How do School and Psychological Factors Relate to Students’ Sense of School Belonging in Ethnically Mixed Student Communities?

This thesis investigates the issue of the sense of school belonging experienced by adolescents from different ethnic backgrounds, starting with a systematic literature review on how the ethnic composition of a school and students' sense of acculturation relate to their feelings of belonging.

A review of seventeen relevant studies shows that students from an ethnic minority group are vulnerable to a lower sense of school belonging, but also there is a clear positive association between students' belonging and the number of students from the same ethnic background in the school.

Findings on how ethnic diversity related to belonging were more mixed, with some studies suggesting increased diversity removes differences across ethnic groups, but other evidence suggesting that greater diversity leads to a lower sense of belonging overall.

A second part of the review produced evidence pointing to if ethnic minority students have a higher acculturation to the native country culture and language, this may associated with higher school attachment and bonding. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.

The empirical paper then presents new, quantitative data collected in two ethnically-diverse inner-city secondary schools. Students answered self-report questionnaires about their sense of school belonging, perceptions of the school environment, academic motivation, and personal strengths and difficulties.

Results from regression analyses found no difference in sense of school belonging across native and non-native groups, nor across the majority and minority student groups.

In addition, a strong positive correlation was found between students' sense of school belonging and their perception of the school environment, as measured by the Index for Inclusion, and a negative relationship between psychological difficulties and belonging, particularly emotional symptoms.

Results are interpreted with reference to contact theory.

Implications for future research and for educational practice are discussed within a critical appraisal, along with rationale for the research design, and strengths and weaknesses of the thesis.