Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation investigated the development of academic belonging among first-year students enrolled in a two-year paramedicine diploma program at a community college in Central Canada. Academic belonging, defined as students’ perceived sense of acceptance, respect, and integration within academic contexts (Rueda & Lowe-Swift, 2024), has been identified as a critical determinant of student persistence and success in post-secondary education. Despite its growing prominence in higher education literature, academic belonging remains underexplored in applied health programs, particularly within the Canadian college system. Guided by a pragmatic paradigm, this qualitative study integrated journals and interviews to examine how students conceptualized and experienced academic belonging over the course of their first term. Data was collected through structured reflective journals that participants completed three times throughout one academic term and semi-structured interviews conducted five weeks after the term finished. The journal prompts were adapted from the sense of belonging scale (Gehlbach et al., 2015; Cohen & Viola, 2022) to capture students’ perceptions of relational, instructional, and institutional factors influencing their sense of belonging. The study addressed four primary objectives: (1) to trace the evolution of students’ definitions of belonging and its influence on program connection; (2) to identify the interpersonal relationships most salient to academic belonging; (3) to determine the learning environments that foster or hinder belonging; and (4) to provide empirically grounded recommendations for pedagogical and institutional practices that support belonging in paramedicine education. Previous research shows that academic belonging is shaped by a dynamic interplay of faculty engagement, peer support, and perceived respect within instructional spaces (Allen et al., 2021; Cohen & Viola, 2022; Cohen & Walton, 2011; Felten & Lambert, 2020; Kahu et al., 2022; Means & Pyne, 2017; Strayhorn, 2019). This research contributes to the theoretical refinement of academic belonging by distinguishing it from broader constructs such as social belonging and institutional integration. It also offers practical implications for program design in intensive health sciences programs and student support services in health professions education. By centering the voices of an underrepresented population, this study advances understanding of how academic belonging is cultivated, disrupted, and sustained in community college contexts.
Author: Langridge, Sarah
Institution: University of Saskatchewan
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214857283