Category: annotated bibliography

This Stanford dschool text is an illustrated guide to using core levers of design to facilitate and foster rituals, spaces, roles/responsibilities, and systems that support feelings of belonging to emerge. The book’s premise is that groups are unlikely to thrive unless people feel included and valued, and that the experience of belonging has the capacity…

This research study overviews how belonging is framed in higher education studies, particularly in relation to learners with non-majority identities: students with racial/ethnic minority identities, or who are LGTBQ+, have disabilities, or are first generation. The study begins from the recognition that marginalized identity groups experience increased stress and barriers to belonging in higher education,…

This psychology-based perspective on belonging frames the idea that there is currently a crisis of belonging in Western society, and overviews the concept of situation-crafting, or small actions that can bolster belonging, as a means of addressing it. The text emphasizes controlled-trial studies to support its claims, but encourages reflection on core values and expressing…

This US education-centred book focuses on belonging through dignity as a fundamental need, foundational to educational change and to democratic and equitable education. It approaches dignity as the core of belonging, and dignity prioritization as a path to disrupting the common cycle of equity dysfunction in school settings, particularly with regards to failed efforts to…

This paper is a meta-analysis, overviewing more than fifty other studies on individual and social level factors that influence school belonging. Its intention is to identify factors schools should emphasize to best support students. It focuses on specific themes – academic motivation, emotional stability, personal characteristics, parent support, peer support, teacher support, gender, race and…

This book’s primary argument, grounded in historical and anthropological contrasts to modernity, is that interconnectedness and adversity can lead to greater social cohesion and feelings of belonging. More military than education-focused, and critiqued for nostalgic and ahistorical representation of pre-modern experiences, the book’s focus on how wealth accumulation and personal property end up dividing people’s…

This book explores belonging within a globalized society through a political lens, framing the multiple and sometimes contradictory meanings of the boundaries of identity in multi-national and multi-cultural contexts. It focuses specifically on the concept of belonging by choice, and positions this as a distinctive feature of modern society. It explores how symbols operate in…

A higher education-focused book with a specific lens on students’ social identities – particularly race, gender, and sexual orientation –  as critical dimensions of how belonging is experienced and success is fostered (or not fostered) institutionally. Belonging is presented as a basic human need shaping students’ academic goals, achievements, and retention, and as being particularly…