Building upon existing research conducted in face-to-face universities, our research explored whether, in the context of a distance learning institution, the positive association between subjective socioeconomic status and academic performance can be explained by students’ sense of belonging. To that end, we conducted a three-wave correlational study with 2,261 students enrolled in Social Psychology in a distance learning university. At the start of the academic year, we measured participants’ subjective socioeconomic status relative to other students alongside their initial expectations in terms of time investment and grades and other relevant covariates. Midway through the course, we assessed their sense of belonging to the university and, at the end, we recorded their grades. Results suggested that sense of belonging potentially serves as a mediating factor in the positive relationship between subjective socioeconomic status and grades even after accounting for variables like initial grade expectations, time commitment, gender, age, and employment situation. These findings emphasize the pivotal role of students’ psychological connection to the university in shaping their academic achievement, even within the expanding landscape of distance education.

Certaines études suggèrent que le projet de Charte des valeurs du PQ et la loi 21 ont nourri un sentiment d'exclusion chez les membres des religions minoritaires. Cependant, aucune étude ne permet à ce jour de comparer le sentiment d'appartenance des minorités religieuses avant et après la mise à l'agenda de ces projets législatifs. Ancrée dans la recherche sur les « événements focalisateurs » et reposant sur des données de trois sondages réalisés en 2012, 2014 et 2019, notre étude examine l'impact des débats sur laïcité sur le sentiment d'appartenance des immigrants racisés au Québec. Nos résultats démontrent qu'un déficit d'appartenance au Québec par rapport au Canada existait déjà en 2012, mais qu'il était circonscrit à certains groupes, notamment ceux de dénominations non chrétiennes et les non francophones. Nos analyses montrent aussi qu'avec les débats sur la laïcité, le déficit d'appartenance au Québec s'est étendu aux minorités non religieuses et aux francophones.

Literature on neighbourhood disputes has explored legal consciousness by focusing on identity, personal relationships, and community norms. However, it still remains unclear how affective factors and one’s sense of identity can influence the social practice of law and how the recursive relationship between law, emotion, and identity can influence life in particular communities. This study explores the dynamics of identity/alterity construction, and the role of emotion in shaping these dynamics during a neighbourhood conflict in Taipei, Taiwan. This dispute highlights how ordinary Taiwanese people’s legal consciousness is constituted through a culturally embedded sense of emotion (qíng) and belonging (zìjǐrén). Analysis of “The Noodle Shop Case” advances our understanding of the social presence and authority of law and the ways in which the role of law changes according to how individuals feel as they seek both mutual recognition and justice.

Physical education (PE) is a site that brings categories of difference under erasure, presenting a wicked problem for how a sense of belonging is cultivated for all learners to foster physical activity, health and wellbeing across the lifespan. This article explores how, we, as two teachers of PE, turned to postqualitative and ‘new’ materialist inquiry to generate a sense of belonging within a PE/environmental education nexus. Taking up Karen Barad’s agential realism and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s rhizome, we conceptualise this PE/environmental education nexus as a transdisciplinary approach to curriculum that enacts a knowing/being/thinking/doing between, and across, borders, boundaries, categories, fields and practices. We then show how this nexus was actualised in our teaching practices through two vignettes. As transdisciplinary approaches to curriculum are grounded in the lived, embodied and embedded (micro) politics of location, individuals are imbued with affective obligation to enact affirmative patterns of relating moment-to-moment. This means that a sense of belonging is always imminent, invented and co-created, bringing attention to situated obligations to enact good relations with ourselves, each other and wider planetary systems.

This qualitative study explored students’ experiences in a small, early-college secondary school in the United States that intentionally aims to create a culture promoting accelerated academic achievement, particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Past research in the fields of both educational and developmental psychology has suggested that students’ sense of belonging plays a significant role in their social and academic functioning. Few studies, however, have explored how students’ sense of belonging is supported in settings that emphasise accelerated academic performance. The present study focused on students’ own understanding of the factors that contribute to their sense of belonging in this academically rigorous environment and extends current accounts of belonging, most of which have been quantitative in nature. The results of the present study highlight a distinction between social and academic belonging. Social belonging originated from students’ descriptions of their relationships with teachers and friends, alongside a noted lack of bullying behaviour, and an open and accepting social environment. Academic belonging originated from students’ accounts of meeting rigorous expectations, participating in a range of educational opportunities, receiving academic support from teachers, and sharing similar academic interests with peers. Some students reported experiencing one type of belonging without the other, suggesting that social and academic belonging are distinct aspects of students’ overall sense of school belonging. Future research should examine whether academic belonging provides an alternative pathway to the sense of school belonging in academic environments beyond the context examined in the present study.

The general purpose of this work is to analyze the overlap between organizational identification and commitment. Specifically, our study focuses on the analysis of the differences and similarities between sense of belonging (a dimension of organizational identification) and affective commitment (a dimension of organizational commitment). In order to do this, we analyzed their discriminant validity and raised their relationship with variables that previous research had showed like precedent and subsequent variables of them: value congruence, perceived support, organizational citizenship behavior, and intention to continue in the organization. A total of 292 people at one organization completed surveys measuring the variables previously described. The results showed that sense of belonging and affective commitment are different concepts and they have different relationships with relation to precedent and subsequent variables. Affective commitment seems to be more useful than sense of belonging to predict organizational citizenship behavior aimed at the organization and intention to continue. Some practical implications are described.

Self-reported altruistic activity and social capital were examined as predictors of perceived happiness and life satisfaction among a sample of 4,486 Canadians aged 65 or more years from the 2003 Canadian General Social Services Survey, Cycle 17. Altruistic behaviour was measured by number of volunteer hours per month and helping others (not including family and friends). Social capital was measured using dimensions of belonging to one's community, community and neighbour trust, and group activities. Drawing on generativity and role-identity theories, it was hypothesised that altruistic behaviour and social capital are positively associated with well-being (using perceived happiness and life satisfaction), and that social capital mediates the relationship. For both perceived happiness and life satisfaction, after controlling for demographic, health status, and social support variables, measures of altruistic behaviour demonstrated statistically significant associations. Once measures of social capital were entered into the analysis in the final block, however, the altruistic behaviour variables were no longer statistically significant. Robust associations were found for social capital and the two measures of well-being, particularly between sense of belonging, trust in neighbours, and perceived happiness and life satisfaction. The findings suggest that altruistic behaviour is mediated by social capital. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to understanding the well-being of older Canadians.