Promoting Equitable and Authentic School Belonging: Barriers, Facilitators, and Mechanisms

CALL FOR PAPERS

Promoting Equitable and Authentic School Belonging: Barriers, Facilitators, and Mechanisms

Journal: Contemporary Educational Psychology

Publisher: Elsevier

Full Manuscript Deadline: 1 June 2026

Introduction

Research has consistently demonstrated the importance of students feeling a sense of belonging in school — with many scholars discussing it as a fundamental need and basic student right. School belonging is strongly linked to students' academic success, emotional health, and long-term well-being. Students who belong do better and learn more in school, have greater social-emotional well-being, and show long-term benefits including better career success and well-being after school.

Even with the growing popularity of belonging as an area of research in education, important questions remain about what it is, how it works, and what factors are barriers or facilitators of equitable belonging — especially for students from historically marginalized backgrounds.

Scope & Significance

This Special Issue is focused on advancing three critical areas of inquiry:

1. What facilitates school belonging? Limited organized research exists on what teaching practices facilitate belonging for students — and largely one belonging intervention has been the focus of research, without more consideration of alternative student-focused approaches.

2. What are barriers to school belonging? Challenges with school racial climate are often not considered in studies of belonging that focus on individual student beliefs — and the potential costs of belonging, especially for historically marginalized students, are rarely acknowledged or assessed.

3. What mechanisms mediate the effects of belonging on student outcomes? Few studies test what mediates the beneficial effects of belonging on academic success and student well-being — and even fewer examine how mechanisms may differ based on context and student identities.

The papers in this Special Issue will focus on these questions with an emphasis on how the sociopolitical aspects of society, schools, and educational systems affect how student belonging is supported or disrupted. Particularly when thinking about truly authentic student belonging — when students' desired authentic selves and values are welcomed, accepted, and celebrated in the school context — there is no way to advance this without consideration of the broader context surrounding students.

Note: This is an open call for empirical papers only. Theoretical and/or conceptual reviews or essays are not being solicited.

List of Topic Areas

Manuscripts are invited on themes including, but not limited to:

1. Interventions and policies that promote school belonging

2. Curricular and instructional innovations that facilitate belonging

3. Barriers to student belonging at various levels — classroom, content areas, campus, and system

4. Belonging experiences of students from marginalized communities and/or with marginalized identities — across and among intersections of racial/ethnic, gender, sexual, socioeconomic, and disability identities

5. Investigations leveraging psychosociocultural, sociopolitical, or anti-racist approaches to understanding school belonging

6. Mechanisms of belonging — how mechanisms such as increased mentorship may be more beneficial for certain students and in certain contexts

7. School racial climate and its relationship to student belonging

8. Authentic belonging — when students' authentic selves and values are welcomed in school contexts

9. Belonging across educational levels — early childhood through higher education

10. Costs and trade-offs of belonging for historically marginalized students

11. Sociopolitical and systemic factors shaping equitable school belonging

12. Intersectional analyses of belonging experiences and outcomes

Guest Editors

Dr. Christopher S. Rozek Washington University in St. Louis, USA Email: crozek@wustl.edu

Dr. Carlton J. Fong Texas State University, USA Email: carltonfong@txstate.edu

Key Timeline

Summary and Abstract Submissions Due: 1 March 2026 (Submit at: https://forms.gle/qffWmQP5L5djo284A)

Decision on Summaries and Abstracts: 1 April 2026

Full Manuscript Submission Deadline: 1 June 2026

First Round Review Notifications: 1 August 2026

Deadline for Manuscript Revisions: 1 October 2026

Second Round Review Notifications: 15 November 2026

Deadline for Final Manuscript Revisions: 15 January 2027

Final Acceptance Recommendations: 28 February 2027

Target Publication: End of March 2027

Submission Guidelines

Step 1 — Summary and Abstract Submission (Required First) Authors must first submit a 1–2 page summary (single-spaced, 12pt font) in PDF format — along with a brief 100-word abstract — via:

https://forms.gle/qffWmQP5L5djo284A

Deadline: 1 March 2026

Step 2 — Full Manuscript Submission Authors whose summaries are accepted will be invited to submit full manuscripts by 1 June 2026 via the journal's official submission system.

For inquiries, contact Dr. Rozek at crozek@wustl.edu or Dr. Fong at carltonfong@txstate.edu.

All submissions must be original and must not be under review elsewhere at the time of submission.

About the Journal

Contemporary Educational Psychology, published by Elsevier, is a leading international peer-reviewed journal with a CiteScore of 7.9 and Impact Factor of 3.8. It supports open access publishing and is dedicated to advancing research on learning, motivation, instruction, and educational contexts — providing a global platform for empirical scholarship exploring how psychological and social processes shape educational outcomes across diverse student populations and settings.

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