How Can Friendship Facilitate the Sense of School Belonging?

Jill V. Hamm, Beverly S. Faircloth. The Role of Friendship in the Adolescents' Sense of School Belonging//Jossey-Bass. San Fransisco, 2005, #107.

This article explores friendship in the school context, and determines its role in the development of students' sense of school belonging. It is based on the results of a survey carried out among 24 males and females (high school students) of different ethnic background. Though the survey sample seems rather limited and does not include college students,the article still gives a pretty good understanding of how friendship helps develop adaptive behaviors and adjust to school. It was especially interesting for me because I am a first-year grad student in a new school, and some ideas expressed in the article are quite relevant. 

What is School Belonging? 

A sense of school belonging is not just fitting in. There is emotional attachment, that comes from being valued by, and evaluating of others. It derives from interpersonal relationships with members of school community, and is critical for adolescents because it meets their need for relatedness.  For example, teens increase the level of school engagement when they have a sense of school belonging.  Positive sense of school belonging can protect against nonacademic risk behaviors like suicide, pregnancy, and violence. 

Challenges to a Sense of School Belonging 

Many adolescents experience school as an alienating setting, both socially and academically. 

The main factors of alienation are:

• cliquishness
• lack of acceptance from the school body as a whole
• academic success 

If the first two factors are quite understandable, the third one came as quite a surprise.  The survey showed that high-achieving students experience lack of peer acceptance resulting in the development of vulnerability. In the surveyed school, academic efforts were denigrated b the larger student community. Which for me raises a pretty interesting question: If I were a student at that school, would I rather have many friends and totally 'fit-in', which for me is equal to social development, or concentrate on studies and become a brilliant student, which would probably cross me out from social life, but promote my academic development. 

Friendship and Belonging 

Friendship is what makes school comfortable. Difficult assignments, academic failure, and lack of motivation can make students question their competence and the vale of what they are doing. In this perspective, friends help a lot both with academic and nonacademic issues, and serve as a perfect mechanism to cope with stress. Thus having friends appears to be a good means of finding a place in the school and gaining a sense of school belonging.

Multiple provisions of friendship form a foundation for the development of the sense of school belonging: companionship, tangible and emotional support, helpfulness, trust, intimacy, and enhancement of self worth.


Being with friends and participating in joint activities, according to the survey, decreases the sense of boredom and develops a sense of pleasure from the time spent in a classroom. Many students identify that having friends in class means not only great enjoyment, but also meaningful shared experience which develops further on through extra-curricular activities. 

Conclusion 

The authors go deeper into detail describing how different provisions of friendship promote the sense of school belonging, but the main idea is as follows: Having many friends makes school experience far easier and more enjoyable. Friendship can buffer against the negative effects of peer group acceptance, can help cope with stress, peer and family problems.  And although peer acceptance is important to the sense of school belonging, a close and intimate friendship can protect from the feeling of exclusion and alienation caused by the lack of acceptance. Close friendships are a context for developing adapting behaviors among individuals. Thus, the role of close friendship is crucial in the high school students' sense of belonging.