Teachers and Peers Contribute to Children’s Sense of Belonging With Diverse Socioeconomic and Ethnic Backgrounds

• In Event: Factors Shaping Participation and Outcomes of Participation From Childhood Through Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate how peers and teachers contribute to children’s sense of classroom belonging, with a focus on sociodemographic diversity. Two crucial aspects of citizenship are feeling like a community member and accepting others in a community. In childhood, the elementary classroom serves as one of the first formal communities; it is one of children’s major lived contexts. Classroom belonging can thus be seen as an early experience of citizenship, and granting peers the opportunity for this feeling of belonging can be seen as an act of citizenship. This way, the children are participating members of a social community beyond their formal membership as students of a classroom. A sense of belonging can also contribute to further civic participation in school. However, children from societally minoritized ethnic/racial backgrounds and low-socioeconomic status families are more often excluded and experience less belonging to communities.
This multi-informant, longitudinal study investigated whether teachers and peers can mitigate this risk, to disentangle how everyday social dynamics in the classroom can contribute to civic development in late elementary education. Data was collected in 66 Dutch school classes across 3 waves (Grades 4, 5, and 6; 1434 students). Longitudinal moderated mediation models were used to analyze the effects of peer-perceived teacher liking and disliking (T1) on classroom belonging (T3) via peer preference and popularity (i.e., to what extent children are accepted by classmates and to what extent children are perceived as popular by classmates) (T2), with moderation by ethnic background and socioeconomic status.
First, moderated mediation analyses with peer preference showed that more peer-perceived teacher liking and less teacher disliking predicted a stronger sense of classroom belonging through higher peer preference. Specifically for children with a higher socioeconomic status, the positive effect of teacher liking on belonging through preference was insignificant. Second, an indirect positive effect of teacher liking on classroom belonging through peer popularity was found, but only for children with few same-ethnic peers and a non-Dutch family background. This indicates that these children might need their teacher’s liking more to become popular, which helps them to feel at home in their classroom. Also, peer-perceived teacher disliking had an indirect positive effect on classroom belonging through increased popularity. This indicates that also through negative attention from the teacher, children gained popularity and experienced in turn a higher sense of belonging.
In conclusion, teachers can, via children’s classmates, contribute to children’s sense of belonging. Teachers can support this process through peer perceived teacher liking (fostering preference) and peer-perceived teacher disliking (fostering popularity). This also means that in social dynamics between classmates, enacting citizenship (accepting others in the classroom) and experiencing citizenship (belonging to the classroom) go in tandem. For some specific sociodemographic subgroups however, teachers seem to have additional or less impact. These results provide insights for teachers into how their interpersonal relationships affect aspects of citizenship development through the social dynamics of the classroom.

Authors

• Minke A. Krijnen, Leiden University

• Björn Wansink, Utrecht University

• Allison M. Ryan, University of Michigan

• Yvonne H. M. van den Berg, Radboud University Nijmegen

• Lian Van Vemde, Utrecht University

• Tim Mainhard, Leiden University