Fostering a Sense of Belonging Through Small-Group Discourse

Recommendations for fostering a sense of belonging in a classroom community include the incorporation of cooperative learning and dynamic discussion. This article shares the strategies and experiences of a middle school mathematics teacher (from an online charter school) as she participated in a professional development program to foster a sense of belonging in her students through supporting small-group, student-to-student discourse. In particular, the teacher identified small-group dynamics that hindered a sense of belonging and used aligned talk moves to transition to dynamics that foster a sense of belonging. In this qualitative case study, observation fieldnotes, discourse-based tools, and transcribed debrief meetings were used to build a profile of each small group, centering on the evolution of the group dynamics and discourse in response to the teacher’s use of the aligned talk moves. For the case presented, classroom vignettes demonstrate how over time the students developed a sense of belonging characterized by feeling safe to engage in productive struggle with their group members.