Valued,Trusted,and Supported: Leadership Influences on Sense of Belonging in New Teachers

Abstract

Increased political tensions which have brought new scrutiny to the classroom coupled with living through a pandemic have impacted the well-being of teachers and led many to leave or plan to leave their school. While recent years have been difficult for teachers, they have also underscored the importance of drawing on relationships and feelings of belonging to bolster well-being and resolve. Thus, in this paper we seek to examine the factors that contribute to the sense of belonging of teachers new to a district to understand how school leaders can better attend to their well-being during this sensitive phase in their professional lives. We conducted a qualitative study interviewing 39 elementary school teachers recently hired in eight elementary schools in one school district in California. Using collaborative open coding, we identified three broad categories of experiences that enhanced new teacher belonging: (1) experiences that established or reinforced a culture of trust among educators; (2) feeling valued and supported by colleagues and administrators; (3) having informal interactions with colleagues. We also found that by making new teachers feel valued, listened to, and supported, as well as by using their positions to create opportunities for interactions among staff, school leaders served as belonging brokers, fostering deeper connections between new teachers and their schools.