School Belonging and the African American Adolescent: What do We Know and Where Should We Go?

Research shows, for African American adolescents, issues of school belonging, identification, and engagement are critical to academic performance and successful completion of high school. In the existing literature, school belonging has been significantly linked with teacher support, peer relations, motivation, engagement, and academic performance. This paper reviews major findings on school belonging for this group of students, and offers future directions for research.