From Either-Or to All Together: Integrating Universal and Relativistic Approaches to Belonging and Engagement in the First Year of Middle School

Schools are designed to foster growth and learning while promoting positive educational outcomes for all students. Yet, there is some evidence that the education system is not meeting the needs of all students, nor are achievement outcomes the same for everyone. Some of the identified challenges seem to be developmentally based, whereas others are evident among different demographic subgroups. Developmental differences are apparent in many aspects of academic functioning, such as student motivation and engagement, which peak when students enter school and normatively decline, relatively steadily, throughout students' educational careers. Demographic disparities are even more pronounced, represented, for example, in achievement gaps that continue to persist for certain subgroups of students. These two types of challenges, based on developmental changes and demographic disparities, seem to be operating in tandem. For example, the first year of middle school appears to be a particularly crucial time when students' academic functioning, engagement, and achievement are beginning to show declines for all students, but especially for those from marginalized backgrounds. Researchers studying ways to support students have provided evidence that a sense of belonging is an important correlate of many positive educational and personal outcomes, including student motivation and engagement. Despite evidence that a sense of belonging can support engagement, existing research often adopts either a universal approach in which researchers assume that the belonging operates similarly for all students, or a relativistic perspective, in which researchers focus on specific marginalized subgroups, without examining heterogeneity within these subgroups, leaving open the question of whether findings apply to other subgroups. This "either-or" approach has led to fragmented information about how to foster belonging, with neither approach able to identify practices that have been shown to work for everyone in diverse classrooms. Therefore, the current study employed a "both-and" approach, suggesting that a sense of belonging may universally support engagement while also requiring tailored support for specific subgroups. Participants included a demographically diverse sample of sixth-grade middle school students. Results from research question one revealed that belonging was significantly associated with both fall and spring engagement and predicted changes in engagement over time, even when controlling for race/ethnicity and immigration background. Moderation analyses showed that the relationship between belonging and engagement remained consistent across demographic factors; neither racial/ethnic group, immigration background, nor the intersection of these factors moderated this association. However, exploratory subgroup analyses revealed some variation across subgroups. Belonging had a positive and significant concurrent and cross-time relationship with engagement for most groups. In contrast, the results for belonging as a predictor of changes in engagement over time were most evident for Asian, Latinx, and Multilingual students. These findings provide additional evidence that belonging could be a universal anchor for engagement within schools, while also reinforcing the importance of investigating subgroup-specific experiences to inform research and practice that better reflects the diversity of student experiences.