ABSTRACT

Sense of belonging has been used to gauge students’ adjustment to and persistence within higher education. Social class is associated with sense of belonging and working-class students report lower levels than their middle- and upper-class peers. In this study, I examined how working-class students described their sense of belonging through a critical constructivist narrative inquiry of 24 working-class students across two public research institutions. I found that students developed academic and co-curricular spaces of connectedness to challenge the broader campus culture that they saw as catering to middle- and upper-class students. The same resources were supportive or unsupportive depending on students’ circumstances. Belonging was viewed as something that students themselves created rather than was facilitated by institutions. Moreover, while participants expressed varying degrees of support, connectedness, and belonging, they rarely felt valued by institutions that exploited their labor or tokenized their presence under the guise of supporting diversity. Implications from this research suggest the need to revisit conceptualizations of sense of belonging while providing recognition of working-class contributions, increasing cultural competence, and developing additional structural supports for students.

摘要

归属感已被用来衡量学生对高等教育的适应和坚持。社会阶层与归属感有关，工薪阶层的学生报告的水平低于中上阶层的同龄人。在这项研究中，我通过对两个公共研究机构的 24 名工人阶级学生进行批判性建构主义叙事调查，研究了工人阶级学生如何描述他们的归属感。我发现学生们开发了学术和联课空间，以挑战他们认为迎合中上层学生的更广泛的校园文化。根据学生的情况，相同的资源是支持的还是不支持的。归属感被视为学生自己创造的东西，而不是由机构促成的。而且，虽然参与者表达了不同程度的支持、联系和归属感，但他们很少感到被剥削他们的劳动或打着支持多样性的幌子将他们的存在象征化的机构重视。这项研究的意义表明，需要重新审视归属感的概念，同时承认工人阶级的贡献，提高文化能力，并为学生提供额外的结构支持。