What We're Learning About Learning: Belonging and Academic Success Part I

Season 4 Episode 1

Belonging and Academic Success Part I: What is it? Why Does it Matter?

Belonging is a concept that is getting a lot of attention across college campuses these days, perhaps due to the mental health crisis, the lingering effects of isolation and loneliness of the pandemic, the attack on and stripping away of DEI programming in many schools, the tension between inclusivity and free speech, and a renewed attention to seeing belongingness as a universal and fundamental human need.

In August 2022, we published an episode on belonging, featuring 13 faculty and staff who shared their pedagogical practices for welcoming students and cultivating belonging in their classrooms. Since that episode is our second most listened to episode, we decided to take a deeper dive into the emerging and longstanding literature that examines what belonging means and why it matters. So, in this first of two episodes on belonging and academic success, we explore several key questions. What is the relationship between belonging and academic success? Why does it matter? How can it be measured, and what threatens it?

: : Transcript

A sense of belonging to an academic community has been shown to be an important predictor of academic success (Moallem, 2013), and that, meanwhile, many students—particularly those from groups marginalized because of things like race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.—do feel excluded from learning spaces (see, for example, Tanner, 2013). This experience of exclusion can hamper academic performance (APA, 2006) in a process that can spiral out of control, through a “negative recursive cycle...where psychological threat and poor performance feed off one another, leading to ever-worsening performance” (Cohen et al., 2006). Beyond the purely academic, a sense of alienation or exclusion can even lead to negative health effects (Blascovich et al., 2001, Eisenberger et al., 2003).

Luckily, it’s also been found that efforts to increase marginalized students’ sense of social belonging or competence lead to increases in both academic success and well-being among those students (Walton & Cohen, 2011), and these benefits can last years (Cohen et al., 2009). Furthermore, techniques that help improve the academic performance of students in marginalized groups (e.g., active learning, regular opportunities to practice new skills, etc.) tend to benefit other students, too (Eddy & Hogan, 2014, Haak et al., 2011).

In this episode of What We’re Learning About Learning, you can expect to hear more about

• The literature that demonstrates that belonging and academic success are unequivocally correlated.
• How students’ sense of belonging varies across many dimensions such as race, class, first-generation status, and institutional context.
• What threatens belonging
• How to assess belonging

In the second episode of this two-parter, we'll dig into how thoughtful interventions, both in and out of the classroom, can be used to foster belonging. Throughout these two episodes you’ll hear from three Georgetown staff and faculty who share their knowledge, research, and insights about belonging and academic success. We'll intersperse these conversations with research findings from relevant academic literature to add more depth and context.

Bios

Featured in this episode:

• Susan Cheng, Senior Associate Dean for DEI in the School of Medicine, Associate Professor of Family Medicine and a Deputy TItle IX Coordinator
• Stephon Hamell, Advising Dean in Georgetown’s College of Arts and Sciences
• Yulia Chentsova Dutton, Associate Professor in the Psychology Department

Resources

• ​​Inclusive Pedagogy, Classroom Climate, and Mentoring Practices at Georgetown and their Correlation with Student Belonging and Academic Dispositions - CNDLS
• Pathways Proposal with Executive Summary
• Equity Summer Institute: Home. Equity Summer Institute.
• The Hub for Equity and Innovation in Higher Education.

Bibliography

Baumeister, R., Twenge, J., & Nuss, C. (2002). Effects of social exclusion on cognitive processes: Anticipated aloneness reduces intelligent thought. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 817-827.

Bentrim, E., & Henning, G.W. (Eds.). (2022). The impact of a sense of belonging in college: Implications for student persistence, retention, and success. Routledge.

Bindreiff, D. (2023). Belonging: How social connection can heal, empower, and educate kids. Corwin.

Brown, B. (2017). Braving the wilderness: The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone. Random House.

Carey, R. M., Stephens, N. M., Townsend, S. M., & Hamedani, M. G. (2022). 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. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 123(5), 889-908.

Chen, S., Binning, K. R., Manke, K. J., Brady, S. T., McGreevy, E. M., Betancur, L., Limeri, L. B., & Kaufmann, N. (2021). Am I a science person? A strong science identity bolsters minority students’ sense of belonging and performance in college. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(4), 593–606.

Eddy, S. L., & Hogan, K. A. (2017). Getting under the hood: How and for whom does increasing course structure work? CBE—Life Sciences Education, 13(3).

Edwards, J. D., Barthelemy, R. S., & Frey, R. F. (2022). Relationship between course-level social belonging (sense of belonging and belonging uncertainty) and academic performance in general chemistry 1. Journal of Chemical Education, 99(1), 71.

Gopalan, M., & Brady, S. (2019). College students’ sense of belonging: A national perspective. American Educational Research Association, 49(2).

Healy, M. (2020). The other side of belonging. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 39(2), 119-133.

Hoops, L. D., Green, M., Baker, A., & Hensley, L. C. (2016, February). Success in terms of belonging: An exploration of college student success stories. Paper presented at The Ohio State University Hayes Research Forum, Columbus, OH.

Johnson, E. (2020). Students' sense of belonging varies by identity, institution. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved April 20, 2023.

Kahu, E. R., Ashley, N., & Picton, C. (2022). Exploring the complexity of first-year student belonging in higher education: Familiarity, interpersonal, and academic belonging. Student Success, 13(2), 10-20.

Kirby, L.A.J., & Thomas, C. L. (2022). High-impact teaching practices foster a greater sense of belonging in the college classroom. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 46(3), 368-381.

Lancaster, C. (2020). A study of sense of belonging and its relationship with engagement, persistence, and intersectionality in Higher Education (Doctoral dissertation). [Eastern Michigan University].

Layous, K., Davis, E. M., Garcia, J., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Cook, J. E., & Cohen, G. L. (2017). Feeling left out, but affirmed: Protecting against the negative effects of low belonging in college. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 69, 227-231.

Lu, A. (2023, February 13). Everyone is talking about belonging: What does it really mean? Chronicle of Higher Education.

MacLeod, J., Yang, H. H., Shi, Y. (2019). Student-to-student connectedness in higher education: a systematic literature review. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 31, 426-448.

McQueen, C., Thelamour, B., & Daniel, D.K. (2023). The relationship between campus climate perceptions, anxiety, and academic competence for college women. College Student Affairs Journal, 41(1), 138-152.

Murphy, M., & Zirkel, S. (2015). Race and belonging in school: How anticipated and experienced belonging affect choice, persistence, and performance. Teachers College Record, 117(12), 1.

Nunn, L.M. (2021). College belonging: How first-year and first-generation students navigate campus life. Rutgers University Press.

Pedler, M. L., Willis, R., & Nieuwoudt, J. E. (2021). A sense of belonging at university: Student retention, motivation, and enjoyment. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 46(3), 397–408.

Renn, K. A. (2022). Forward. In E. M. Bentrim & G. W. Nenning (Eds.), The Impact of a Sense of Belonging in College: Implications for Student Persistence, Retention, and Success (pp. xiii-xv). Taylor and Francis.

Strayhorn, T. L. (2019). College students' sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students. Routledge.

Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2007). A question of belonging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1), 82-96.

Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2011). A brief social-belonging intervention improves academic and health outcomes of minority students. Science, 331(6023), 1447-1451.