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Understanding higher education students’ sense of belonging: a qualitative meta-ethnographic analysis

Dost, G.; Mazzoli Smith, L.

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Authors

Gulsah Dost gulsah.dost@durham.ac.uk
PGR Student Doctor of Philosophy



Abstract

The current literature on ‘sense of belonging’ spans a number of disciplines, with no apparent consensus on definition between these, complicated by the fact that sense of belonging is temporal and context-sensitive (such as during COVID-19). In particular, a closer look at how students define sense of belonging is needed from an up-to-date perspective to help them feel more connected to the faculty/campus and improve their wellbeing and mental health in the ‘new normal’ and ‘next normal’ post-pandemic eras. Therefore, this study explores higher education students’ sense of belonging, a concept that has not been adequately conceptualised, from their perspectives. As these perspectives are subjective, an interpretive approach is required to generate rich meanings. This study has adopted a meta-ethnographic approach to synthesise qualitative studies, which allows for comparison and synthesis of studies into a new interpretation through translations. Interpretive qualitative synthesis resulted in one higher-order concept, four main concepts, and nineteen sub-concepts that conceptualise higher education students’ understanding of sense of belonging to their universities.

Citation

Dost, G., & Mazzoli Smith, L. (2023). Understanding higher education students’ sense of belonging: a qualitative meta-ethnographic analysis. Journal of Further and Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877x.2023.2191176

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 13, 2023
Online Publication Date Mar 23, 2023
Publication Date 2023
Deposit Date Apr 19, 2023
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Journal of Further and Higher Education
Print ISSN 0309-877X
Electronic ISSN 1469-9486
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877x.2023.2191176

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Published Journal Article (1.2 Mb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.




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