Centering Social, Self-Concept, Goal, and Resource Fit as Necessary for Student Belonging in Academic Settings

• In Event: How to Create Environments of Belonging for Students: New Perspectives on School Belonging Research

Abstract

A common theme across psychological research on belonging in school has been a focus on the social—on the quality of students’ connections to others in the school environment. In this talk, I argue that when a student indicates that they do or do not “feel like I belong at my school,” social connections are necessary but not sufficient to fully explain that experience. Extending Schmader and Sedikides’ State Authenticity as Fit to Environment model, I instead suggest that they are indicating whether they are experiencing a sense of state authenticity in school. This feeling—that they are able to think and act in alignment with their true, genuine, real self in their school environment, without experiencing psychological threat or friction— is argued to hinge on four factors: the degrees to which (a) teachers and other students accept, value, and include a student socially (social fit), (b) an academic setting’s structures and norms support and afford their personal goals and values (goal fit), (c) the school environment naturally activates or supports their connections to their most valued identities (self-concept fit), and (d) the school environment provides sufficient financial, nutritional, health, and safety resources to meet their needs in these domains (resource fit). In reviewing how students from historically under-researched backgrounds define belonging, I demonstrate both the divergence of their definitions from the traditional psychological focus on social connections alone, and the convergence of their definitions with the construct of state authenticity and its four fit antecedents. I therefore argue that shifting to a model of belonging centered on self-concept, resource, goal and social fit would provide an especially fruitful future for research on the subject.

Author

• Alexander S. Browman, College of the Holy Cross