Sense of belonging during a global pandemic: a case of accounting students

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we use the context of a global pandemic and subsequent movement between on-campus and online teaching to explore the concept of students’ sense of belonging. We ask how the sense of belonging in accounting students has been impacted during the pandemic and what are the lessons learned from such observations. Considering teaching and learning at University A (The University’s name is blind as per the review requirement of the journal), New Zealand as a case study, and the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment, we explore a sense of belonging in our accounting students. We speculate that whether the new circumstances be beneficial or detrimental to students’ sense of belonging would depend on many factors. Our study offers practical implications for accounting educators and the higher education sector to enhance students’ sense of belonging when facing disruption.

KEYWORDS:

• Sense of belonging
• accounting education
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 AFAANZ (2021).

2 We use these terms in the following way: online (pure online/distant teaching with no face to face), hybrid (either concurrently teaching online and face to face, or switching between the two), face to face (only teaching in person).

3 There are no statistics on how many actual students remained in the campus area, but during the first lockdown, residential colleges reported having very few students remaining.

4 At University A, we use the term ‘paper’ to describe a ‘unit’ or ‘course’ lasting 13 weeks.

5 Level 2 was a government-mandated state in New Zealand. Level 4 was lockdown, level 3 was a very cautious approach (and teaching was still online) and level 2 was more relaxed and some teaching was able to be back face to face with appropriate social distancing.