Abstract
The American College Health Association recently reported that the majority of US college students experience significant feelings of loneliness, with approximately half of all US college students reporting feelings of hopelessness or depression. In an effort to mitigate students’ feelings of loneliness while in college, I sought to enhance students’ sense of belonging through the implementation of relational teaching practices. In doing so, I highlight promising practices for cultivating a sense of belonging within a US institution of higher education (IHE). Specifically, the objective is for students to internalize the value of relational pedagogies as a means of fostering their sense of belonging in a college classroom with the hope that students can appreciate their worth and value as learning community members. To assess the effectiveness of these efforts toward promoting student belonging, a triangulated design utilizing qualitative data sources was employed. Codes were organized into three primary themes: valued voices; academic and emotional safety; and, teacher identity development. Overall, the data collected from PSTs suggest that the implementation of specific relational pedagogies can positively influence PSTs’ sense of belonging and overall wellness.
Data on the mental health of college students is concerning. The American College Health Association (2019) recently reported that the majority of US college students feel very lonely and about half of all US college students feel a sense of hopelessness or report feeling so depressed it was difficult to function. These data, in addition to dismal statistics on the mental health of students following the Covid-19 pandemic, prompted my university to develop a Wellness Strategic plan for members of our campus community. Within the Wellness Strategic Plan 2024–2028, my university aims to position itself as “a leading institution dedicated to fostering holistic health and well-being for every member of [the] campus community,” across six dimensions of wellness–emotional, communal, purposeful, financial, social, and physical (Wellness Strategic Taskforce, 2024).
Based on the Strategic Plan, I considered how I might influence the wellness of the students I teach; I designed a study to explore the influence of belonging on preservice teachers (PSTs) in a postsecondary classroom in hopes of supporting PSTs’ overall wellness. I take up belonging principally through relational teacher pedagogies (Kitchen, 2002) in two sequential courses in a college of education across an entire academic year. The study, therefore, addresses two related research questions: how do my efforts in relational teaching pedagogies support students’ feelings of belonging in a college classroom? And, how do students think about the usefulness of belonging as it pertains to their learning in higher education classrooms?
Consequently, this work aims to demonstrate the significance of belonging and relationship building within a learning community for PSTs, with the expectation that PSTs will recognize belonging and relational teaching practices as a valuable undertaking in their future classrooms. This could facilitate the integration of more relational pedagogies into PK-12 classrooms, thereby enhancing PK-12 student belonging and potentially transforming US schools into environments that stimulate engagement and center student wellbeing.
Theoretical Framework & Related Literature
A major goal of my work as a relational teacher educator is to prepare PSTs to create more equitable classroom practices through the modeling of humanizing, person-centered pedagogies which foster students’ sense of belonging (see Morettini, 2022). When students at any grade level know they matter, they have a stronger sense of purpose and belonging in the world, and they may be more inclined to civic participation, social engagement, and humanizing actions. To that end, two threads of literature inform the study: relational teacher education (Kitchen, 2002) and the construct of belonging (Allen et al., 2024).
Relational Teacher Education
Kitchen (2002) developed the framework of relational teacher education to encompass an approach to working with PSTs grounded in conveying respect and building relationships. He developed this based on the perspective that we live and know in relation to others (2005a; 2005b). The mission of my project is to model humanizing teaching practices for a small cohort (n = 6) of PSTs through specific dimensions of relational teacher pedagogy across two sequential courses (fall and spring semesters) in an Educator Preparation Program (EPP). Relational teacher education comprises seven dimensions as defined in Table 1.
Dimensions of Relational Teacher Education Adapted from Kitchen (2002; 2005a; 2005b).
I enact certain dimensions of relational teacher education through specific pedagogical strategies that foster a sense of belonging and wellness for preservice teachers such as seeking student input and feedback on elements of the course and building relationships with and among students. In particular, I want students to experience the value of relational teacher education and humanizing pedagogies as they consider whether they approached class differently because they felt a sense of belonging to the learning community.
The Construct of Belonging
The literature characterizes belonging in higher education as a complex and multidimensional concept, subject to varied definitions across studies (Tachine et al., 2017). The concept of belonging is rooted in the psychological need for meaningful, stable connections to others (Allen et al., 2022; Baumeister & Leary, 1995) and is essential for student success and wellbeing (Allen et al., 2024). In a meta-analysis of 33 research studies, researchers identified four themes pertinent to the definition of belonging in higher education: connectedness to peers, faculty, and the institution or learning environment; feeling safe, at home, and part of the community; feeling valued and accepted; and emphasizing diversity and inclusion (Allen et al., 2024).
The definition of belonging, then, encompasses institutional efforts aimed at creating inclusive, welcoming, and safe campuses as well as individual faculty efforts aimed at creating similarly welcoming and safe classroom spaces and learning environments for students. For example, research suggests four determinants of student belonging in higher education, including institution-wide approaches, creating and maintaining inclusive environments, educator practices, and quality relationships with faculty and other students (Allen et al., 2024).
Educator practices identified in the literature as fostering student belonging include the use of informal discussions between students, demonstrating care and respect for students, and being attentive to and open with students (Larsen & James, 2022; Russell & Slater, 2011; Tice et al., 2021). The literature widely maintains the interdependent nature of the institutional efforts and individual faculty practices in students’ sense of belonging. It is important to note, however, the practices of individual faculty are critical in fostering student belonging.
Larsen and James recently found that the relationships between faculty and students “cannot be underestimated in the discussion around building a sense of belonging within the higher education sector” (2022, p. 10). With this in mind, what we do as faculty, what we say and what we do not say have an impact on the extent to which students feel a sense of belonging in a university setting. In sum, pedagogical practices demonstrate the potential to foster student belonging in higher education.
Research Design & Methodology
The research is framed by self-study methodological tenets; self-study methodologies explore teaching and teacher education practices from the epistemological perspective that challenges positivist notions of validity and truth (Hamilton et al., 2020). The epistemological roots of self-study methodologies grow from Schön's (1983, 1987) argument for an epistemology constructed in reflective practice. Self-study researchers seek to “understand courses from the students’ perspectives” (Hamilton et al., 2020) and to shift our practices based on students’ experiences and responses. Indeed, self-study researchers seek to learn about their experiences and students’ experiences through “listening both to oneself and to one's students” (Martin & Russell, 2020, p. 1049). In this way, self-study research maintains that quality and trustworthiness are demonstrated “when we live out our responsibility to shifting practice through research” (Hamilton et al., 2020, p. 314). As a self-study researcher, my aims are to better understand my practice and my self-in-practice (Fletcher, 2020) through systematic inquiry of my relational pedagogical practices.
Relational Pedagogical Practices
Student Input
Student input was solicited consistently and systematically at the end of class each week in the form of an anonymous exit ticket. The anonymous exit ticket asked students the same four questions each week: What is something you learned today that you value? What is something about which you have a question or concern? What do you like that the class currently does? What would help you in the class? After class each week, I spent time looking through the exit tickets to get a sense of students’ experiences, understandings, and concerns. Then, at the beginning of class the following week, I shared with students how I was pedagogically responding to their input by doing such things as reviewing key ideas, clarifying assignment expectations, and more. Seeking student input through a consistent and systematic process was one way I modeled respect for students and receptivity to growing in relation to them over the semesters. Thus, in keeping with the aims of self-study methodology (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2015) I sought to improve my own teacher education practices by systematically reflecting on how students responded to particular pedagogies aimed at fostering their sense of belonging in my classroom.
Community Building and Wellness
In addition to seeking student input and feedback, I devoted time during class meetings to discuss with students challenges they may be facing in their clinical experiences in local classrooms during the semesters. Many times, students’ discussions went into other, more personal, challenges they were facing during the semesters. As a way to support students, I always shared many of my own challenging experiences in my journey to become a teacher and during my first few years in the classroom. Doing so for students modeled how to be open and vulnerable as a way to process experiences and to grow.
I was very intentional with my focus on relationship building both with my students and among my students. For example, I created different community building experiences at the beginning of each class to get to know my students better and to share my own lived experiences with students and model how we grow in relation to each other over the semester.
Specific examples of community and relationship building exercises are wellness check-in questions, asking students to list out their various identities, asking students to complete a heart map, and collaborative book clubs and literature circles.
The wellness check-in questions were used as warm-up activities at the beginning of each class and asked students things like: What has brought you joy lately? What have you learned about yourself so far this semester? And, what is a word to describe how you are feeling at this moment in time? Students were encouraged to discuss their answers and products, when applicable, with their classmates in small group settings, but were not required to share their answers with me or in the whole class setting. And, students had the option to reply anonymously to questions using the word cloud function of Slido that displays students’ answers. In this way, students had choice and flexibility in whether or not they shared, how they shared, and the extent of their sharing. In addition, two times during each semester, I set up times for individual meetings with preservice teachers to review their work, offer feedback and suggestions, and to provide a personalized check-in.
Context of the Study
The study took place across an entire academic year (two semesters) with the same cohort of PSTs. The study received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), and the entire cohort of PSTs (n = 6) consented to participate in the study; pseudonyms were used to protect participants’ confidentiality. The first course I taught was Working with Families and Communities. This course is a requirement for students’ degrees. The course description, taken from the syllabus I created, states: This course is designed to heighten inclusive teacher candidates’ awareness of the roles that family and community have on a child's success in school. The course situates students’ communities and families from an asset-based perspective, demonstrating that all children must be understood in the context of their community environment, including their families, schools, communities, and the wider society. Students will also develop skills in working effectively with diverse families in the learning community, in order to provide positive educational outcomes for children in inclusive settings. The course focuses on engaging prospective teachers in inclusive social studies pedagogy for the K-6 elementary education classroom. The course aims to equip students with instructional models that will prepare them to teach history and social sciences integrated with other subjects in the elementary classroom.
Data Sources & Data Analysis
To assess the impact of my efforts toward fostering student belonging, I employed a richly qualitative design drawing on document analysis (Bowen, 2009; Corbin & Strauss, 2008) of three qualitative data sources: university-issued, end-of-semester anonymous student evaluation instruments of each course, an anonymous student survey, and a one-hour focus group with participants at the end of the entire academic year. The data were examined through open coding procedures and thematic analysis. Protocols for both qualitative instruments are provided in the Appendix.
The focus group was recorded and transcribed; the entire corpus of data was read several times in its entirety; while reading the data, I engaged in iterative analysis through two rounds of coding; first, I followed open coding procedures by taking notes in the margins of words that stood out to me and indicated significance (Saldaña, 2013). Then, I engaged in more descriptive coding, using codes developed through open coding procedures. Similar codes were merged together while infrequent codes were assessed for their utility (Saldaña, 2013). The university-issued anonymous student evaluation instrument asks likert-scale questions and also has space for open-ended responses; therefore, the qualitative data from these surveys were analyzed using the same open coding followed by more descriptive coding methods as I did for the other qualitative data. While the university-issued student evaluation instrument does provide quantitative data, the small sample size should be noted.
Findings
Overall, data collected from PSTs demonstrate that implementing specific relational pedagogies positively influences PSTs’ sense of belonging and overall wellness. Analysis of qualitative data produced 12 initial codes. The initial codes were refined and grouped into three themes that captured the range of codes that appeared frequently in the data: valued voices, academic and emotional safety; and, teacher identity development.
Valued Voices
Data from the focus group, survey, and course evaluations reveal that when students are invited to provide systematic feedback on their learning experiences in a college course, they report a greater sense of belonging. For instance, during the focus group, one student commented, “Everyone feels like they are making contributions that the whole class appreciates.” Students expressed similar sentiments regarding the value of their input on the anonymous survey. One student wrote, “It felt like our feedback was valued/taken into consideration and there was [sic] a lot of opportunities for sharing/engaging with the material.” Another student wrote, “The classroom environment was welcoming and encouraged open dialogue, which made it easy to share my thoughts and experiences.” Students elaborated on these ideas, describing instances “when it feels like what I say matters” and noting that it is helpful when their “ideas and contributions are valued.” Additionally, all participants reported that I encouraged student-faculty interaction outside of class. By purposefully soliciting students’ perspectives through focused meetings throughout the semester, students reflected that this effort was noticed and enhanced their sense of belonging. For example, one student wrote in the survey, “For you to have the time to meet up in person and do things individually means a lot.” Inviting students’ feedback and allowing them to offer feedback on my teaching approach resulted in students expressing a sense of belonging because students felt valued in the learning process.
Academic and Emotional Safety
In addition to students feeling a sense of belonging and mattering through valued voices, the data also suggest feelings of belonging fosters a sense of academic and emotional safety for students. Through consistent check-ins with students, I centered wellness and normalized discussions about how the preservice teachers were feeling and managing the semester. For example, one student shared in the focus group that “When I know that my voice matters and that I'm accepted for who I am, I'm more likely to participate, ask questions, and take academic risks.” Similarly, another student shared, “I'm more likely to ask questions, participate in discussions, and try new things without fear of being judged.” In the survey, a student wrote, “I feel more open to feedback and collaboration, which deepens my understanding and helps me grow.” Taken together, these data suggest that when students experience belonging, they are more likely to feel the emotional safety they need to take the academic risks conducive to deeper learning.
Across the data sources, all preservice teachers made mention of the importance of a sense of safety to their feelings of belonging in a classroom. Specifically, students mention the degree to which they feel they can be authentic in their actions and discussions with the instructor and with peers as contributing to their sense of safety. For example, during the focus group, one student stated, “When I feel safe, heard, and surrounded by positive energy, positive people, I am allowed to be myself.” Further, one student shared, “clear expectations and routines make me feel safe and confident.” The data directly from students’ voices suggests how the intentional pedagogical approaches focused on student input, community building, and wellness can influence students’ academic and emotional safety, thereby shoring up their sense of belonging in the classroom space.
Teacher Identity Development
Further, when students experience the benefits of belonging in a classroom, they express a desire to be a teacher who fosters belonging with their own students in the future. Through modeling relational pedagogies and focusing on students’ sense of belonging, PSTs began to consider how they can emulate elementary students’ belonging in their future classrooms. For example, one PST shared, “I want to form relationships and create an environment just as Dr. Morettini did with us–one that is welcoming, respectful, and supportive.” Another student stated, “I will make sure that every student feels like they belong in my classroom by ensuring they feel heard and valued.” In the survey data, another student wrote, “I hope to build a sense of belonging in my classroom through class engagement, student feedback, engagement with the community, and involvement with parents.” Additionally, a student stated, “I’m starting to see myself not just as someone who teaches, but as someone who leads with empathy, These data help show the effects of belonging on PSTs’ teacher identity development inasmuch as PSTs begin to see themselves as teachers who foster belonging in their classrooms and see belonging as integral to the work of teachers.
Concrete Strategies for Future Practice
Preservice were able to identify relational strategies they plan to enact in their own teaching practice to build student belonging in their future classrooms by consistently emphasizing the importance of knowing students as individuals. As one preservice teacher explained, they plan on “getting to know my students individually, celebrating their strengths, and supporting their challenges.” Another preservice teacher echoed this commitment more succinctly, stating, “I will build relationships with every student.” This individual approach extended to recognizing and honoring diversity, with one student noting, “I will incorporate diverse voices and perspectives in my lessons and encourage students to share their own experiences,” while another highlighted their intention of “getting to know students, celebrating their individuality, and encouraging kindness and connection.” Therefore, as a result of experiencing relational pedagogies across an academic year, PSTs began to articulate specific pedagogical strategies they hope to implement in their future classrooms. This suggests that cultivating a sense of belonging in a classroom might influence preservice teachers’ burgeoning identity to encompass pedagogies aimed at fostering belonging in their future teaching contexts.
Preservice teachers also recognized the temporal dimension of belonging-building, understanding that this work must begin immediately. One student reflected, “I also want to make sure I take time to establish the sense of belonging in my classroom when I first meet my students.” This proactive stance demonstrates students’ understanding that belonging cannot be an afterthought but must be foundational to classroom culture. The affective and relational dimensions of teaching emerged as central to students’ planned practice. One student committed to ensuring that “building strong relationships and showing genuine interest in each student's well-being will be a priority for me.” Another articulated a vision for classroom culture, stating, “I want to foster a classroom culture based on kindness, empathy, and collaboration.” These reflections reveal that students internalized not just discrete strategies, but a holistic relational orientation toward teaching that positions belonging as fundamental to their emerging professional identities.
Thus, these data suggest that being intentional with student belonging through specific relational pedagogies can positively influence PSTs’ burgeoning teacher identities. It is important to note that PSTs stated they plan to implement some of the same community building activities in their future classrooms that I modeled for them in order to help their students feel the same sense of belonging. Indeed, the data suggest preservice teachers are more likely to invest their efforts in experiences that both invite and validate their voices
Discussion
The study highlights specific relational practices for the cultivation of student belonging in higher education. In the study, I experimented with relational teacher education pedagogies (Kitchen, 2002; 2005a; 2005b) as way to demonstrate respect for students, show my own vulnerability, and grow in relation to my students by systematically and consistently seeking and responding to student input to show students that they matter in our learning community.
Learning and Being
From the data, we can extrapolate the idea that students’ feelings of safety and value in a classroom setting support greater confidence, which can lead to more participation and academic risk-taking, potentially resulting in deeper understanding of and connection to the content. It is important to note that students themselves felt validated through the relational pedagogies focused on building their sense of belonging. For example, one student wrote, “The content was meaningful and relevant to my goals as an educator.” Likewise, another student also wrote, “I would not be who I am in class without our great class environment.” During the focus group discussion, one student even stated that the relational pedagogies “helped me feel valued and supported in my journey as a future teacher.” When asked if a sense of belonging is important, one student simply stated, “I can’t learn without it.” Thus, the findings suggest belonging as foundational to student learning.
Extant research (e.g., Taff & Clifton, 2022) suggests the need for greater and more in-depth understanding of strategies for cultivating student belonging in higher education. The data I gathered on PSTs’ perceptions of the relational pedagogical practices suggests that by being intentional with students about your pedagogy, being vulnerable with students about your own lived experiences, and situating PSTs as co-creators of the learning experience can improve students’ sense of belonging in higher education settings.The study details promising practices for cultivating belonging in higher education, specifically in EPPs where we hope to develop a cascade trend in which PK-12 teachers have experienced belonging in the classroom and are intentional with cultivating belonging for their young students.
The Power of Relational Pedagogies
In addition, the study suggests teacher educators should model relational pedagogies that value student input and experiences, and they should invest time in fostering relationships among students and with students to heighten PSTs’ belonging, wellness, and learning in higher education settings. To do this, instructors could work to create a welcoming and supportive environment for students from the first class meeting through a systemic approach that includes, but is not limited to: accommodating students throughout the semester, encouraging discussions with and among students, demonstrating respect for diverse perspectives, emphasizing collaboration over competition, helping students make purposeful and meaningful connections to course content, and taking time to individually meet with students to offer focused support and make personal connections. Indeed, showing a genuine interest in students’ lives and holding space for their perspectives in class is critical for building positive relationships with students and fostering their sense of belonging.
Educator Wellness
Since students’ sense of belonging in post-secondary settings is interconnected to both civic participation and student wellness, both are top concerns of IHEs. For example, The Healthy Minds Study for the 2023–2024 academic year revealed anxiety, stress, and other mental health issues are consistently high across all IHE student demographics (Eisenberg et al., 2025). IHEs are working to address these record-level mental health and wellness concerns with their college students, as are PK-12 settings, who are also seeing increased depression, anxiety, trauma, and feelings of isolation among students (Anderson et al., 2024). Therefore, the study on student belonging in an IHE advances two related aspects of student mental health and wellness: how a sense of belonging might enhance preservice teachers’ wellness and mental health; and, how a sense of belonging can positively influence PSTs burgeoning teacher identities that value the importance of building student belonging.
The American Federation of Teachers has identified teacher well-being as a direct threat to educators’ work (Seton, 2019), which intensifies teacher shortages. Based on the study, we can argue that teacher educators should explicitly discuss the importance of wellness in teacher identity development, as doing so might be effective in increasing teacher job satisfaction and reducing teacher attrition. For example, PSTs reported they benefitted from the positive relationships with peers and the instructor that were fostered through collaboration, focused discussions, and individual meetings. Also, PSTs noted the level of feedback from me–including several individual meetings and check-ins over the year–reduced their sense of stress and anxiety related to coursework and meeting instructor expectations. As one preservice teacher stated so poignantly, “when I feel connected and accepted in a learning environment, I experience less stress and anxiety, and I feel more emotionally secure.” Thus, providing intentional support fosters overall preservice teacher wellness.
Limitations and Future Studies
This study was powerful because it allowed me to follow one cohort of preservice teachers throughout an entire academic year. In PK-12 settings, this practice is commonly referred to as looping, where a teacher stays with a group of students across more than one grade level. By looping with my PSTs across two consecutive semesters, I had the advantage of sustained and systematic evaluation of their growth and development over time. Future research might follow preservice teachers into their teaching careers to continue to explore if and how they use the strategies shown to them to build belonging in their own classrooms.
This study is limited by the small sample size (n = 6). Therefore, the future studies could recruit greater sample sizes of participants and could assess particular belonging interventions and the influence they have on students. Future research should look at critical incidents and collect detailed narratives about specific moments when belonging was created or diminished to gain deeper, more nuanced understandings of the construct of belonging.
As is the case in practitioner self-study, the study could be limited by students’ social desirability with me as their instructor, which is a widely acknowledged limitation to forms of practitioner inquiry. I attempted to lessen this aspect of the methodological limitations of self-study by providing anonymous ways for students to provide input and respond to surveys. Still, the limitation exists. Finally, in keeping with the finding of valued voices, future researchers could collaborate with students in participatory action research projects and involve students in designing belonging interventions and initiatives to explore longitudinally over time.
Conclusion
This study deepens our understanding of the role of belonging in relation to education by demonstrating that for a particular cohort of preservice teachers, a sense of belonging is a foundational need for learning, understanding, and overall wellness. A sense of belonging within an educational environment is associated with students reporting enhanced emotional safety and security. This, in turn, motivates students to engage more thoroughly with course material, undertake academic challenges, and maintain receptivity to constructive criticism, thereby facilitating learning and development. To that end, we can posit that when students feel a sense of belonging, they may be more likely to engage with their environment and express their voices and needs, even when they assess some degree of risk in doing so. Such actions are related to students’ overall civic participation because when students feel belonging, they know they are valued, they matter, and they are more likely to engage.
Moreover, what we do in classrooms–how we teach and how we approach students–can positively impact students’ overall wellbeing. This study ought to motivate others to continue the important work of studying student belonging; fostering student belonging should be a focus of professional development for university faculty, since the data suggest students’ sense of belonging is critical to their learning, their wellbeing, and their identity development as future teachers. When students in any educational setting recognize their inherent value, they may cultivate a more profound sense of purpose and belonging in the broader world. Students, therefore, may be more inclined to articulate their viewpoints, safeguard such liberties of expression, and uphold the civil liberties essential to democracy when they understand and appreciate their worth, value, and sense of belonging to the greater community.
Footnotes
Author Contribution(s)
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.