Centering Social Fit, Self-Concept Fit, Goal Fit, and Resource Fit as Core Elements of Students’ Experiences of Belonging at School

A common theme across psychological research on belonging in school has been a focus on the social—on the quality of students’ connections to others in the school environment. In this review, I argue that when a student indicates that they do or do not “feel like I belong at my school,” social connections are necessary but not sufficient to fully explain that experience. Extending Schmader and Sedikides’ State Authenticity as Fit to Environment model, I instead propose that this experience hinges on four factors: the degrees to which (a) teachers and other students accept, value, and include a student socially (social fit), (b) an academic setting’s structures and norms support and afford their personal goals and values (goal fit), (c) the school environment naturally activates or supports their connections to their most valued identities (self-concept fit), and (d) the school environment provides sufficient financial, nutritional, health, and safety resources to meet their needs in these domains (resource fit). In reviewing how students, especially those from from historically under-researched backgrounds, define belonging, I demonstrate both the divergence of their definitions from the traditional psychological focus on social connections alone, and the convergence of their definitions with these four forms of person–environment fit. I therefore argue that shifting to a model of students’ experiences of belonging that centers on self-concept, goal, resource and social fit would provide an especially fruitful future for research on this subject.