Navigating school belonging in Qatari schools: a mixed-methods study of student perspectives

A sense of school belonging is essential for adolescent development, though there is limited research investigating ways to improve students' sense of school belonging in Qatar. With 116 Qatari secondary school students, the current study explored student perspectives of ways teachers and schools could improve their sense of school belonging. Students responded to a survey including open-ended questions and a descriptive scale measuring the usefulness of established belonging strategies during remote learning, in-person, or all the time (both). Encouragement and support from teachers were found to be useful all the time, with school activities during breaks and opportunities to make friends only being useful during school-based learning. From the examination of open-ended responses using a hybrid qualitative approach with inductive and deductive coding, two overarching themes each at the teacher-level and school-level were found, defined by several subthemes. Belonging practices at the teacher-level included caring and supportive teachers and teachers treating students as people. Belonging practices at the school-level included student engagement and a positive and supportive school environment. For Qatari students practices such as prioritising supportive student–teacher relationships, introducing policies which promote a respectful, fair and safe environment, and offering school wide-extracurricular activities that encourage peer connections are important to develop their sense of school belonging.