Chris Rozek

Excellent thread summarizing this new paper in our special issue on School Belonging in Ed Psych Review doi.org/10.1007/s106...

🛑🛑🛑 and read this free open access paper introducing the Brilliance-Belonging Model, which shows how cultural beliefs about ability lead to inequitable outcomes in education through perceptions of belonging and other downstream psychological mechanisms!

As @maeganarney.bsky.social advisor, I’m biased, but I completely agree and encourage a vote for Maegan Arney for MotSIG junior co-chair!

Article titled “Who Gets to Belong in College? An Empirical Review of How Institutions Can Assess and Expand Opportunities for Belonging on Campus,” published in Educational Psychology Review (2025). Abstract: Over a dozen rigorous randomized-controlled trials show that recognizing worries about belonging in a new school as normal and as improving with time can help students stay engaged, build relationships, and succeed. Such “social-belonging” interventions can help students take advantage of opportunities available to them to develop their belonging in college—yet what is the institutional role? Drawing on past literature, and reporting novel data from the College Transition Collaborative’s massive trial of the social-belonging intervention (N = 15,143 control-condition students in 374 “local-identity” groups across 22 representative colleges and universities; Walton et al., 2023), we explore who gets to belong in college and what institutional leaders can do to expand these opportunities. First, we find that opportunities for belonging (i.e., “belonging affordances”) vary widely, both across institutions and systematically across groups. Notably, Black, Asian, and first-generation college student groups are each less likely than other groups to have minimally adequate opportunities for belonging. Second, all institutions are serving some student groups well, but all can improve: none provides adequate belonging affordances for all groups. Third, four classes of institutional factors predict belonging affordances at the identity-group level: (1) greater in-group representation, (2) more inclusive cultures, (3) greater opportunities for strong relationships, and (4) greater opportunities for productive learning. We conclude by discussing how institutions can learn for whom they are creating opportunities for belonging and for whom they are not, and how institutions can expand opportunities for belonging for groups that are not yet well served.

Although this isn’t exactly new news, I wanted to share more about a paper that came out while I was on maternity leave: “Who Gets to Belong in College? An Empirical Review of How Institutions Can Assess and Expand Opportunities for Belonging on Campus,” published in Educational Psychology Review. 🧵

Congratulations— SO happy for you!!!

I argue that historically, educational and social psychology have largely equated belonging with social connectedness. Social connectedness is, of course, essential for belonging.

🚨 One issue in school belonging research is we don't have a good definition for it yet! It is MUCH MORE than just positive relationships. This MUST READ paper puts forth a much needed framework for defining school belonging with important implications for research & practice bsky.app/profile/alex...

‼️ If you care about how institutions can support STUDENT BELONGING, make sure to read: link.springer.com/article/10.1...! They surveyed 15k+ students to uncover 4 important factors that promote belonging and found variation in how different groups of students felt belonging across context ‼️

Excited to be featured by the Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring chatting about a recent paper with Katherine Emerson, Maithreyi Gopalan, and Greg Walton. We looked at actionable ways institutions can create belonging opportunities for students.

Abstract for new PNAS article

It’s a tough time for STEM education research right now, but we are still excited to share our new PNAS paper, “Divergence in children’s gender stereotypes and motivation across STEM fields”! We have big surveys (2,765 students in Grades 1-12), 2 pre-registered studies, and open data. (1/13)

Interesting in SCHOOL BELONGING?? We hope you can join us tonight at AERA for a mega-session on cutting edge new belonging perspectives and research!

🚨 Important new paper from the Ed Psych Review special issue on belonging. This paper considers how racial/ethnic identity relates to school belonging and how that might depend on whether asset-based pedagogy is being used in classrooms

Love this post! ❤️

WOW!!! This is such great news! I'm more hit or miss for seeing things on academic social media now, so I'm sorry I missed this initially, but I'm so excited to come on and see this news. Very happy to see your excellent work acknowledged in this way!

I don't work much with that age group, but both major K-12 belonging meta-analyses exclude elementary school/primary school students (Allen et al., 2018; Korpershoek et al., 2020). This paper is one option (but called engagement: doi.org/10.1037/a002...) or (www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....)

I think you would have to adapt it for children like we do with math anxiety, likely defining what you mean by belonging or comfort or acceptance, making sure they understood, & then likely use pictures to have them point to the one that matches their feelings bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/sites.wustl....

Excited for this paper on college belonging and academic outcomes to be out now! Free view only link (rdcu.be/d2fv2). ResearchGate (www.researchgate.net/publication/...)

Diversity and inclusion have greater support than most Americans think - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Diversity and inclusion have greater support than most Americans think

New publication alert! 🚨 My former graduate student (Dr. Naomi Isenberg) and I have a new paper in Scientific Reports about how Americans underestimate diversity support and that correcting this boosts inclusion.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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For college students (psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-...). For adolescents (and generally the most popular measure), PSSM (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1.... A short, 4-item scale for adolescents (psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-...). A discussion of measures (www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...).

Hi! I'm a social psychologist in a Department of Education, and I'm interested in student belonging, emotions, motivation, and interventions. I mostly work with adolescents. See below for an example of my belonging theory work done with awesome collaborators :) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....