ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Psychology in Education
Multilevel Determinants of School Belonging: The Moderating Role of National Safety Climate
Provisionally accepted
- University of Kansas, Lawrence, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Why do some students feel they belong at school while others do not—and how much does national context matter? This study explores the role of safety and teacher–student relationships in shaping students' sense of belonging across 74 countries, using data from the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The analytic sample included 501,731 15-year-old students with complete data on school belonging, perceived safety, and relational climate. Multilevel modeling revealed that students who felt safer and more supported by their teachers reported higher belonging. Country-level differences in average safety also mattered: in safer countries, the positive link between individual safety and belonging was even stronger. However, national variation in perceived teacher–student climate was not a significant contextual predictor. These findings underscore the dual importance of individual perceptions and national context—especially safety climate—in fostering a stronger sense of school belonging among adolescents worldwide.
Keywords: Belonging, educational psychology, multilevel modeling, PISA, school safety
Received: 01 Sep 2025; Accepted: 03 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Elizondo-González, Malla and Barros-Bustos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jose Fabián Elizondo-González, josefabian.elizondo@ucr.ac.cr
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.