A Leader's Impact on Students' Sense of Belonging

Sense of belonging is of vital importance to children's success in schools. School environments play an important role in socializing students toward education and educational attainment. Feeling a sense of belonging at school is linked to higher levels of student emotional and physical well-being and better academic performance and achievement. School belonging plays a critical role in how students see themselves and their futures. Within K-12 education, educational leaders are unaware of how their personal leadership styles enhance or detract from a sense of belonging among all students in their community. This study aims to measure the leadership style and characteristics that best promote a sense of belonging. Methods: Building leaders were interviewed about how they establish a positive climate and culture that promotes a sense of belonging. Responses were then triangulated with building school improvement plans and Panorama Education Survey data. The project team found that shared leadership (also known as distributive leadership), communication, and integrating social-emotional learning with equity work has the greatest impact on belonging. School leaders that had these three criteria had higher percentages of staff and students report a strong sense of belonging. The project team's first recommendation is to develop distributive leaders. School districts should mandate that leaders are trained in distributive leadership. Building leaders should develop various committees to spread leadership throughout the school. The second recommendation is to value relational leaders. State and district evaluation systems should include standards on relational leaders. The final recommendation is to integrate social emotional learning and equity work. District leaders must adopt the policy that everyone matters or no one matters. Leaders must place value on the most marginalized groups feeling a sense of belonging which then created a greater collective sense of belonging. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]