Unlocking the power of belonging

Geri Sumpter

So, I'm very delighted now to welcome you to our first keynote speaker so this is Dr. Kelly-Ann Allen and Dr. Kelly-Ann Allen is an Associate Professor and Educational and Developmental Psychologist at Monash University. She has over 10 years’ experience as a school psychologist and she started off her career in early learning. And she currently combines her expertise as a practitioner with her academic research interest in the area of belonging and social inclusion and that's what we're going to be hearing about today. She is an author and she's also authored and edited over 200 scholarly publications and want to make you aware of a free to download book that Kelly-Ann has been involved with which is, ‘Building back to school with evidence-based policy’, it’s an adaptable policy for teachers and school leaders and I believe the link to that will be popped into the chat for you.

So, in a world of rising rates of loneliness and social isolation a comprehensive understanding of belonging has never been more important. So, I'm going to hand over to Dr. Kelly-Ann now who is going to tell you about the critical importance of school belonging for children and young people, thank you.

Dr Kelly-Ann Allen

Thank you, Geri, hello and thanks for joining us today. As Geri mentioned my name’s Kelly-Ann Allen and I'm an Associate Professor at Monash University in the School of Educational Psychology and Counselling. So today I am very excited to share with you some research and insights about the critical role belonging plays from birth, from birth to adulthood. Last year the OECD which represent 38 member countries ranked belonging as an educational trend, with many institutions around the world now prioritising it. I have been researching belonging since 2010, so I am thrilled to have this opportunity to share with you my understandings and research today. So, during our time together we're going to be talking about the power of belonging, how it is crucial in shaping our development and how it is critical for our own wellbeing. Together we will explore the developmental perspectives of belongingness, the systemic barriers and drivers of school belonging, and the importance of belonging for teachers in their workplace and the profession. We’ll also discuss strategies and solutions for building a sense of belonging in schools, drawing insights from research but also student perspectives.

So, in terms of what is belonging, well belonging is considered a fundamental human need and that's illustrated by many psychological theories. You might remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there's also the belongingness hypothesis and there’s also self-determination theory, and that's possibly one of the most tested to date theories that we know, and this shows how relationships are so important for our life satisfaction and happiness. If we think about babies and young children, attachment theory highlights the significance of secure catchments. These attachments have a role in child development but then they go on to create a bit of a blueprint that determines our future relationships in how we connect and how we trust others, right up into adulthood and then there’s also social identity theory which shows how deeply our sense of self is derived from the group memberships that we’re a part of, or not a part of and we know this because we see people really struggle with memberships when they’re disrupted. Like for example in the loss of work, or retirement, or transitions into parenthood and even during Covid so this is one of the reasons why belonging I think has got so much attention recently. Yet despite all these theories belonging remains something researchers, practitioners, and educators strive to understand more especially in how seemingly easy it is for some people to establish a sense of belonging but not others. In terms of defining it, there is no one universal definition of belonging but we know it's subjective and it’s a feeling and it's usually described as being accepted, included, respected, valued and about fitting into a particular context or setting whether that includes being with family, or friends, groups, school, work environments, communities, cultural groups or physical spaces. In a recent interview with very famous social psychologists, Baumeister and Leary, Leary pondered if he should have interchanged the word belonging with feeling accepted in their very famous 1995 paper that they published. But I think more importantly than how researchers and social psychologists define - what's more important is how you define belonging. So today we’re going to be using the chat box to drop your thoughts and we’ll be asking some questions along the way and what we'll be doing is we’ll be collecting them all and then we'll be providing you with a summary of responses in the coming weeks. So, some of the questions today we’ll ask you to think about strategies and we hope that engagement in the chat box will help build almost like a collective resource for you to take away from today's participation. So, consider what does belonging mean to you and just write your reflection in the chat.

Now while you're doing that, most languages have a word or phrase that conveys the idea of belonging and as you will see from a recent Twitter poll there are common words, and when we talk about belonging we must also be aware of the nuances and differences in how belonging is defined for the groups that we're working with, and you might if you're still writing in the chat box you might reflect on this as well. The connotations of belonging can vary between languages and some languages have multiple words that represent different aspects of belonging and then there's other languages that have no direct or easy translation. Aboriginal understandings of belonging can also vary greatly. So, when we think about belonging, we need to remember that there's a lot that can shape how people understand and experience belonging. Even the historical context of a country can shape a sense of belonging for certain groups, the experience of colonisation, or forced migration, historical marginalisation, the concept of belonging can actually be very complex when we think about things like identity, displacement and power dynamics. Teachers are so important for student belonging but how does it look when teachers in some countries have a different power distance to their students or the people of that country have a different relationship with their political figures and leaders. These are some things just to think about.

Now before we dive into the benefits of belonging and strategies, I just want to take a step back to reflect on the importance of considering belonging through a developmental lens, and by doing so this allows us as practitioners and educators to think about whatever belonging needs at each developmental stage and what opportunities are required and what skills are needed. From birth you could say we’re born to belong and this need stems back to our evolutionary history, where cooperation and social bonds provided support and protection from predators and resources and ultimately survival. Our ancestors could not have done it alone, so group life is so built into us as human beings. While newborns do not have a fully developed sense of belonging in the way that older children or adults do, they are biologically primed to form attachments with their care givers. From birth where we see early emotional bonds between infants and caregivers, we see evidence for this from things like imitation and synchrony particularly in those verbal responses, smiling, reciprocal turn-taking, joint attention, and even cooperative behaviours. We see babies develop preferences for some caregivers over others and we see incredible outcomes for bonding and belonging through appropriate perinatal and postnatal support. But the most profound evidence comes from when we observe disruptions during infancy. Children who grow up in neglectful environments or experience absence or loss of parents they can face adverse developmental consequences that can persist throughout their lives. Such disruptions can lead to difficulties in forming attachments with others and challenges to social and emotional development. So we also know what the risk for mental, we also know that mental health issues here can increase as well. So here's another question for the chat box, and just a note on the use of the chat box today what we're going to be doing is we will be dropping the questions in the chat box and then you are free to respond but we won't be reflecting on them during our time today. We’ll just keep going on through the presentation but what we'll do is we’ll provide a summary of the responses in the coming weeks. So the question to you is, for the chat box, do you work with infants and caregivers and what strategies have you used to build belonging? So put your thoughts in the chat.

Now early childhood, throughout the different stages of development belongingness needs evolve and for those in early childhood you know because this happens right before your eyes particularly that huge jump, we see between 3-year-old and 4-year-old settings. Important milestones in age groups include increased social interactions, conformity to social norms, and development in social emotional competencies. While the inclusion of belonging in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework highlights its importance in early childhood education there is a gap in how belonging is understood, measured, implemented in these early age groups compared to other life stages. If you work in these settings, you might have noticed a bit of a gap in the resources available and how, also how these constructs also speak to things like autonomy, competence, and resilience which we see a lot of resources for in children who are older and in adolescence but not so much in the early years. There is far less research on belonging in early childhood age groups, yet we know in early childhood secure attachment is crucial for things like emotional regulation. We also know that setting expectations early for inclusion and acceptance are immensely important and early childhood settings are an ideal place to do this. The work of Vivian Paley and researcher Amanda Harris has endeavoured to do this with their implementation of the rule, ‘you can't say, you can't play’, you might know the books. This is where educators have an important role as coaches to build conditions of belonging and it is not only about helping children feel included that is about helping them to understand that they too can create conditions for belonging for others as well, that helping others to belong is actually their job too. So again, in the chat have a go at responding to this question here, if you work in an early childhood setting or perhaps you have some experience, perhaps you’re a parent of that age group. I would love to hear what strategies have you used to build belonging in this age group? So, share your thoughts, we won't reflect on them, but we will be collating them.

I am currently investigating conceptualizations of belonging in the early years with a Master's student at Monash University and by that I mean I'm looking at how students or how young children define belonging and what helps them to feel belonging and so I tested out some questions on my son the other day and I asked him, what helps you to belong? Now admittedly his first response was poo, which wasn't very helpful but then he came around and he drew these pictures for me and just reflecting on his pictures and you can see them there, his responses highlight what we know already about the role of transitional objects between context and and the importance for him and others for fostering a sense of belonging. Blankets, toys or other comfort items can help children feel secure when transitioning between home and new environments, such as preschool or daycare or even the first year school but often we do ask children to leave these at home because they can create a bit of a headache for us when they are misplaced or lost but his response was a good reminder that these objects can actually be important.

During childhood, children continue to form important connections with educators and peers as well, and they develop a sense of belonging within their social circles but not all children do and it can be a time when some children can struggle, especially when additional complexities are present and these might include things like separation anxiety, or issues with social and emotional competencies. This can lead to feelings of isolation or low self-esteem and even bullying or peer victimisation. Being viewed positively and managing a positive reputation is actually really important for this age group and rejection from peers in particular becomes an emerging concern. Research shows us that protective and preventative approaches especially around opportunities for belonging and social connection are really important. Like encouraging social groups, activities, clubs, playdates and that those extra opportunities to practise those skills. Also, actively and preventively addressing instances of bullying is also important to ensure students feel safe in their environment, with safety being a core feature of belonging. What strategies have you used to build belonging in childhood? Write them in the chat and again we won't reflect on them now, but we will present in them back to you in the coming weeks.

Adolescence, during adolescence the need for belonging intensifies. Adolescents have a heightened sense of sensitivity to exclusion and appear more negatively affected by ostracism than younger children. Social identity plays a significant role in belonging, particularly in identity exploration where belonging becomes more fluid and complex during this period. Adolescents can experience fluctuations in their sense of belonging and this can occur because young people in this age group experiment with different peer groups which is really normal, they might question or challenge the values and beliefs they grow up with, or seek out new experiences, hobbies, or activities which can also provide opportunities for social connection or social disruption. Academic fit becomes extremely important for adolescents during this stage, if young people cannot fulfil their sense of belonging through typical pathways like school, they might seek less socially desirable alternative ways to achieve belonging. So, schools play a really important role in preventing this from happening. Again, in the chat box, what strategies have you used to build belonging in adolescents? So tell us through the chat, we’ll collate the responses. We're going to have an incredible resource I think after this presentation.

School belonging. School belonging in terms of how we define it, possibly one of my most favourite topics to talk about. That one of the most undisputed, operationalised and commonly cited definition of school belonging in the literature is offered by Goodenow and Grady in 1993 and they defined school belonging as, the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included and supported by others in the school social environment. But one criticism of this definition is that it's a bit dated and so we did a bit of a pulse check just to see what teams today, how they defined belonging and turns out we found very similar concepts. Like it is multidimensional, and it encompasses the sense of security and safety, both physical and psychological. It includes positive relationships with teachers, peers and friends and feelings of inclusivity and acceptance and autonomy and guidance and that is they feel empowered and in control of their learning but at the same time they also feel academically and personally supported and encouraged.

When students feel like they belong to school, there's quite a few benefits and what I'm presenting today is just the tip of the iceberg, this research is rich. When people feel like they belong they tend to have fewer mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, stress. In fact feeling a sense of belonging can even help reduce stress and mental illness as people grow older from their late teens to their early twenties. School belonging also plays a big role in overall wellbeing. When students feel like they belong they are more likely to be socially competent, satisfied with life, trusting and tolerant of others and actively engaged in communities. And again this can have long-term outcomes also found in adulthood.

Feeling a sense of belonging is not just about mental health and wellbeing it's also about physical health. Young people who feel a sense of belonging tend to visit the doctor less often and have fewer long-term health issues. One study of 14,000 adults found those connected to school 13 years earlier had reduced emotional distress, physical violence both as a perpetrator and as a victim, reduced prescription drug use, and other drug misuse and STI diagnosis. Belonging is also crucial for school experiences more generally. Students who feel like they belong are more motivated, academically orientated and enjoy school more. Feeling a sense of belonging can help predict whether someone will continue with their education, find a job or engage in training after they've finished school and that can last up to another 13 years. And we know school belonging is linked to diminished fighting, absenteeism, school dropout rates, disruptive behaviours and all of these findings highlight the importance of creating a sense of belonging for students, as it can lead to overall wellbeing and success. But we must remember that not all students feel a sense of belonging to school. Just like you might not have felt a sense of belonging to school either. Thus, irrespective of belonging trends in schools and belonging priorities we need to ensure it remains a priority in schools.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveyed over 500,000 students representing around 29 million 15-year-olds from 72 participating countries and economies, and they do this nearly every 3 years although things are a little bit disrupted during Covid. And from the data we have consistently found over many years 1 in 3 students do not feel a sense of belonging to school. And that's a trend that is an international problem and one that has existed since 2003, to our knowledge. My research on school belonging has tried to address this or investigate reasons why this is happening and one of my most cited papers has actually been a meta-analysis on school belonging. Which is a synthesis of published, peer-reviewed research and here we aimed to investigate the overall effect size for the major themes related to school belonging to see how they compared, and this graph more or less summarises the findings. Here we found that teacher support that is that student-teacher relationship, contributed the most variability towards school belonging than any other factor. That's really powerful if you're tuning in as an educator a teacher. It was even stronger than peer support or parent support which was a little bit of a surprise to me and my team because we were expecting peer support to actually be the strongest determinant. And our other findings showed that personal characteristics, those traits, those constructs like self-esteem, self-efficacy, the ability to cope with stress. We also saw that as a really important factor for fostering a sense of belonging, that is how well students are able to cope when things go, go wrong or challenges emerge which they do from day to day. Leading them to be able to use some skills like problem solving, rather than question their own sense of belonging. And these findings have huge implications on how schools might rollout interventions or that might try and target social and emotional competencies to build a strong sense of belonging with the students or children that they’re working with. And there’s also a message in this finding that we don't always talk about, and that is there are a lot of students that can do things to build their own sense of belonging not necessarily relying on the interventions or the strategies that might be occurring in the classroom. That students can actually feel empowered to have control over their own sense of belonging as well and we see this particularly in the research around attributions and perceptions.

Onto strategies and practises now. Another project I have been working on asked for solutions and strategies to improve belonging from students themselves. We conducted a thematic analysis of responses to an open-ended survey and we found four overarching themes and several sub-themes related to what teaching practises students believe would strengthen their school belonging. First was emotional support, that is students emphasise the importance of having approachable and understanding teachers who provided emotional support, not just academic support. Students wanted teachers to know them as individuals and notice them, for example if they're away from school for a day. Another theme was support for learning. Students said they needed teachers to provide feedback, address diverse needs, and regularly check on their progress to enhance their sense of belonging. They were also deeply aware of the needs of others and strongly articulated they want their classmates to also feel supported, which was a really heart-warming finding that we saw in our data. Building social connections was another theme that we saw, students mentioned the need for teachers to help them connect with their peers, create a welcoming classroom environment that fosters unity, and support their involvement in school activities. They talked about feeling awkward about reaching out to other students and they clearly, in our data, were asking for adults to help in this regard. And the last theme was fairness and inclusion. Students emphasised the importance of fairness and inclusion in the classroom which can significantly contribute to their sense of belonging. Students talked about their need for inclusive language, one example from our data was that students had embraced using people's preferred pronouns as an example but as adults we're still seeing this debated but students in in the cohort in our sample really were strongly asking for teachers to at least understand a little bit more. Students also provided suggestions for school level practises to include, to build a sense of belonging and these included things like building a positive school culture by nurturing respectful and supportive relationships, encouraging collaboration among students and educators and staff, creating supportive teaching practises by empowering educators to be effective and responsive to student needs, providing resources and training for best practises, making a welcoming environment so students felt included and safe and this meant encouraging things like student voice and choice. Students also mentioned easy access to counselling support and school-wide activities. These activities are about offering opportunities for social connection and engagement and encouraging participation in clubs, sports, events. This was one example where students were for asking for adult support in their social connections.

From all the information presented so far, it is important to emphasise there is no one approach to building belonging. And when we think about fostering belonging and the different factors at play, it helps to think of this through a bit of a systems lens. Schools have an immense role to play in a student’s individual factors, their experiences, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, social and emotional competencies, personality, mental health and temperament. These are all of a part of the individual level that can influence students sense of belonging. The there’s also their primary social groups and that's how family, friends, class and social and extracurricular activities and groups are encouraged, what opportunities are available and then we've also got the school climate. The organisational structure, the school culture and the policies these can really impact how a student feels that sense of belonging and can feel a sense of belonging. And of course all these conditions apply for adults too. A model like this is very flexible and adaptable to a school environment. So again in the chat box, what strategies do you think work best for improving a sense of belonging at the school climate level? Reflect on the context you work in, do you have school policies, do you have school practises, are there particular things going on at the wider school-level that could encourage a sense of belonging in students. We're really interested in hearing your thoughts here.

Educator belonging. In adulthood many individuals face challenges in making and maintaining social contacts which can impact their sense of belonging. For adults with children it can be particularly difficult to balance family commitments and work demands, sometimes leading to a decrease in friendship groups and social activities. Retrospective studies have also shown that a lack of belonging during childhood and adolescence can predict mental health concerns and psychosocial disturbance later in life. It's important to note that a sense of belonging in adulthood is a predictor of good health on par with things like diet and exercise. And loneliness and social isolation can pose significant health risks equal to that of smoking, obesity, heavy drinking and high blood pressure. As adults and educators and members of the community, we should be mindful of making sure we’re active in safeguarding a sense of belonging for our own wellbeing and our overall health. We also know that educator belonging predicts student belonging, so educator belonging is actually really important as a consideration for building student belonging as well.

Some good news though, our research has found that most educators feel a strong sense of belonging to their profession, and this is research lead by Fiona Dr Fiona Longmuir at Monash University. But from this research we also notice that early childhood educators were less likely to feel a sense of belonging compared to teachers in older age groups, 66.5% compared to 80%, and this is a bit of a concern. The key contributors of belonging for educators found in our research included things like emotional support from colleagues, relationships with students, and supportive school environments and systems. However, barriers such as a lack of respect, workload, and unrealistic expectations negatively affected their sense of belonging. Addressing these factors to ensure a positive work environment and strong sense of belonging for all educators is key but the message about belonging in school can sometimes just focus on students and the sense of belonging for educators can be a bit neglected, so we need to put this also on our agenda. So I've got a bit of a double-barrelled question for you for the chat box this time, what strategies have you used to build a sense of belonging for yourself and what do you do to build a sense of belonging for your colleagues? So have a go at dropping some responses in the chat.

So, I've got some final thoughts here, a bit of a disclaimer, or two considerations really for you to take away and think about. Educators first should be aware that groups that students belong to that would usually build a sense of belonging can sometimes inadvertently disrupt their sense of belonging. It is crucial to carefully consider the potential consequences of our own actions and to engage in ongoing reflection to ensure that we are truly fostering a sense of belonging for all our students, and that our role in fostering belonging, our role in fostering belonging compliments their lives outside of school. For example, it's congruent with the cultural practises, traditions, and rituals they might have. Sometimes we see uniform policies, as just one example, at odds with this. Also, it's important to remember the need to belong can be different from an actual sense of belonging. We need to consider individual and context specific differences, such as the varying need to belong across cultural groups where schools may not be the only source of belonging or the primary source. We have to remember we can't force people to belong, that doesn't help with belonging. We need to also remember we must not presume one group does not belong over another. Our research has showed in the past that groups we expected to have a low sense of belonging were the ones that actually had the higher sense of belonging. So, taking a strengths-based approach when we investigate belonging is really important and context is key.

So just to conclude, every child and student has a right to experience a sense of belonging in their educational environment. The right to belong is a fundamental human right that we must all strive for and remember it for ourselves as well. So, thank you.

Geri Sumpter

Thank you that was absolutely fantastic - and I know for one I took plenty of notes during that session. I really found it fascinating that we've got such strong outcomes associated with belonging in relation to health and wellbeing, enjoyment, relationships, academics etcetera but also the importance of that tie to the educator belonging, to the educator wellbeing as well, and we know when we've got educators that are experiencing wellbeing that that also encourages those better student outcomes. So, I just thought that presentation was fantastic, so thank you very much for all of that. So, we encourage you to pop any of your questions into the chat. As we said we’ve not got time to go through those at the moment, but we will make sure we collate those afterwards and I’m also super excited for the resource that we’re going to be creating from all of the strategies that you will have been popping into the chat. I think that is something that's, you know, we’re going to find an absolutely fabulous resource across all of those age groups so thank you for prompting that through your conversation as well. There are some topics for reflection that we’d like you to think about as a result of Dr. Kelly-Ann’s presentation. So, it's really around, you know, thinking about key ways in which your learning community can enhance the educators’, children, and young people’s sense of belonging and thinking about and reflecting on that importance of fostering those empowering learning environments for the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people as well. So fabulous, so many thought prompters in this initial conversation and please take the time after this session to reflect on a few of these points as well.

So, we are coming up to a bit of a break, we’d like you to take the time to look after yourselves. Making sure that you are taking the time to stretch, you might pop into one of our virtual booths and have a conversation with a Consultant, you might just go and get yourself a drink and a snack which is something that we all need at this time of day. Because our next session is coming up at 12:05 AEST, that again includes Dr. Kelly-Ann so looking forward to this panel. So, it's going to be a panel and it's talking about educator wellbeing but with a couple of our Consultants from ECA and from headspace, and the title of this panel is, Moving Beyond Self-Care. So, this kind of will really be discussing how belonging in the workplace correlates to wellbeing and the nuances of self-care and how learning communities can adopt a systematic, systematic approach to wellbeing. So, enjoy your break and thank you for joining us for the first part of our conference, thanks again to Dr. Kelly-Ann, that was absolutely fantastic and I we’ll look forward to seeing you all back online with us at 12:05 AEST, thank you.

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