Identification, place and belonging: The brand new cornerstone of school-based approaches to pupil wellbeing?

No man is an island,

Whole of itself;

Each man is a chunk of the continent,

Part of the principle.

To riff on the 17^th Century poem by John Donne, ‘No little one is an island’. A minimum of, this can be a central thesis underpinning Brown and colleague’s 2025 paper wherein they define an strategy to school-based wellbeing programmes that harness younger folks’s relationships to at least one one other, their faculty, and their wider neighborhood.

The subject of school-based programmes to assist youngsters’s wellbeing is a well timed one given proof that 1 in 4 younger folks in England has a possible psychological well being dysfunction (NHS England, 2024). This rise within the charge of psychological well being issues have led to calls from policymakers to embed psychological well being assist inside colleges.

Nonetheless, the determinants of psychological well being issues are complicated and multifaceted, working throughout a number of methods inside and out of doors colleges themselves. For instance, we all know late childhood and early adolescence is a interval of social reorientation wherein younger folks come to align their id with their peer group (learn Emily’s weblog to study extra) and programmes that assist younger folks construct peer relationships can enhance their wellbeing (Veenstra & Laninga-Wijnen, 2022).

Cultural id – and the extent to which that is embraced or minoritised – also can affect psychological well being outcomes. On this paper, Brown and colleagues (2025) introduce their ‘Linked Belonging’ mannequin, an strategy to high school wellbeing methods that locations much less emphasis on particular person abilities and highlights younger folks’s intersectional identities.

Relationships are key in adolescence, and Brown et al.’s (2025) Linked Belonging mannequin place this on the centre.

Strategies

To introduce and assist their mannequin, the authors narratively summarise 4 research they beforehand performed earlier than outlining how these findings had been used to develop the Linked Belongings mannequin. It is very important observe that the mannequin is predominantly based mostly on the findings from these 4 research, which embrace:

1. A rigorous, large-scale evaluate of schooling coverage throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Eire, offering an summary of present apply.
2. A qualitative, photo-narrative research asking pupils’ views on school-based psychological well being programmes, performed throughout seven colleges in South East England.
3. An Australian-based research evaluating school-based approaches to wellbeing, with themes derived in collaboration with the younger folks collaborating within the interviews.
4. An analysis of younger folks vulnerable to leaving schooling, and a trial of a co-designed intervention to assist these pupils

Nonetheless, Brown and colleagues do additionally draw on a variety of literature that corroborates their findings.

Outcomes

The Linked Belonging mannequin places the younger individual, and their particular person id, on the coronary heart of the strategy to school-based wellbeing programmes. This core element is surrounded by materials, relational and subjective dimensions that may both promote or hinder wellbeing. The mannequin is explicitly contrasted in opposition to present approaches to high school wellbeing programmes that concentrate on instructing younger folks abilities and competencies, comparable to displaying ‘grit’ within the face of pressures inside their lives.

Somewhat, by bettering younger folks’s relationships to the methods that encompass and form them, the Linked Belonging mannequin takes a extra holistic strategy to younger folks’s wellbeing in colleges.

So, what are the size of the Linked Belonging mannequin?

• Faculty id, which describes the extent to which a teen feels a part of their faculty neighborhood. To successfully assist younger folks’s faculty id, instructional establishments ought to assist younger folks develop a constructive id inside their research no matter studying types, aptitudes, talents and pursuits.
• Cultural id, which is younger folks’s sense of their relationships to their background and tradition(s). Colleges can play an energetic position in nurturing this characteristic of younger folks’s id by displaying understanding and sensitivity in the direction of totally different practices, beliefs and values, whereas guaranteeing these will not be discriminated in opposition to by employees or college students.
• Area people id, outlined as younger folks’s place inside the space they reside in, however exterior of their speedy dwelling atmosphere. The extent to which colleges interact with the area people, comparable to partnering with neighborhood teams or instructing native historical past, may be each a facilitator and barrier to this facet of younger folks’s id.
• Place attachment, which not like the opposite domains described to date, refers to younger folks’s capability to establish a bodily location or house they really feel secure or really feel that they belong in, and is especially well timed in context of the decline in ‘third areas’ (Finlay et al., 2020). Colleges can themselves be these locations for younger folks.
• Social id and the intersectional traits that mirror that younger individual, together with their gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social class, diagnoses and life experiences (e.g., being care-experienced). Colleges’ roles in supporting the inclusion of all pupils can mitigate the multiplicative boundaries confronted by these from minoritized backgrounds.
• Peer group id, describing younger folks’s connectedness to their peer group, and could also be supported by initiatives to cut back victimisation comparable to bullying prevention programmes.
• Citizenship id, which is the extent to which younger folks establish themselves as nationwide and world residents. The diploma to which colleges assist younger folks’s engagement with nationwide and world points can affect this area of younger folks’s id.

The Linked Belonging mannequin is contrasted in opposition to present approaches in colleges that concentrate on ‘grit’.

Conclusion

As a mannequin, Linked Belonging locations the younger folks on the centre of a posh atmosphere. Supporting younger folks to navigate these totally different domains is proposed as a brand new and efficient strategy to school-based wellbeing programmes.

Nonetheless, whereas the Linked Belonging mannequin proposes these domains are related to all younger folks, it doesn’t ascribe the relative significance of those domains and acknowledges these could range throughout younger folks. For instance, within the third of the 4 research used to derive this mannequin, Aboriginal younger folks described their views on id formation and positioned better emphasis on place attachment to nature in comparison with younger folks from the UK.

Whereas this strategy could assist the adaptability of the mannequin to younger folks in numerous contexts, it could make it difficult to guage which parts of the mannequin enhance wellbeing, and whether or not every element contributes equally to modifications in wellbeing.

Colleges can foster younger folks’s relationships to totally different components of their id. That is an strategy that colleges could need to contemplate adopting in relation to wellbeing.

Strengths and limitations

This paper is a complete define of a novel strategy to school-based wellbeing. It has a notable power of drawing on separate our bodies of proof to substantiate the mannequin, together with a big coverage evaluate and qualitative proof from worldwide sources (which included Aboriginal younger people who find themselves sometimes underrepresented in research). This power implies that proof is triangulated throughout totally different sources and reduces the chance the mannequin is biased to at least one specific context or group of younger folks. An additional benefit is that wellbeing shouldn’t be conceptualised as one thing restricted to varsities alone, and reasonably colleges play one (necessary!) half in younger folks’s complicated lives.

Nonetheless, these strengths needs to be thought-about in context of some notable limitations. First, the mannequin is derived from solely 4 research, regardless of there being an unlimited literature evaluating school-based approaches to psychological well being and wellbeing. This comparatively slender focus could miss various approaches to school-based psychological well being, comparable to these that don’t depend on whole-school approaches.

As well as, no formal methodology was specified when describing how the findings from these 4 research had been synthesised to develop the mannequin, which limits reproducibility and doesn’t present details about the extent to which the mannequin built-in the total knowledge from these research.

Additional, the paper lacks an outline of how this mannequin is likely to be formally examined in opposition to present approaches to school-based wellbeing. An outline of the quantitative or qualitative strategies that would offer an empirical take a look at of this mannequin could be useful to check whether or not this mannequin does enhance college students’ wellbeing in comparison with present approaches.

It could even be fascinating to contemplate the extent to which this mannequin may generalize to different, non-mainstream faculty settings, comparable to Pupil Referral Models that are settings for college students who want extra assist attributable to behavioural points. Whether or not younger folks with behavioural points contemplate these domains necessary to their wellbeing could be an fascinating avenue to discover.

The Linked Belonging mannequin is predominantly based mostly on 4 research, and it’s unclear within the paper how these findings had been synthesised to develop the mannequin.

Implications for apply

The Linked Belonging mannequin affords an fascinating alternate strategy to supporting younger folks’s wellbeing inside the faculty atmosphere and is a vital contribution to the literature given the position that colleges now play in early intervention and prevention.

Nonetheless, additional testing and analysis is required to raised perceive how this mannequin may match into totally different education contexts, and its potential to be utilised inside analysis, coverage and apply. To do that, researchers may conduct analysis inside and between colleges to check associations between area power and constructive psychological well being outcomes, figuring out the power of impression and which domains appear to be most necessary in numerous contexts.

Based mostly on the findings from additional analysis, policymakers might have to contemplate shifting past narratives centered on particular person resilience in the direction of approaches that concentrate on relationships and id. Nonetheless, if that is achieved, the change will have to be knowledgeable by engagement with stakeholders, together with younger folks, dad and mom, lecturers, clinicians, and researchers.

Lastly, lecturers and faculty employees could need to contemplate figuring out which domains of id are inspired of their settings, and which is likely to be additional supported.

Ought to coverage change from an strategy centered on particular person resilience in the direction of one which centres id and relationships? Extra analysis is required to search out out.

Assertion of pursuits

Alex Lloyd – None.

Edited by

Dr Nina Higson-Sweeney

Hyperlinks

Main paper

Ceri Brown, Alison Douthwaite, Michael Donnelly, & Marnee Shay (2025). Linked Belonging: A relational and id‐based mostly strategy to varsities’ position in selling little one wellbeing. British Instructional Analysis Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4112

Different references

Donne, J. (1624). Devotions upon Emergent Events.

Finlay, J., Esposito, M., Kim, M. H., Gomez-Lopez, I., & Clarke, P. (2019). Closure of ‘third locations’? Exploring potential penalties for collective well being and wellbeing. Well being & Place, 60, 102225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2019.102225

Stapley, E. (2018). Peer affect and danger taking behaviour throughout adolescence. The Psychological Elf.

Veenstra, R., & Laninga-Wijnen, L. (2022). Peer community research and interventions in adolescence. Present Opinion in Psychology, 44, 157-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.09.015

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