Desired belonging amongst upper division physics students

Prior research has identified sense of belonging as an overall positive contributor to students’ academic success. Also, junior-level physics has previously been shown to be a critical period in students’ undergraduate physics career. In earlier work, we identified a variety of cases in which students’ expectations for belonging did not align cleanly with their course-taking and academic success which, in turn, can affect individuals’ future physics intentions. Thus, we developed the concept of Desired Belonging to articulate the ways in which students seek or intend to belong to a specific community or communities. To explore this concept, we conducted a phenomenological study by collecting interview data from upper division physics students to probe their social networks, academic experiences, experiences in the university physics community (including peer and faculty relationships), and their desired belonging. In this talk, we will present the emergent findings of this study to examine how students’ experiences affect (or not) their desired belonging during their upper division years, and the implications of this work for supporting students.