From leadership research to district action: Fostering Students’ Sense of School Belonging: Emotional Intelligence and Socio-Ecological Perspectives

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Abstract A strong sense of school belonging is essential for students’ academic achievement, emotional well-being, and overall development. This study explores the role of emotional intelligence and the social environment in shaping students’ sense of belonging. Adopting a basic qualitative approach, this study analyzes teachers’ perspectives on the contributions of students, teachers, parents, counselors, school principals, and the wider society. Qualitative data which were collected through interviews with 49 teachers (37 female, 12 male; years of experience mean is 12) were analyzed through content analysis to identify the main themes. The findings suggest that students’ sense of belonging improves when they actively participate in school life and are aware of the importance of school. Furthermore, students’ sense of belonging improves when teachers offer academic and emotional support, parents engage actively, counselors foster well-being, and school principals provide strong leadership and relationship management. In addition, increased social involvement enhances student belonging. This study offers valuable insights for educators and policymakers in fostering supportive school environments. It highlights the emotional and social processes underlying school belonging and discusses their implications for future research. Keywords: sense of school belonging, emotional intelligence theory, socio-ecological theory, student

Study methods

This research was designed as basic qualitative research, also referred to as general or interpretive qualitative research, aimed at “understanding how people make sense of their lives and experiences” (Merriam and Tisdell 2016). This research design enables researchers to explore how participants perceive and interpret a given phenomenon (McMillan and Schumacher 2006; Merriam 2009).

Limitations

This study examined the behaviors that school stakeholders should adopt to improve students’ SoSB according to EI theory and the socio-ecological framework, based on teachers’ views. This study examined student belonging within the context of both emotional and social environment, emphasizing that such a multidimensional phenomenon cannot be explained solely by student behaviors. It highlights the importance of the roles played by all stakeholders, from those in closest contact with the student to those with more indirect involvement. In the ecosystem in which the student is located, each unit should have responsibilities according to the unitary/separate approach. According to the holistic and interactive perspective, each unit should interact with one another and the SoSB of the student should be provided with a holistic approach. It was emphasized that EI is an important factor in the formation of belonging and that the student’s emotional competencies should be supported.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Hatice Turan Bora; Sadegül Akbaba Altun. Fostering Students’ Sense of School Belonging: Emotional Intelligence and Socio-Ecological Perspectives. Journal of Intelligence (2025-09-02). https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence13090112

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.