The Sense of Classroom Belonging Among Pre-Service Teachers: Testing a Theoretical Model

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to test a hypothetical model in order to examine the association between students’ sense of classroom belonging along with four other university class-level variables including faculty-student relationships, connected classroom climate referring peer relationships, loneliness and classroom identity. It is intended to draw attention of teacher educators to the importance of creating sense of community at classroom level through this study in order to improve the quality of teacher education. With this aim, pre-service teachers attending the faculty of education were selected as sample of the study (N= 1425). Each measures used in this study was adapted for college-level students through confirmatory factor analysis in order to test specific predictions concerning each measure’s structure and the results revealed that  all measures have adequate psychometric properties. The model examined with structural equation modeling was an excellent fit with the data, and the results indicated that the fitted model explained 50% of the variance in classroom identity; 47% of the variance in sense of classroom belonging; 14% of the variance in classroom climate; and 9% of the variance in loneliness. Results and implications are discussed.

Keywords

• Classroom belonging,classroom climate,classroom identity,faculty-student relationship,loneliness

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