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Students' sense of belonging at school is a central dimension of social and emotional development, yet little is known about how individual competencies and peer climates jointly shape belonging across cultural contexts. Using data from the 2023 OECD Study on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES; N = 43,686 students, 1453 schools in 14 sites), we applied multilevel models to examine individual, peer, and cross-level predictors of belonging. Affect balance, sociability, and trust were the strongest individual predictors, while peer aggregates—especially peer affect balance and sociability—explained most between-school variation. Cross-level interactions revealed striking amplification effects: individual strengths such as emotion regulation, empathy, and trust predicted greater belonging when widely shared among peers. Self regulatory competencies showed the most complex dynamics: emotional control predicted belonging only in schools where peer-level emotional control was already high, and self-control undermined belonging where it was less normative but strongly enhanced it where it was common. Gender and age analyses revealed modest but notable patterns: girls' belonging was more closely tied to peer-level empathy and tolerance than boys', while sociability was a stronger predictor of belonging at age 10 and emotional regulation at age 15. Overall, the findings highlight belonging as a relational, co-constructed process shaped by the fit between individual dispositions and collective peer climates, advancing socio-ecological perspectives on school life.
Sotardi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.