Student sense of belonging and its impacts on help seeking behaviour

Entering higher education can be an alienating experience leading to institutional and systemic drop out. Academic help-seeking behaviour as a self-regulated learning strategy is one way to counteract this. But help-seeking can be enabled or hindered by several factors including a student’s sense of belonging. In this study we attempted to understand how issues of belonging impact on student help-seeking behaviour and, if they are positively related, how institutions of higher education might promote a greater sense of belonging. We collected a total of 818 student submissions from students in an academic recovery programme. Our thematic analysis of these submissions revealed that students did feel a lack of belonging leading to help-seeking hesitancy. We also captured students’ voices to understand what conditions would enable a greater sense of belonging and we make recommendations on how institutions may work to create these conditions for students and thereby empower their help-seeking behaviour.