Conference Agenda

This - the second of two linked symposia on school belonging - takes an ‘inside-out’ perspective, shining a light on the daily practices and expectations which represent the totality of school life. It will consider:

• How can we develop student identity and meaningful student-teacher relationships?

• What enables teachers’ sense of agency and belonging?

• What kinds of leadership build trust, agency and a sense of belonging?

The school-life experience of young people can shape their belief in themselves, and how they see the world around them. How students perceive their relationships with staff has a significant impact on whether young people feel a sense of belonging in school (Allen & Kern, 2019). Leaders are the mediating force whose actions shape the culture of an organisation (West, 2021), determining whose voices are heard and whose, overlooked. Where compassionate and caring leadership prevails, the internal world of the school, and the world beyond the school gates connect (Riley, 2022; Smylie et al, 2020).

Prompted by the respondent, participants will be invited to reflect on two presentations and through peer discussion seek responses to these questions examining the implications for their own policy and practice.

This presentation draws on studies that were not designed to investigate belonging but which, nevertheless, can contribute to our understanding of some of the invisible social constraints that may limit the best-intentioned efforts to increase a sense of belonging among all members of a school community. The first (Palmer & Louis, 2017) examined four schools that participated in a deep self-examination of their practices in order to increase cultural responsiveness. The second (Yeboah, 2018) interviewed recently retired African American teachers around the topic of professional inclusion (or exclusion) in schools in which they had worked. A third study (Bussman & Louis, 2021) looked at the role of equity coaches who worked with teachers on a voluntary basis to increase their instructional effectiveness with immigrant students and other students of color. The final research (Walls & Louis, 2023) used student investigators at the physical school plant, asking students to identify spaces where they felt they belonged or did not belong.

Looking across these studies, we can extract some observations about questions that are less often asked when schools, municipalities – or even countries – embark on an agenda to increase students’ inclusion and belonging.

First, we recognize that even in schools where belonging and inclusion are an explicit priority, adults will experience significant conflicts between promoting belonging among individual students (or groups) and maintaining the sense of orderliness that has been identified as central to student engagement and learning (Scheerens, 1990). These may be problematic for both principals and teachers in their respective roles. Additional recent research suggests that the balance between caring/belonging and orderliness/control may be viewed very differently in different cultural contexts (Su & Lee, 2023).

Second, teacher belonging and a sense of professional community, which affects their work in instructional innovation and in promoting classroom belonging, must be examined more deeply. A school may, in general, have a strong professional learning community that does not attend to the many isolated teachers that are found in schools (Penuel, et al., 2009). Which teachers—especially those who may be “different” from the traditional female/racial-ethnic majority - are on the margins, and how does this affect the way in which student experience belonging?

Third, how do factors that are less often considered, such as student experiences outside of those environments that are heavily controlled by adults (classrooms, lunchrooms, sports fields) affect their overall belonging and sense of efficacy.

In sum, the underlying research asks us to look beyond successes and failures in belonging to understand the ways in which subtle experiences of inclusion and exclusion are related to informal power relations that are inevitable in complex, contemporary social settings. It also requires us to examine our own cultural lenses, as well as those of teachers and students in order to strengthen our investigations of belonging and inclusion.

Students’ sense of belonging at school is foundational for positive academic engagement and behaviour. Yet, some groups of students—mostly those who have been historically minoritized or marginalised—feel that they do not belong in school because of how “people like them” are understood and represented within the local educational context. This can contribute to poorer academic outcomes among these groups of students.

For example, research suggests that teachers can have biased expectations towards certain groups of students, which can erode teacher-student relationships and reduce feelings of belonging among those groups of students. We investigate whether these processes can account for the higher levels of school absence and disciplinary sanctions among students from certain backgrounds in the UK (e.g., boys, those eligible for free school meals, those from Black Caribbean backgrounds). We briefly present two intervention studies that foster strong teacher-student relationships, finding that they reduce absence and disciplinary sanctions among certain groups of students, in part by boosting students’ sense of belonging.

The first study is a quasi-experimental longitudinal field study (N = 1347) that trialled a brief empathic mindset intervention with maths teachers (N = 19) in two secondary schools in England, examining its effect on students’ end of year behaviour records and perceptions of schooling. Overall, compared to students whose maths teachers were in a control condition, students whose teacher completed the intervention received significantly fewer exclusions across the school year. The intervention was most beneficial for boys: in the control condition, boys received around twice as many detentions and negative behaviour points as girls. This gender difference was eliminated in the intervention condition. We found that the intervention forestalled a drop-off in students’ feelings of school belonging, which in turn predicted fewer detentions.

In the second study, across two secondary schools in England (N = 2070), we used a newly developed diagnostic survey tool, in combination with qualitative analyses, to identify two specific psychological barriers that appeared to be contributing to the lower attendance and poorer behavioural records of Black students and students from low-income families. These were (a) perceptions that school is biased against, and that there are negative stereotypes about, certain groups of students; and (b) perceptions that teachers and students do not come from similar backgrounds. We then designed, implemented, and evaluated a bespoke intervention aimed at addressing these specific barriers and so improving student-teacher relationships (N = 1104). Despite being curtailed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the intervention improved the attendance of low-income students in one school (reducing the gap by 66%) and the behavioural records of Black students in the other school (reducing the gap by 86%), showing partial success.

These two studies show the importance of teacher-student connections to students’ sense of belonging at school, and how these social psychological processes can underpin positive engagement.