Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Belonging in Middle School Math Classrooms

• In Event: Family Background and Children's Educational Outcomes

Abstract

A substantial body of literature considers how sense of belonging at school varies among students, but substantially less work has explored belonging in classrooms, the contexts, where most educational interactions occur. We explore how students’ sense of belonging in mathematics classrooms relates to their general sense of belonging in school, prior exposures to classmates, and prior success in math. Using survey data from almost 1,800 students in a Midwestern school district, we find that general sense of belonging in school and prior math achievement are important determinants of classroom belonging. Net of these measures, economically-disadvantaged students have greater math belonging. We find surprisingly modest and nonsignificant conditional differences by race and gender, and no evidence of neighborhood effects.

Authors

• Jacob Wertz, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Eric Grodsky, University of Wisconsin

• Katie Eklund

• Elizabeth Vaade, Madison Metropolitan School District

• Patti Schaefer