School Belonging Essay

Intro

The Effects of School Size on Student’s Sense of Belonging

In 2013, the Council for American Private Schools (http://www.capenet.org/facts.html) reported that approximately 5.3 million students attended private schools in the United States, and of those 5.3 million students, 80% are enrolled in schools of religious affiliation. Every year, parents choose private and religious schools in the belief that the investment in the lives and educations of their children will yield their them a brighter future than their public school counterparts (CAPE, Outlook, February 2015). A recent independent survey (The School choice journey; The Ride to Independent Schools: 2300 families tell us about their journey) revealed that when choosing an independent school, parents place a high value on academic rigor, love of learning, class size, character development, emotional and social development and lastly, college placement. Although parents desire academic rigor for their children, they are more likely to seek

Lee & Robbins (1995), divide belongingness into three components: companionship, affiliation, and connectedness; therefore, efforts to measure students’ sense of belonging must include all three of these components. Social connectedness and the sense of “being a part” are multifaceted aspects of belongingness that require a subjective measurement of students’ feelings about themselves, their peer groups, and their school environment (Lee & Robbins, 1995). Need to Belong (NTB) is a need that drives individuals toward connectedness which is most often birthed and cultivated by the interpersonal relationships of a community (Vanier, 1989). A study by Baumeister and Leary (1995) concluded that NTB is satisfied only by “frequent, affectively pleasant interactions with a few other people” within the context of genuine, reciprocal “affective concern” for each individual’s welfare