The question.
What can students’ reports of belonging and emotional support tell us about engagement with school? This project brings those experiences into a proposed study of attendance and academic achievement among adolescent boys.
The proposed approach.
The design considers student survey responses alongside educational indicators. A central measurement question is how closely available survey items represent the concepts of interest. Feeling emotionally supported, for example, is not automatically a direct measure of emotional regulation ability.
What the design can—and cannot—show.
The project is correlational. Associations could help refine questions and identify patterns worth investigating; they would not, by themselves, establish that belonging causes an improvement in achievement or attendance.
Current stage.
The poster was prepared for NERA 2026. The research remains a proposed study, with data access pending and no empirical results to report. The relationships shown in the conceptual model are hypotheses.
Reading behind the question
- Bergin & Bergin (2009). Attachment in the classroom.
- Côté-Lussier & Fitzpatrick (2016). Feelings of safety at school, socioemotional functioning, and classroom engagement.
- Massachusetts DESE. Views of Climate and Learning (VOCAL) Survey Project.