Narrowing the achievement gaps in higher education with social-belonging intervention : A systematic review

Abstract

Review question / Objective: Summary - Social-belonging intervention belongs to the family of wise psychological interventions (for exhaustive review of wise interventions, see Walton & Crum, 2021). The latter notion was introduced by Walton (2014), for whom a wise intervention is “a precise tool, often instantiated in a brief exercise, to change a specific psychological process in a real-world setting” (p. 74). In line with this definition, a social-belonging intervention is a brief interactive exercise for freshman students conveying a message according to which worries and doubts about their social belonging in higher education are normal and they tend to dispel over time (Walton & Brady, 2021). This intervention seems to enhance academic outcomes of underrepresented or minority students in higher education (Walton & Brady, 2021), thus helping at narrowing (or closing) the achievement gaps. The main aim of this review is to examine in a rigorous way, using the systematic review methodology, quantitative studies addressing the question of the efficiency of social-belonging intervention in narrowing the achievement gaps in higher education (Research Question 1). Moreover, this review will also focus on analyzing other outcomes (educational and health), which may be impacted and enhanced by this intervention (Research Question 2). Finally, our goal is to investigate how to implement this intervention in the most efficient way (Research Question 3). Answers to these research questions may be a valuable resource to psychologists and educators willing to apply an evidence-based intervention in order to close or to narrow an achievement gap, as well as to psychologists and educational researchers working on higher education.