For a BIPOC student who is also neurodivergent, what does a sense of belonging actually do for achievement — and what does its absence cost?
Why the question matters
This is the question underneath the title my professor gave me. Walton and Cohen showed that doubt about fit drags achievement down on its own, with no change in ability — but that work was not built for students carrying more than one reason to doubt. A BIPOC student who is also neurodivergent is read through two sets of assumptions at once, and the belonging literature mostly treats those as separate studies. In my building they are not separate students. They are the same kid, in the same seat, in the same hour.
What I currently think
My hunch is that belonging does not add to achievement so much as remove a tax on it — that a student spending part of every hour managing how they are being read has less of themselves left for the work, and that the tax is heavier when it comes from two directions. I do not yet know how to measure that without reducing a child to a data point, which is why the method keeps pulling me toward narrative inquiry: the student's own account of where their attention went is evidence, not decoration. What I need next is the literature that sits exactly at this crossroads — neurodiversity research that accounts for race, belonging research that accounts for neurodivergence — and I expect to find it thin.
What I am reading & learning
- —Walton & Cohen (2007), A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement
- —Baumeister & Leary (1995), The need to belong
- —Osterman (2000), Students' need for belonging in the school community
- —Crenshaw (1989), Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex
- —Harley (2023), The lived experiences of Black girls at a predominantly White independent school
Related journal entries
- The title my professor gave me
My working title was too chunky and too broad, and my professor said so. Her suggestion narrows it to the crossroads I actually care about: BIPOC students at the intersection of neurodiversity, in my particular school, and how their sense of belonging influences achievement.