Abstract
This study investigated student belonging in high school. High school is a time in which students participate in academic and non-academic activities at school and develop a sense of belonging with friends, relationships with teachers and coaches, and value academic outcomes. This quantitative study will investigate the relationship between social and emotional learning, classroom engagement, and extracurricular activity participation to school belonging in high school students, to gain insight on student belonging in high school. The results of this study show there is statistically significant evidence that destressing activities, participation in extracurricular activities, and teacher’s value all play a role in student belonging. The two most influential of these are teachers’ value and listening through classroom engagement and destressing activities through social-emotional learning. There is also evidence that extracurricular activities influence belonging, but more information is needed to help determine what type of extracurricular activities may lead to increased student belonging.
The result of this study gives school leaders evidence to fully support initiatives for improving classroom engagement. Leaders also have support to implement SEL curriculum into their school programming. Extracurricular activities should be investigated further, with specific data on the type of extracurricular activities involved in. These initiatives will help students find a sense of belonging in their schools.
Keywords: school belonging, social-emotional learning, classroom engagement, extracurricular activities, teacher’s value, and listening