by Thomas Tucker
Belonging has always been at the forefront of my thinking as an educator and parent. However, the approach I took to creating a sense of belonging in my classroom may have been missing the intention needed to ensure students felt they belonged.
In the summer of 2025, I spent seven days in Lisbon, Portugal, completing the PTC course Leading for DEIJB. During that deep dive, I began thinking specifically about belonging in my own context. It led me to ask:
• Are we more in touch with students’ sense of belonging when they are more visibly different (race, nationality, language, etc.) than the majority?
• Do we assume a sense of belonging among students who speak the common language in our local context or share similar nationalities or backgrounds?
• Do we really know whether our students feel a sense of belonging? If so, how do we know? If not, how can we find out more?
This experience motivated me to develop a plan to collect and analyse student belonging data so we could take intentional action to increase our students’ sense of belonging.
To look effectively at the level of belonging our students feel at school, we first need to take a closer look at what belonging is, why it matters, how we know whether students feel they belong, and what actions we can take to ensure they do.
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐁𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠?
How central a theme is belonging in guiding educational practices in international schools? To explore this, I asked ChatGPT to analyse the guiding statements of 45 leading international schools across Asia. The prompt focused on schools that explicitly mention or allude to belonging — through community, inclusion, relationships or connection, being valued or known, and care — in their guiding statements. According to ChatGPT’s analysis, 100 per cent of the schools analysed communicate belonging through the language of their guiding statements, with 60 per cent explicitly mentioning the term belonging.
But what do we mean when we say belonging? A commonly accepted definition found in research is “the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others in the school social environment” (Goodenow, 1993, p. 60). While this remains the foundation of what we consider belonging, the definition has expanded to include physical and psychological safety as well as a focus on student and teacher relationships.
𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐁𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬
The idea that students benefit from a strong sense of belonging is rarely, if ever, debated among teachers in the corridors or staff room. However, it often feels as though the job descriptions of teachers and educational leaders continue to expand. Increased expectations, paired with continued pressure for students to achieve high academic results, can exacerbate the ever-present feeling of “never enough time”.Under such pressure, it is all too easy to focus on academic outcomes and achievement, with anything else feeling like an add-on. However, when we look at what the research says about the benefits of students feeling a sense of belonging at school, we realise that belonging may be the foundation that everything else rests upon.
In a comprehensive review of research on school belonging, Kelly-Ann Allen and Shiqi Dong found that students who feel they belong at school tend to experience:
• Improved academic achievement
• Greater academic motivation
• Greater engagement
• Better mental health and wellbeing
• Greater life satisfaction and wellbeing
• Better adjustment to school
• Reduced anxiety, loneliness and depression
• Reduced bullying
• Reduced behavioural challenges
• Reduced absenteeism and dropout
• Reduced participation in risky behaviour
The authors cautioned that we should view this as a correlational relationship between belonging and the benefits outlined above. If you would like to see specific correlation figures on the benefits of school belonging, I recommend reading The Relationships Between School Belonging and Students’ Motivational, Social-Emotional, Behavioural, and Academic Outcomes by Korpershoek et al. (2020).
𝐁𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧
It is clear that there are benefits associated with students having a sense of belonging when they go to school. As research suggests, belonging at school is far too important to leave to chance. While aspects of belonging can occur naturally when you have caring adults in schools, it is far more appropriate to make building belonging an intentional act in schools.
Ensuring students feel they belong at school is the job of every adult they encounter throughout the day. Below are some intentional things teachers and school leaders can do to support students’ sense of belonging.
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐂𝐚𝐧 𝐃𝐨
• Build positive relationships: greet students by name, get to know their interests and backgrounds, check in regularly, and notice when they are absent or appear to withdraw.
• Develop peer relationships: use community circles, create collaborative learning tasks, be intentional when grouping, have classroom buddy systems, and provide opportunities for students to get to know each other.
• Help students feel valued: honour student contributions, recognise students’ strengths, incorporate students’ cultures, languages and identities in learning engagements, ensure students see themselves in classroom materials, and ensure all students receive positive attention.
• Create safe and inclusive classrooms: create shared expectations, respond consistently to exclusionary and unkind behaviours, celebrate mistakes as learning opportunities, and create an environment conducive to risk-taking.
• Incorporate meaningful student voice: invite students to contribute to classroom expectations, allow students to make decisions about their learning, involve students in feedback cycles, and have students participate in solving classroom problems.
• Create opportunities to contribute: assign meaningful roles and responsibilities, develop classroom leadership opportunities, and provide opportunities for service and action.
• Use inclusive teaching practices: ensure all students can participate in and contribute to learning tasks, use resources that represent students’ cultures and languages, and provide various ways for students to showcase their strengths and share their understandings.
• Use a restorative approach to conflict: help students understand the impact of their words and actions, help students repair relationships that are harmed, help students rebuild trust and reconnect with the class, and use restorative circles when appropriate.
• Notice students who may feel disconnected: pay attention to friendship difficulties, social isolation, changes in participation and withdrawal, and follow up with these students privately.
What School Leaders Can Do• Make belonging a priority: create a shared understanding of belonging, communicate expectations for inclusive practices, and include belonging in the school’s guiding statements.
• Support student–adult relationships: ensure systems are in place to support positive relationships among students and adults, such as mentor systems, regular check-ins and advisory times.
• Develop a culture of inclusion: review policies, curriculum, school celebrations, school traditions and school activities to ensure all students and families feel welcomed.
• Establish student voice structures: create systems for students to share their thoughts and ideas, establish student representative councils, include students in feedback cycles, and allow students to be involved in school decisions.
• Support transitions: create intentional onboarding processes and procedures, establish a buddy system for new students and families, and ensure you follow up and check in with new students and families.
• Respond positively to behaviour: review the behaviour code of conduct, create clear expectations for students, and ensure responses to behaviour are fair, consistent and respectful, and focused on accountability, repairing harm and reconnecting with the community.
• Create meaningful opportunities for participation: ensure there are many extra-curricular activities across disciplines and interests, create leadership opportunities, and provide students with service and action opportunities.
• Build partnerships with families: create welcoming spaces for families, develop positive communication channels, create opportunities for family participation, and seek family perspectives.
• Measure and respond to belonging: create systems to collect student feedback, identify students who may feel a lower sense of belonging, take action to increase that sense of belonging, and evaluate whether actions are impactful.
𝐖𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐀𝐜𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲
In a world in which students across the globe are reporting a shrinking sense of belonging at school, it is becoming even more important that teachers and school leaders are intentional about building student belonging in their classrooms and throughout the school community.
A quick online search can lead you to organisations that can provide options for collecting data centred on students’ sense of inclusion and belonging. However, your school is full of experts — students and teachers — who could lead a grassroots approach to collecting data and taking action to increase your students’ sense of belonging at your school.
By focusing on whether students feel known, connected, valued, safe, included and empowered, you can ensure your students are receiving the benefits of a strong sense of belonging each day they walk on campus.
In the fast-paced world of education, belonging needs to remain at the centre of what we are doing. As school leaders, we have the capacity and the responsibility to make belonging a priority in our schools.
Thomas Tucker is the Upper Primary Principal at the International School of Nanshan Shenzhen (ISNS).
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