Entering a school, one can quickly get a sense of the culture from the way people interact with each other: students with students, adults with students, and adults with adults. A culture has many features, and no single culture can be characterized as “right” or “best;” a positive culture may be more or less formal, more or less quiet, more or less structured. But there are some features of culture that matter enormously because they significantly impact student learning. Key among these is a sense of belonging. When students feel a sense of personal connection, when they get the message: you belong and can be successful in this community (the classroom, the school, or an affiliation group within the school), they are more likely to engage academically and to persevere with challenging tasks. <6>

The Problem

There is a widespread belief that academic success and interpersonal behavior are reflections of the characteristics of individual students—of their intelligence and their character. The systems commonly put in place to manage students’ conduct and to reward or punish their academic performance reinforce that belief. However, a large body of research suggests that both academic and interpersonal behavior are significantly influenced by characteristics of the environment. When students believe that academic success can be achieved with effort, and that mistakes can be opportunities to learn and improve, they are more likely to devote themselves to learning and less likely to avoid active participation in the classroom. <7> But it is a far more demanding task for teachers to treat every student’s thinking as relevant than to rely on the students with raised hands who can quickly provide the right answer. Relatedly, many studies have found that students who report interpersonal relationships with teachers that are supportive and caring have more positive academic values and attitudes toward school work, <8> and attend school more often. <9> But teachers may struggle to maintain positive relationships when a student’s conduct is disrupting their instruction.

Students who experience multiple adverse childhood events, such as witnessing or experiencing violence, are more likely to have trouble remaining calm and focused in school. These students are particularly in need of positive relationships, but their conduct may make it particularly challenging for teachers to respond positively. <10> In addition, secondary teachers may legitimately feel that they have too little time to develop personal relationships with each of their students because they teach many different classes. 

What Can Be Done?

1. Students need to be noticed and heard. Particularly as they move into higher grades, students can go through an entire day of classes barely uttering a word. Developing a sense of belonging happens in relationship to other people; it is unlikely to develop at all if students have no voice during the school day except to provide responses to closed (fill-in-the-blank) questions. Opportunities for students to share what they personally value (whether in speaking or writing) have been shown to have a significant effect on learning. In one study, students expressed two types of teacher behaviors that they found motivating: the first was learning about students’ lives outside of school, and the second was communicating directly and regularly about the student’s academic progress. <12> Students want teachers to care about whether they understand what is being taught, and to work at making academic material accessible. There is substantial evidence that teachers play an important motivating role, as well, when they hold high expectations for students. Evidence suggests this effect is stronger for Black students than for White students. <13>
2. Students need to know that the struggles they experience are not unique, and are a normal part of learning. When students get negative feedback on a paper or fail a test, they can easily feel isolated and inadequate. This is particularly true of students who experience stereotype threat (a belief that one’s performance may reinforce societal expectations of inferiority). <14> They need to understand that many of those whom they see as successful are experiencing or have experienced similar struggles. Feelings of inadequacy can be diminished when teachers treat student ideas and mistakes as interesting and helpful because they reveal ways of thinking that are informative for the learning process. For example, students who calculate the border of a 10x10 grid as 40 draw an incorrect but very logical conclusion. By treating the answer of 40 as interesting because it is logical and exploring why the logic produces a wrong answer allows the students who got the incorrect answer to see their thinking as helpful to learning. 
   

To maintain positive relationships among adults and students, it is essential that there be clear, school-wide expectations about significantly disruptive conduct that are simultaneously sensitive to the many reasons for the disruptive conduct and the impact of that conduct on the teacher and other students. While there is no single right way to accomplish this goal, multiple research-based programs support schools in this effort. <15>

Common features include:

• assigning the problem to the conduct and not to the student, 
• eliciting and then listening to the student’s explanation for their conduct, 
• clarifying the reason that the conduct is considered problematic, including concerns about the ways in which it may harm the student and/or harm others, and
• providing a path forward that preserves the student’s dignity even while confirming boundaries. 

In general, the more students feel a sense of belonging, the less likely they will be to engage in aggressive or harmful conduct.