Rainey, A. M., & Verdin, D., & Smith, J. M. (2021, July), Classroom Practices that Support Minoritized Engineering Students’ Sense of Belonging (Research)  Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--36797

\bibitem{asee_peer_36797}
  Rainey, A. M., \& Verdin, D., \& Smith, J. M. (2021, July), \emph{Classroom Practices that Support Minoritized Engineering Students’ Sense of Belonging (Research)}
  Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference.
  10.18260/1-2--36797

Arielle Marie Rainey, Dina Verdin, and Jessica Mary Smith.  "Classroom Practices that Support Minoritized Engineering Students’ Sense of Belonging (Research)".  2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference, 2021, July.  ASEE Conferences, 2021.  https://peer.asee.org/36797 Internet.  28 Mar, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_36797}
  Arielle Marie Rainey, Dina Verdin, and Jessica Mary Smith.
  "Classroom Practices that Support Minoritized Engineering Students’ Sense of Belonging (Research)".
  \emph{2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference, 2021, July}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2021.
  https://peer.asee.org/36797 Internet.  28 Mar, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_36797
author = "Arielle Marie Rainey, Dina Verdin, and Jessica Mary Smith"
title = "Classroom Practices that Support Minoritized Engineering Students’ Sense of Belonging (Research)"
booktitle = "2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access"
year = "2021"
month = "July"
address = "Virtual Conference"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/36797}
number = {10.18260/1-2--36797}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Establishing and sustaining a sense of belonging is a necessary human motivation with particular implications for student learning, including in engineering. Students who experience a sense of belonging are more likely to display intrinsic motivation and establish a stronger sense of identity and persistence. It is important, however, to distinguish different domains of belonging, such as belonging to one’s university, belonging to a major, and belonging in the classroom setting. Our study examines if and how faculty support efforts contribute to diverse students’ sense of belonging in the classroom setting. Specifically, we sought to answer the following research questions:

Which faculty support efforts promote a sense of classroom belongingness?

Do faculty support efforts differentially promote a sense of classroom belongingness for students based on their demographic characteristics?

Data for this study were collected in the Fall of 2018, across ten institutions, n = 819. We used the Faculty Academic Support items from the STEM Student Perspectives of Support Instrument developed from Lee’s model of co-curricular support to answer our research questions. Demographic categories were created to understand if and how faculty support efforts differentially promote a sense of belonging for minoritized students compared to their counterparts. Students were divided into the following demographic groups: minoritized women (excluding White and Asian; 14%), minoritized men (excluding White and Asian; 23%), majoritized women and men (i.e., White and Asian 32% and 31%, respectively), and first-generation college students (46%). The term minoritized is used to acknowledge the ongoing social experiences of marginalization, even when groups subject to racial-ethnic discrimination achieve a numerical majority in the population.

Multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the faculty support factors that fostered a sense of belonging in the classroom. Interaction effects were included to understand how faculty support efforts affected classroom belongingness for the students in the demographic groups we identified. 

We briefly summarize a portion of our findings. Minoritized women were less likely to feel a sense of belonging in the classroom when compared to majoritized men. Neither group of women believed that their instructors wanted them to succeed, thus negatively impacting their classroom belongingness. There were, however, faculty support efforts that positively contributed to a sense of belonging in the classroom for minoritized women, including instructors’ availability, knowing that they could ask instructors for help in course-related material, and when instructors fostered an atmosphere of mutual respect. Additionally, minoritized women felt a sense of classroom belonging when they could capitalize on their previous experiences to scaffold their learning. 

While the survey data point to concerns related to women engineering students’ perceptions of faculty and their own sense of classroom belonging, our findings also highlight classroom practices and strategies faculty can use in the classroom to support minoritized women’s sense of belonging. These practices and strategies will be a crucial resource for engineering educators and administrators who seek to improve the field’s retention of minoritized and women students. Whereas efforts have been made to recruit minoritized students into engineering, our study points to a clear and crucial role for faculty to play: they can support minoritized students by fostering a sense of belonging in engineering classrooms.     

AU  - Arielle Marie Rainey
AU  - Dina Verdin
AU  - Jessica Mary Smith
CY  - Virtual Conference
DA  - 2021/07/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Classroom Practices that Support Minoritized Engineering Students’ Sense of Belonging (Research)
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/36797
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--36797
ER  -