Research Articles

01/06/2025
9 Ways to Support Student Mental Health (Opinion)

In my 48 years working in public education, I have never seen conditions as challenging for students’ mental health as these. This issue is an acute concern for all the schools and districts I am privileged to collaborate with.

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04/18/2024
The Importance of Student Sense of Belonging

Sense of belonging refers to the extent to which students feel personally accepted, included, and supported at school, and includes school-based experiences, students’ relationships with teachers and peers, and students’ general feelings about school.

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12/13/2022
What We Know and What We Need To Find Out

This article reviews 12 meta-analyses of universal, school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs for children from early childhood education through high school. The aims were to assess the breath and consistency of outcomes across meta-analyses, and the potential influence of different moderators (i.e., individual, programmatic, ecological, and methodological) on program impacts.

Read Full Article: Engagement Belonging

05/12/2017
School Values: A Comparison of School Belonging With Student Achievement

School vision and mission statements are an explicit indication of a school’s priorities. Research has found academic motivation, mental health promotion, and school belonging to be the most frequently cited themes in these statements. The present study sought to examine whether these themes relate to student academic achievement, as indicated by National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) scores.

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04/01/2011
Social motivation in the secondary classroom

Scholars have amassed robust evidence that teacher-student relationships (TSR) are associated with a multitude of valued student outcomes. Although much of this research has focused on elementary-school students, TSR are vital at the secondary-school level. Drawing from a sample of 922 middle and high school students and their 127 teachers in six different schools, this article examines these relationships with three goals in mind. 

Read Full Article: Engagement Belonging