Fostering College Students’ Sense of Belonging by Building Help‐Seeking Behaviors in an Academic Recovery Program

ABSTRACT Students, particularly those at academic risk, often experience feelings of alienation and lack a sense of belonging. This can make them reluctant to seek help. A sense of belonging and the willingness to seek help are therefore closely linked. Persistent socioeconomic disparities, inherited from apartheid, make this especially challenging for Black students in South African higher education, who are, in many ways, already marginalized. At the University of Cape Town (UCT), the COVID‐19 pandemic and the shift to remote teaching and learning, led to a significant increase in the number of students in this group that faced academic exclusion. To address this issue, an initiative for academic recovery was developed to help students re‐engage with their studies. A key objective was to encourage students to view help‐seeking as a strategy for future academic success. Using grounded theory analytic techniques, we analyzed 270 student submissions from two cycles of the program to evaluate changes in help‐seeking behavior before and after explicit instruction on help‐seeking strategies. Our analysis revealed a strong connection between help‐seeking behavior and a sense of belonging. As students increased their engagement in help‐seeking behaviors, they also reported a greater sense of connection to both their peers and the institution. We conclude that this approach, therefore, not only supports academic recovery but also fosters a sense of belonging among students, thereby offering a practical, capacity‐building method to enhance belonging.