College Sense of Belonging Support Typology for Low-Income Students

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 3:35 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Supporting Low-Income and First-Generation Students (Table 4)

Abstract

Low-income students comprise a growing share of college-goers and face several factors that can thwart their college sense of belonging and, as a consequence, their success and retention. Several unique factors affect their college belonging including classism, navigating unfamiliar campus environments, cultural and social alienation, and support processes that privilege middle/upper-class norms and expectations. Educators have a responsibility to aid low-income students in navigating resources to promote their sense of belonging and need empirically-informed tools to guide their understanding and support of low-income students’ sense of belonging. Extending Nunn’s (2021) idea of multidimensional belonging, this paper proposes an emergent, data-informed sense of belonging support typology to aid scholars and practitioners in better understanding and supporting low-income student success.

Authors

• Joseph Kitchen, University of Southern California

• Ronald Hallett, University of Southern California

• Lauren N. Irwin, University of Tennessee