https://doi.org/10.3102%2F00346543070003323
(Could only access the abstract so here is the briefest notes…)
‘Conceptually, the review reflects a social cognitive perspetive on motivation. This theoretical framework maintains that individuals have psychological needs, that satsifaction of these needs affectsperception and behaviour, and that characteristics of the social context influence how well these needs are met. The concern here is how schools, as social organisations, address what is defined as a basic psychological need, the need to experience belongingness. The findings suggest that students’ experience of acceptance influences multiple dimensions of their benhaviour but that schools adopt organisational practices that neglect and may actually undermine students’ experience of membership in a supportive community.’
Key points of reflection from this article is how belongingness is necessary for good mental health, which has a holistically positive impact on the student experience and continuation and retention. the third level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is love and belonging needs. Humans are social creatures that crave interaction with others. This level of the hierarchy outlines the need for friendship, intimacy, family, and love. humans have the need to give and receive love, to feel like they belong in a group.
Tinto. V. (2008) ‘Access Without Support Is Not Opportunity’, Inside Higher Ed. Available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/06/09/access-without-support-not-opportunity (Accessed: 16th August 2022)
‘Basical skills learning communities proved to be particularly effective when the faculty and staff changed the way they taught the courses. Rather than rely on lecture and drill, they employed pedagogies of engagement such as cooperative learning and problem-based learning. As a result, students not only learned the material of the courses in a connected manner, they also learned that material together. As one student told us, ‘we learn better together’ […] ‘It has benefited me because I have gotten to know people. I am not alone anymore. It has helped me feel more comfortable, more confident. The more confident I feel, the better I do.”
Importance of creating communities as part of access in HE.
‘Can you imagine what changes we might achieve if we were all willing to use evidence to reconsider our own practices and together think differently about what we do.’
Love this so much, think it could be a nice opener quote.
‘The fact is that many colleges speak of the importance of increasingly the retention of low-income students and sometimes invest considerable resources to that end. But for all that effort most institutions do not take the student success seriously […] they adopt what parker calls the ‘add a course’ strategy in addressing the issues that face them […] Need to address the issue of student retention, in particular that of new students? Add a course, such as a Freshman Seminar, but do little to reshape the prevailing educational experiences of students during the first year […] the result is that efforts to enhance student retention are increasingly segmented into disconnected parts that are located at the margins of institutional academic life. Therefore while it is true that there are more than a few retention programs on our campuses, most institutions have done little to change the nature of college life, little to alter the prevailing character of student educational experience, and therefore little to address the deeper roots of student attrition. to be serious about the success of academically underprepared students, institutions would recognise that the roots of their attrition lie not only in student backgrounds and the academic skills they bring to campus, but in the very character of the educational settings in which students are asked to learn…’
Just stresses the importance of having an integrated and universal approach to a problem.
Wilcox, P., Winn, S. and Fyvie-Gauld, M. (2005) It was nothing to do with the
university, it was just the people: the role of social support in the first year
experience of higher education. Studies in Higher Education. 30 (6),
pp. 707–722. DOI: 10.1080/03075070500340036
- ‘Here the concept of ‘social support’ is used to analyse interviews with 34 first-year students, investigating the processes through which social integration (or lack of it) influenced their decision as to whether or not to leave university. Our data support the claim that making compatible friends is essential to retention’ (p. 707)
- ‘[…] most research on the first-year student experience has focused on social support within the academic environment, perhaps understandably so, but this has inevitably meant that less attention has been paid to students’ experience of the wider social world of the university (Haselgrove, 1994). Those authors who have investigated aspects of students’ lives outside their course have found that the wider student experience plays a significant role in their decisions about staying at university of leaving.’ (p.709).
- Even though this is a 2005 study, it still stands that I don’t think (!) there are formal reporting metrics for these softer external aspects of the student experience. Is there?
- FYI there is a good model and rationale for methodology on p.710 i.e. how samples were chosen, selection of the ‘constant comparative method of grounded theory’.
- ‘Of the 12 interviewees who withdrew, only one student was clear that his decision to leave was due solely to having made the wrong choice of subject. The remaining 11 students discussed between four and nine different factors, each of which contributed to their ultimate decision to leave, and three themes emerged – social support, academic and material factors […] the first of the three themes that emerged from our data, the creation of social support, ran through the majority of our interviews.’ (pp. 711-712).
- Acknowledging that belonging (i.e. a social factor) is not the be-all and end-all, but it is one of the three key factors identified and it’s something that arguably received less attention than academic (i.e. unhappy with course or struggled with independent study) and material (i.e. finances or accommodation).
- ‘Ozga and Sukhnandan argue thatwe need to understand non-completion as a ‘process of student-institutional negoti-ation’ (1998, p. 319). We agree, but argue it is also about students negotiating betweenthe old life they have left behind (family, home and friends) and the new life they haveahead of them. This is a complex process and ‘finding your place’, as one studentexpressed it, between old and new creates tensions which have to be resolved. Makingand maintaining social support with peers and (to a lesser extent) staff is central tothis process. Scheff (1990, p. 4) argues that the maintenance of social bonds is the‘most crucial motive’ for humans and threats to social bonds generate intense feelings.Indeed, survival is threatened when they do not exist, as Zoe explains:
- Looking back now I think why did I get so upset? Because you do feel really lonely and I think that really plays on your mind, so that you feel so bad, that you feel so, you know, you are just so desperate to go home, you really are desperate. … I think I went home for thehalf-term or something like that, I think I remember driving back up again thinking please, crash the car so that I didn’t have to go back. Just thinking ‘I so don’t want to have to go back’ so, and that’s how bad it got, wanting to crash the car so I didn’t have to go back.
- (Zoe, 20, withdrew; her emphases)
- ‘Students who fail to make compatible friends, or who continue to spend too much time with former friends or existing boyfriends/girlfriends, are fare more likely to report being homesick and, as Mackie (1998) found, they are likely to go home frequency and thus become more socially isolated at university In our sample, three-quarters of the students who withdrew talked about the difficulties of making friends’ (p. 714)
- ‘The key issues raised by students in relation to social support in the academic side of their new lives were relationships with staff, especially personal tutors, and relationships with other students on the course’ (p. 716)
- It would be interesting to unpack how both staff and students feel about being ‘friends’ with their course staff. Is it a valid form of friendship? A substitute if friendship with peers does not form? Free comments might be enlightening here.
- ‘[…] Suzanna, who experienced a number of personal problems during her first year, said that her tutor played a central role in her decision to stay on her course: I felt that I could tell her things and just and she helped me so much Like it if wasn’t for her I would have just left uni, I would have. (Suzanna, 21, stayed). However, a number of those who withdrew failed to get on well with their personal tutor. These students identified problems around lack of approachability, failure to listen and lack of availability of the personal tutor: My personal tutor, I wasn’t particularl impressed with, that he intimidated a little and I don’t, I felt that he didn’t particularly listen and I don’t think he would have been my first choice to have gone to about anything then.’ (Fiona, 18, withdrew).
- I wonder if staff fully comprehend this?
- ‘Our findings indicate that new students need support to deal with not only the academic culture shock of adapting to the higher education environment, but also the emotional shock of moving from the familiar home environment to a very different life at university. If academic staff are aware of the intense anxiety and fear that new students experience in relation to the social aspects of transition to university, personal tutors can play a significant part in conveying to students that these feelings are not unusual’ (p.719)
- Low-hanging fruit for Get Ready.
- ‘[…] the limitations of our research raise methodological questions around how best to capture the complexity of students’ social interactions over time’
- This is, in part, the focus of my study – how do we measure something as intangible as belonging? Institutions can’t conduct qualitative research with every student. So, what is the alternative? What methodology could be used?
- ‘what we are suggesting is that any analysis which fails to look at how social relationships are accomplished (or not) cannot give a full account of student retention.’ (p. 720).