Date of Award

Fall 2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Foundations & Leadership

Program/Concentration

Educational Psychology and Program Evaluation

Committee Director

Linda Bol

Committee Member

Kristin Gansle

Committee Member

Joanna Garner

Abstract

In higher education, sense of belonging has been linked to improved outcomes such as retention and academic achievement (e,g., Pittman & Richmond, 2007). Previous research has also identified participation in learning communities and campus residency as interventions which improve sense of belonging for students in this context (e.g., Solanki et al., 2019; Soria & Roberts, 2021). However, little research has been conducted to empirically study sense of belonging as a multidimensional construct, and no research has investigated interactions between on-campus residency and learning community participation on its development.

Data were collected from 1,072 first-year students on the Sense of Belonging questionnaire (Hoffman et al., 2002). Results revealed four dimensions of belonging: perceived peer support, perceived faculty support, perceived classroom comfort, and perceived isolation. Results also revealed significant main effects of learning community participation and interactions between learning communities and campus residency. Students who participated in a learning community but lived off campus reported greatest perceived peer support and perceived faculty support along with lowest perceived isolation of all participant groups. Students who participated in a learning community and lived on campus reported greater perceived peer support and perceived faculty support, along with lower perceived isolation than their non-learning community, on-campus counterparts. Students who lived off-campus and did not participate in a learning community reported the lowest perceived peer support and perceived faculty support, and the greatest perceived isolation, of all participant groups. These findings support previous scholarship on the relationship between learning communities and campus residency in the development of sense of belonging in undergraduate students.

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DOI

10.25777/47wh-mp66

ISBN

9798381446746

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