How Student Belonging Shapes School Culture and Climate
Strategies to Create and Measure Belonging with the Belonging Index
School administrators today navigate enormously complex matters, from academic recovery and staffing challenges to increasing concerns about student mental health.
In that landscape, belonging can sound abstract or optional—yet another initiative competing for attention.
Research with young people tells a different story. Building belonging matters.
Why Belonging Matters
In 2019, Springtide Research Institute began conducting research to better understand young people’s experiences with loneliness and examine how young people find a sense of belonging.
Young people seek meaningful relationships
Springtide’s research reveals that young people are searching for connection. Young people long for community, though they don’t always know where to find it or how to nurture it. Creating a sense of belonging is key to developing relationships and communities.
Belonging is connected to mental health
There are consistent positive correlations between measurements of belonging and young people’s well-being. Young people who have higher levels of belonging also tend to have higher levels of measures of thriving, such as flourishing or mental health.
Student belonging is a key component of school climate
Schools are uniquely positioned to encourage belonging, with educators playing a critical role in helping to facilitate belonging and thriving in their students’ lives.
Belonging also positively correlates with traditional measures of school success, including grades and likelihood of recommending the school to others.
How is belonging measured?
At Springtide, researchers measure belonging with a social scientific, field-tested online survey, called the Belonging Index. Built on research with more than 50,000 responses nationwide, the Belonging Index is a school climate survey designed to help schools understand whether students feel noticed, named, and known.
What is belonging, and how is it cultivated in school?
Through years of national research centered on young people’s voices, Springtide has identified core components of belonging that consistently show up across school and community settings.
These components provide both a shared language and a research-backed framework for measuring belonging in young people.
Being Noticed
Belonging begins with being noticed.
Students feel noticed when adults acknowledge them in simple, humanizing ways like greeting them, remembering them, and recognizing their presence. These moments may feel small, but being noticed often sets the emotional tone for everything that follows.
Helping students feel noticed is often as simple as greeting them in the hallways. It might begin by encouraging all staff, whether they are mowing the grass or setting up for a game, to say hello to students or by asking teachers to greet students individually before starting class.
Being Named
Being named goes deeper than name recognition.
Students feel named when their interests, identities, and experiences are truly seen and valued—when schools create spaces that reflect who they are and what they care about, and when adults help them feel safe showing up as themselves.
In practice, this often means looking beyond traditional pathways to help students connect their strengths to the school community. One school uses their Belonging Index results to create opportunities to make sure everyone is connected. For example, they may offer a student with an interest in interior design the chance to contribute to the homecoming dance committee. This gives that student a visible, valued role and a place in their community
Sometimes, helping students feel named requires adults to stretch beyond their own comfort zones. In one case, a school introduced a sports writing class to engage students who weren’t interested in writing but were passionate about sports. This new opportunity opened a new pathway for participation, expression, and belonging.
Being Known
Being known reflects unreserved acceptance.
Students feel known when adults demonstrate genuine curiosity, care, and personal investment in who they are.
In professional development, we often use this example: when a student has been absent, which question comes first? Do schools ask about missing homework, or do they check in with the student, ask how they are doing, and say they were missed?
Across schools, students frequently report not feeling missed when they are gone. This is not necessarily because adults don’t care, but because students don’t always experience that care in visible, relational ways.
What factors promote belonging in school?
An important element of a strong school culture is belonging. By helping students feel noticed, named, and known, educators can foster environments that cultivate the well-being that students need to succeed.
Belonging can be influenced in a variety of ways. In our research, we focus on identifying crucial factors in helping young people feel a sense of belonging.
Where do students feel a sense of belonging?
When Springtide researchers first asked young people where they felt belonging—at school, in activities, in religious spaces—the responses were unexpected.
Young people pushed back on the question itself.
They told us that belonging isn’t primarily about where it happens. It’s about how adults show up in the spaces young people already inhabit.
When trusted adults take actions that help young people feel noticed, named, and known, they can feel belonging almost anywhere.
This insight shifts how we think about student belonging to a systems level. It moves the focus away from programs or places and toward actions that can be measured, cultivated, and changed.
In a school setting, this reframing can empower educators and leaders alike.
What helps young people feel a sense of belonging?
One of the most hopeful findings in belonging research is this: adult’s actions matter—and they’re within reach.
While peer relationships are important, schools have significant influence through the everyday ways adults interact with students. That’s why measuring school belonging focuses intentionally on adult behaviors rather than student deficits.
Why schools need to measure belonging
Belonging is often treated as something schools hope that students experience. Signs like participation in activities or a generally positive school climate can suggest connection, but they do not always reveal how students feel within their community.
Measuring belonging helps schools move beyond assumptions and see the full picture of student life. It allows leaders to understand where students feel supported, where gaps exist, and how relationships shape the daily experience of school.
By measuring belonging, schools can gain the insight needed to build a culture where every student can feel noticed, named, and known.
Our research on belonging in schools
Over the past few years, Springtide Research Institute has surveyed over 20,000 students in high schools across the country. The findings reveal specific insights into creating a sense of belonging for students.
Space to share ideas or perspectives: Students are more likely to feel they belong when they are invited into real conversations. When young people know their perspectives matter in the day-to-day life of a school, they are more likely to feel noticed, named, and known.
Trusted adults they can turn to: Belonging grows through consistent and personable relationships with adults. Simple, authentic moments help move relationships beyond roles and routines. Over time, these interactions build trust, which strengthens belonging.
Safety and authenticity at school: Students need to feel emotionally safe to fully engage in school life. That safety is built through relationships where they are known as individuals, not just learners in a system.
What belonging can look like in practice
Looking at belonging across schools: The Christian Brothers Midwest District wanted to understand how students experience belonging across their schools. Springtide’s research found that students who felt they belonged were also more confident in their academic success—an important insight for schools committed to student flourishing.
Finding those on the fringe: Alexsandra Walton, former director of inclusion and belonging at Saint Mary’s College High School in Berkeley, California, reflects on what it means to notice students who may seem to be on the margins.
Data you can trust
Most schools care deeply about their culture. To build confidence, you need accurate, unbiased data. A robust dataset will build trust with stakeholders, parents, school boards, and even your own staff and faculty.
Springtide’s Belonging Index is a data‑backed measurement tool, designed by social scientists and built using years of national research centered on the lived experiences of young people.
The Belonging Index is designed by researchers and has been taken by students in the United States and parts of Europe. It is regularly refined to reflect a growing dataset.
Using the Belonging Index allows schools and districts to:
- Gather trustworthy data: The Belonging Index is grounded in a validated research framework, which has been extensively tested.
- Receive honest feedback: Students respond anonymously, allowing them to share their true thoughts and feelings.
- Keep data secure: Survey responses are stored on secure servers and results are shared via a password-protected dashboard.
- Understand where students feel connected and where they don’t: The Belonging Index provides results that reflect students’ everyday experiences in school, from the cafeteria to the classroom.
- Examine meaningful differences: The dashboard allows schools to see key differences in responses across grades, schools, and student groups—not just overall averages.
- Track belonging over time: Schools can track key changes year to year, helping leaders understand whether efforts to strengthen belonging are reflected in the student experience. Rather than relying on snapshots or anecdotal signals, schools can observe patterns that reveal how belonging is developing over time.
- Survey students on your school’s climate: The Belonging Index provides schools with a practical way to listen to student voices and uncover meaningful insights about school culture.
The data your school or district receive form a clear roadmap for a school, district, or region to improve school culture and cultivate deeper levels of belonging with efficiency and ease.
Get a preview of the Belonging Index Tool with our free training webinar >
Find out more about the Belonging Index Tool >
From Data to Action: Where Leaders Can Start
For principals, superintendents, and district leaders, a few points matter most:
- Shift the conversation
From “Do our students belong?” to “How are adult behaviors shaping students’ experiences of belonging?” - Look for patterns, not just averages
Belonging data are most powerful when it highlights variation and opportunity. - Treat belonging as infrastructure
Alongside academics and school climate, belonging deserves close attention, reflection, and measurement.
When you choose the Belonging Index, you’ll get straight forward data that make it simple to know what to do next. Our optional professional development workshops offer your staff and faculty results-based actions they can take, empowering your educators to cultivate a school environment where everyone flourishes.
Cultivating belonging begins with looking at the password-protected data dashboard after your Belonging Index is complete. After viewing their dashboard, one school found that lunch hour was when students felt the most belonging, so they leaned in and expanded lunch to offer an all-school lunch once a week.
Why belonging is instrumental to school culture
Student belonging is not just a feel-good concept. It is a measurable, evolving, research-backed driver of student mental health, engagement, and thriving.
As Springtide’s research continues to develop, so does our understanding of what young people need—not just to succeed, but to feel deeply connected to the communities shaping their lives.
When students feel noticed, named, and known, schools become places where young people don’t just attend, they belong.