The Effect of Sense of School Belonging on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Review

Abstract

A sense of school belonging has been receiving a growing an increasing amount of attention in the educational community due to its numerous developmental and educational benefits. Nevertheless, research on the sense of school belonging has been scattered and has missed some clarity for the terminology ambiguity. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a meta-analysis study to eliminate the ambiguity about the terminology of “sense of school belonging” and to determine the relationship between school belonging and academic achievement. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of the sense of school belonging on academic achievement and to explore the factors that may moderate these relationships. A pool of 6891 studies was created, including titles containing the terms “sense of school belonging” and “academic achievement”. Twenty-two studies that met the inclusion criteria were selected for the analysis. The findings reveal a statistically significant yet small effect of the sense of school belonging on academic achievement. The effect of the sense of school belonging on academic achievement varied across publication years. Moreover, the study's findings showed no statistically significant difference among the various measurement tools used. These findings highlight the need for further investigation of the relationships between these variables, followed by researchers employing diverse measurement tools.