revealed that adolescents perceived parental involvement, classroom practices, teacher-student relationships, safety and school social practices, and peer relationships in novel and different ways to their teachers. Various factors including parental involvement, teacher-student relationships, and classroom practices were viewed as unimportant in promoting student belonging. The adolescents appeared to be more concerned with safety and school social life and peer relationships. The findings are significant for policymakers and practitioners in their quest to improve the educational experiences of adolescent students and facilitate their psychosocial development.

How the Bronfenbrenner Bio-ecological System Theory Explains the Development of Students’ Sense of Belonging to School?

“…This could be attributed to the different ways early adolescents and later adolescents reacted to socialization due to a variety of factors, including developmental changes (Krishnan, 2010). However, El Zaatari and Ibrahim (2021) as well showed that there is no statistically significant difference in the sense of belonging between boys and girls in Grade 11. Sánchez et al (2005) also saw no significant differences in the sense of belonging between boys and girls in Grade 12, a result that contradicts findings based on middle-school students’ performance.…”

“…For example, when an education system aims to achieve internationally competitive educational outcomes by ranking among the top countries in international exams, the national and local education policies within the school exosystem will apply an exam-oriented approach that could affect the school microsystem's practices, curriculum, teaching strategies, and the student evaluation system. Such changes appear to influence the overall school climate and would indirectly impact the development of school belonging (El Zaatari & Ibrahim, 2021).…”

“…Several studies have shown that feeling safe at school contributes to a sense of belonging. For example, Allen and Bowles (2012); El Zaatari and Ibrahim (2021); Koyuncu (2021) noted that safety was one of the main measures of school belonging. Henry et al (2021) as well highlighted the importance of not only physical but also emotional safety in the development of belonging.…”

“…After reviewing the literature, we believe that an effective learning environment, teacher-student relationships, safety at school, extracurricular activities, peer interactions, and parental involvement are the most important school climate factors that influence students’ development of school belonging. This review follows the research of El Zaatari and Ibrahim (2021) in identifying parental involvement as parent-school relationships that are built in the mesosystem and parent-student relationships that exist in the home microsystem. Even though the two types of parental involvement are present outside the school microsystem, the researchers still considered parental involvement as one school climate factor, in accordance with Faour (2012) and Smith (2015), who believe that parental involvement is a constituent of the school climate.…”

“…However, in both studies, the participants believed that high-stakes testing did not improve the teaching and learning process. El Zaatari and Ibrahim (2021) indicated that frequent exams and school curricula were the main reasons behind students’ reluctance to go to school and lack the feeling of belonging to a school. Cohen and Viola (2022) clarified that “pedagogy and the curriculum have their main influence not directly, but rather by contributing to a broader ‘academic sphere’, within which students do or do not develop a sense of belonging” (p. 6).…”