What is the research evidence for belonging?

Since Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs was published in 1943, we have been aware of the importance of belonging. The need for love and belonging is a fundamental need essential for healthy child development. Bowlby's research (1951) proved that normal development was dependent upon quality connection. Attachment theory (Mary Ainsworth 1978), found that the quality of connection resulted in three different attachment styles: secure, insecure avoidant and insecure ambivalent/resistant.

Teachers and leaders will know how insecure attachment, and the need to belong, can drive poor behaviour. We know how some children will adopt poor behaviour as a means of communicating a lack of belonging, or will deliberately disrupt, or become the class clown, as a means of earning love and respect from their peers. Others will withdraw within themselves due to a lack of connection and belonging.

As educators, we will have witnessed first hand the impact of poor parenting on children, and indeed how forms of abuse such as emotional abuse and neglect are worsened by the lack of love and belonging that pupils experience.

Research by Baumeister and Leary (1995) found that the need for belonging can be as compelling the need as food. They found that, if young people cannot find a socially acceptable place to belong, they will look elsewhere to fulfil this need. And this is what drives humans to make unhealthy connections with gangs, cults or sub-culture.

Bucholz and Catton's research (1999) found that whilst connectedness is a fundamental human need, it varies by individual and is affected by factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, disability and age. As educators, we will have seen how children and young people can become susceptible to unsafe activities, for example through grooming, due to their desire to feel loved and belonging.

Children who have been looked after face huge disadvantages, as they haven't experienced the love and sense of belonging required during normal child development. Other groups of pupils are also disadvantaged at school, due to risks around belonging due to their circumstances, such as traveller children, refugees and asylum seekers or service children who may attend numerous schools, and therefore lack the ability to totally feel that they belong in their educational setting.

Attendance is also impacted by lack of connection and belonging. Pupils who do not feel strongly connected with their peers and teachers will not want to be at school. Equally pupils with attachment issues will not want to leave their parents.

Evans (2024) found that their are nine key factors that may influence pupils' perceptions of school and belonging: teacher-student relationship, peer relationships and support, individual traits and personality, parental support, extra curricular activities, school climate, student aspiration, academic achievement, wellbeing and self-esteem. Therefore, schools which use these levers to build belonging are much more likely to boost engagement, wellbeing and achievement.

So what is belonging?

• Hagerty et al (1993) found that connectedness occurs ‘when a person is actively involved with another person, object, group or environment’.

• Goodenow's (1993) research summed up belonging at school as the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others in the school social environment.

• Allen et al.(2021) described belonging as“the subjective feeling of deep connection with social groups, physical places, and individual and collective experiences”.

• Whilst Riley (2022) argued that belonging is a relational, cultural and geographic concept, a complex emotion triggered by a range of factors. It’s a sense of being somewhere you can be confident you will fit in, a feeling of being safe in your identity and of being at home in a place.