Cultivating safe learning environments and affirming students’ strengths can offset their uncertainty about belonging and keep them engaged and enrolled.
Earlier in this guide, we shared Linda Nilson’s troubling observation that many students believe “they do not belong in this strange culture of higher education, and any poor or mediocre grades they get ‘prove’ it.”1 But what does belonging have to do with equity? What does it mean for students to believe that they belong? What factors influence their belonging? Why does belonging matter? And how can we as faculty influence students’ sense of belonging? This unit explores these questions, and more.
As Tracie Addy and colleagues point out, when faculty are asked to define inclusive teaching and describe what it looks like in practice, fostering a sense of belonging emerges as a key theme.2 Inclusion and belonging have become virtually inextricable. Belonging is the fundamental human need to be affiliated with and accepted by a group, the “desire for interpersonal attachments.”3 It is often traced back to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s theory of human motivation, in which Maslow isolates “belongingness” as one of our basic needs. In the 1990s, social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary suggested that “the desire to belong is a deeply rooted human motivation that, underpinned by our ancestral origins, permeates our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.”4 Maya Angelou expresses this sentiment and its universality as, “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” Knowing that belonging is a fundamental human (not just student) need helps explain why it has been linked to important outcomes like student retention and student learning.
Research has consistently shown that minoritized students are less likely to report feeling a sense of belonging, particularly when they are attending Predominantly White Institutions. In fact, the construct of college students’ sense of belonging was introduced in the 1990s, when scholars were examining the experiences of college students of color and seeking to understand why the retention and graduation rates for these students were lower than those of their White peers. Extensive research has been conducted ever since, deepening our understanding of what it means to belong and even generating types of belonging (description to follow).
Although several definitions have been articulated, college students’ sense of belonging generally refers to the feeling of acceptance and support that comes with knowing that one is part of a group. Terrell Strayhorn, a leading scholar of college student belonging, defines it as “a student’s perceived social support on campus, a feeling or sensation of connectedness, the experience of mattering or being cared about, accepted, respected, valued by, and important to the group (e.g., campus community) or others on campus (e.g., faculty, peers).”5 Human development and family studies scholars Annemarie Vaccaro and Barbara Newman sought to understand how students themselves define belonging and how these descriptions vary across students’ identities.6 Based on their analyses of two rounds of in-depth interviews, belonging entails being comfortable and fitting in for all students in the study. However, minoritized students indicated that for them, belonging also requires safety, respect, and the ability to be their authentic selves.
Two related terms—belonging uncertainty and group membership—help to clarify the impact of not feeling that one belongs. Belonging uncertainty describes the state in which individuals are uncertain of the quality of their social bonds. Gregory Walton and Geoffrey Cohen suggest that “in academic and professional settings, members of socially stigmatized groups are more uncertain of the quality of their social bonds and thus more sensitive to issues of social belonging.” They call this state belonging uncertainty and suggest that it contributes to racial disparities in achievement.7 This definition echoes some of the earliest studies of belonging, in which limited or lacking belongingness was identified as a key reason that students from minoritized groups left college without securing a degree. The term group membership, in turn, reminds us that for each social group, there are various (often invisible) rules at play that define the features and requirements for membership. Although learning how to navigate new norms is a common part of the transition to college for all students, minoritized students can experience far more than uncertainty about their belonging when they encounter social groups in college and are not accepted. They can feel like full impostors who will eventually be found out. Not only is this impostor syndrome mentally and physically taxing but it also robs the student of the sociocognitive bandwidth needed to be fully present in the course.
What does all of this information about student belonging have to do with us as faculty? Can we really help students overcome impostor syndrome? Thankfully, several recent studies have examined students’ sense of belonging in ways that relate to faculty and our teaching, offering a variety of practical ways for each of us to shape our courses and interactions with students to promote belonging. As with previous units, this one begins with a preview of the research, both in general and as it relates to teaching. It then provides strategies for cultivating course environments in which students feel that they belong, matter, and can thrive.