Year of Award

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Name

School Psychology

Department or School/College

Psychology

Committee Chair

Greg Machek

Commitee Members

Greg Machek, Jacqueline Brown, Jayna Mumbauer

Publisher

University of Montana

Subject Categories

Child Psychology | School Psychology

Abstract

School belonging is an important factor to examine when considering the well-being of school-aged children. Factors that may influence a student’s sense of school belonging include bias-based victimization and the quality of teacher-student relationships. Many studies have examined these three variables independently or have analyzed the interaction of two of these variables. However, there are very few studies that have specifically looked at the effects of bias-based victimization and the quality of teacher-student relationships on school belonging. In order to fill these gaps in the research, this study sampled participants using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online crowdsourcing platform that is used to disseminate surveys and collect data across the United States. These participants were asked to reflect upon their high school experiences and complete a survey to capture data regarding their reflections on bias-based bullying experiences (specifically bullying on the basis of one’s race/ethnicity, gender identity/sexual orientation, and disability status), their perceived quality of teacher-student relationships, and their perceived sense of school belonging. The results showed an unexpected positive correlation between bias-based victimization and school belonging, such that increased levels of victimization were associated with a higher sense of school belonging. Teacher-student relationship quality moderated this relationship, with high quality teacher-student relationships showing the strongest correlation between victimization and school belonging. The findings from this study suggest that students who are victimized receive additional attention from teachers, which improves the quality of their teacher-student relationship and, as a result, increases their sense of school belonging. This study adds to the literature by showing a surprising positive trend in school belonging and provides possible directions for future research within this area of study.

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© Copyright 2023 Charlotte J. Moss