Ya'at'eeh: Race-Reimaging Sense of Belonging Among Indigenous Community College Students to Predict Academic Outcomes

• In Event: 47.028 - Diverse Perspectives on Social Justice Inquiry in Education and Psychology

Abstract

For decades, students’ sense of belonging has been conceptualized through colonial perspectives, assuming students are to assimilate to educational institutions in order to belong. To challenge these perspectives, we race-reimaged the construct of sense of belonging (DeCuir-Gunby & Schutz, 2014) in an investigation of Indigenous students (n = 887) from 156 U.S. community colleges in a secondary dataset. We used multilevel modeling to assess the influence of a Native-specific sense of belonging, operationalized through the peoplehood framework, on a range of student outcomes. Our findings suggest that both traditional conceptualizations of sense of belonging (close teacher-student relationships) and Native-specific constructions via relationships to community, family support, and collective identity were salient predictors even when controlling for student background variables.

Authors

• Carlton J. Fong, Texas State University

• Adam Alejandro, Texas State University

• Megan Krou, Texas State University

• John Segovia, Texas State University

• Karen Johnston-Ashton, Texas State University