Classroom Belonging and Student Performance in the Introductory Engineering Classroom

This Complete Paper – Research describes a pilot study among post-secondary students involved in their first engineering-specific class and explores the concept of classroom belonging. The hypothetical premise of this research is that grade performance is, in part, determined by a student’s sense of belonging in a classroom. Further, “classroom belonging” is a function of several factors including social belonging, engineering self-efficacy, engineering identity and closeness to others in the classroom. This study revealed that a student’s sense of classroom belonging has a significant, positive impact on grade performance. The most important components of classroom belonging are the student’s sense of social belonging in the classroom and their engineering identity. The survey-based quantitative data were complemented with qualitative interviews with underrepresented minority engineering students. These allowed us to explore their classroom belonging experiences and showed that classroom belonging is a familiar concept and a function of two separate sources of belonging: academic belonging and social belonging. Academic selfefficacy, curriculum content motivation and an ability to share academic struggles with others were important contributors to academic belonging. Social similarity, successful team experiences and a general sense of caring were also considered helpful to building social belonging in the classroom. Implications and ideas to build engineering classroom belonging from this research are discussed. Key Concepts: social belonging, engineering identity, engineering task self-efficacy, closeness 1.0 Classroom Belonging For this paper, we are conceptualizing that classroom belonging is defined as a relationship between a student’s sense of social belonging, their engineering identity, their engineering selfefficacy and their interpersonal closeness to the social elements that exist with a classroom – the professor, TAs and other students, as shown in Figure 1. We hypothesize that these factors contribute to a student’s sense of belonging in an engineering classroom. The need for social belonging – seeing oneself as socially connected – is often considered a basic human need (Baumeister and Leary 1995). Social belonging has been linked to a range of positive, prosocial outcomes such a improved self-efficacy (Bong and Skaalvik 2003), better health outcomes (Bolger, Zuckerman, and Kessler 2000), improved team effectiveness (Mathieu et al. 2008) and better academic performance within the classroom (Goodenow 1993). Social belonging in the classroom or its reverse, belonging uncertainty (Walton and Cohen 2007), has proven to be a significant moderating variable for classroom performance particularly among less experienced students, such as first year students, and among minority and female students (Walton et al. 2012). Engineering identity which, as defined by Tonso (2006; 2014), includes several factors: thinking about oneself as an engineer, the inner belief that one is performing as an engineer, and ultimately believing that one is thought of by others as an engineer. Engineering identity is an important contributor to both social belonging and classroom grade performance. Engineering self-efficacy, as defined by Mamaril et al. (2016), is the belief by the engineering student in their own ability to successfully achieve engineering tasks, and this in turn motivates them to act in ways that make their success within the engineering classroom more likely. Finally, interpersonal closeness, as defined by Aron et al. (1991; 1997; 2013), is the desire to expand personal efficacy by developing interpersonal relationships that expand the “self” into “others. ” The concept of closeness applies to the many social structures that exist within a classroom – for example, the student’s feeling of closeness to another student, a project team, the TAs and professor. For the purposes of this research we are considering interpersonal closeness and social belonging as interrelated but separate constructs. For example, we hypothesize that a student can feel classroom belonging without closeness to a specific person and conversely, a student can be close to another person in the classroom and still feel as if they did not belong. Our a priori hypothesis is that classroom belonging is a latent construct defined by interrelationship of a student’s feelings of social belonging, a student’s sense of engineering selfefficacy and engineering identity, and their interpersonal closeness with the social structures within the engineering classroom. We further hypothesize that classroom belonging will have a direct and positive effect on grade performance.