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ABSTRACT
Addressing worldwide declines in adolescents’ school belonging requires identifying factors to target in reversing this trend. We hypothesized that adolescents with higher levels of teacher connection and perspective-taking would have greater school belonging and that the joint association of both factors with school belonging would be more than additive. We analysed cross-sectional survey data from 15-year-olds in 62 countries (N = 392,096) collected in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment. Measures were expressed in standard deviation (SD) units. Based on regression models with both factors plus covariates, school belonging increased 0.12 (95% CI: 0.11, 0.13) units for a 1.00 SD increase in teacher connection and 0.09 units (95% CI: 0.08, 0.10) for a 1.00 SD increase in perspective-taking. The observed (joint) association of both factors with school belonging was 19.0% greater than the expected (additive) association. Efforts to increase teacher connection and perspective-taking could improve school belonging.
Acknowledgments
The data used in this publication come from PISA Citation2018 (https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2018database). The views expressed here are those of the authors. They are not necessarily those of PISA.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
Data from the Programme for International Student Assessment is publicly available for download from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s website: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2018database/.
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2023.2254136
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Notes on contributors
Tracy Dearth-Wesley
Tracy Dearth-Wesley is a Senior Research Associate in the Columbia-Bassett Program.
Allison N Herman
Allison N. Herman is a Research Associate in the Columbia-Bassett Program.
Robert C. Whitaker
Robert C. Whitaker is a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Director of Research and Research Education in the Columbia-Bassett Program, a medical education track within the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Research in the program examines how relationships in healthcare, education, and human services can promote well-being by being more responsive to people’s life experiences.