Kelly‐Ann Allen, Shannon McCarthy, Rania Sawalhi, Emily Berger, Fiona May, Lefteris Patlamazoglou, Nicholas Gamble, Christine Grové, Gerald Wurf, Elisa Jones Arango, William Warton, Andrea Reupert
{"title":"Navigating school belonging in Qatari schools: A mixed‐methods study of student perspectives","authors":"Kelly‐Ann Allen, Shannon McCarthy, Rania Sawalhi, Emily Berger, Fiona May, Lefteris Patlamazoglou, Nicholas Gamble, Christine Grové, Gerald Wurf, Elisa Jones Arango, William Warton, Andrea Reupert","doi":"10.1111/ejed.12704","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"A sense of school belonging is essential for adolescent development, though there is limited research investigating ways to improve students' sense of school belonging in Qatar. With 116 Qatari secondary school students, the current study explored student perspectives of ways teachers and schools could improve their sense of school belonging. Students responded to a survey including open‐ended questions and a descriptive scale measuring the usefulness of established belonging strategies during remote learning, in‐person, or all the time (both). Encouragement and support from teachers were found to be useful all the time, with school activities during breaks and opportunities to make friends only being useful during school‐based learning. From the examination of open‐ended responses using a hybrid qualitative approach with inductive and deductive coding, two overarching themes each at the teacher‐level and school‐level were found, defined by several subthemes. Belonging practices at the teacher‐level included caring and supportive teachers and teachers treating students as people. Belonging practices at the school‐level included student engagement and a positive and supportive school environment. For Qatari students practices such as prioritising supportive student–teacher relationships, introducing policies which promote a respectful, fair and safe environment, and offering school wide‐extracurricular activities that encourage peer connections are important to develop their sense of school belonging.","PeriodicalId":47585,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Journal of Education","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12704","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
A sense of school belonging is essential for adolescent development, though there is limited research investigating ways to improve students' sense of school belonging in Qatar. With 116 Qatari secondary school students, the current study explored student perspectives of ways teachers and schools could improve their sense of school belonging. Students responded to a survey including open‐ended questions and a descriptive scale measuring the usefulness of established belonging strategies during remote learning, in‐person, or all the time (both). Encouragement and support from teachers were found to be useful all the time, with school activities during breaks and opportunities to make friends only being useful during school‐based learning. From the examination of open‐ended responses using a hybrid qualitative approach with inductive and deductive coding, two overarching themes each at the teacher‐level and school‐level were found, defined by several subthemes. Belonging practices at the teacher‐level included caring and supportive teachers and teachers treating students as people. Belonging practices at the school‐level included student engagement and a positive and supportive school environment. For Qatari students practices such as prioritising supportive student–teacher relationships, introducing policies which promote a respectful, fair and safe environment, and offering school wide‐extracurricular activities that encourage peer connections are important to develop their sense of school belonging.
期刊介绍:
The prime aims of the European Journal of Education are: - To examine, compare and assess education policies, trends, reforms and programmes of European countries in an international perspective - To disseminate policy debates and research results to a wide audience of academics, researchers, practitioners and students of education sciences - To contribute to the policy debate at the national and European level by providing European administrators and policy-makers in international organisations, national and local governments with comparative and up-to-date material centred on specific themes of common interest.