the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 01 Apr 2025
Students' sense of belonging and its impact on effectively teaching about environmental changes in high latitudes during a master's programme
Abstract. Sense of belonging plays a significant role in students' academic success. For the 'Environmental Changes at Higher Latitudes' master's programme, success is effectively communicating geoscience research and ideas to the students. This study explores students' perceived sense of belonging, the conditions for belonging among master's students of this particular programme, and the impact of belonging on educational effectiveness in a climate change context. This programme is organised jointly between universities of three Nordic nations and for it – and for the multilocality of the geoscience themes – has a particularly high degree of mobility. Therefore, the programme lacks elements present in a typical higher education experience, such as on-site attendance in a physically shared space with a relatively stable group of peers and instructors which are thought significant for the students' feelings of belongingness. Based on 15 interviews, we elaborate on the findings of the students' motivation, ability and opportunities to belong and on the construct of their perceived belonging. Emerging from this study, these constructs for sense of belonging consist of the students' sense of familiarity – familiar elements in the place, surroundings and culture; sense of recognition – recognised by oneself and others as a peer and a member of the knowledge community; and last, sense of relevance – finding their studies relevant and interesting. Due to the unique set-up of the programme, the study reveals insight into elements that support the sense of belonging, crucial in such geoscience and climate education and communication that might lack the typical shared physical space of a programme.
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-715', Fabio Crameri, 07 May 2025
This paper presents useful findings from a masters program in a unique teaching setup. Based on this unique setup, novel results are presented on understanding how the sense of belonging in students is impacted when a longer-term stable geographic classroom environment is missing. This paper is very well written, presents the results clearly, and overall fits well within the scope of Geoscience Communication. I do not see needs for major revisions. I only have one minor comment to revise and two suggestions, which I don’t consider critical and go more into how the results are presented.
Figure 1: Shouldn’t the arrow point to: “Belonging is achieved” or similar, as Belonging is actually possible on the entire intersection between Availability and Ability circles, and the Motivation finally makes it happen.
Section 4.1 is predominantly focussed on the social aspect of belonging. I got the feeling that belonging towards the science content, or the academic and geographic environment, falls a little short here. Maybe it could just be mentioned that most of the students’ answers go in the social direction, so that it is clear to the reader that there’s more to consider (as is nicely mentioned in other sections). As is also pointed out, belonging is increasing with getting to know something better, which, I guess, can be applied not only to people, but also the study environment, the science content, etc.
Regarding the ‘Ability to belong’ section: Would it be worth mentioning the barriers for students with more complex learning needs. It is not clear whether there was feedback from students with variable neurotypes, but adaptive education practices to provide multi-modal learning experiences seem important too.
e.g.,
Spaeth, E., and Pearson, A. (2023). A reflective analysis on neurodiversity and student wellbeing: conceptualising practical strategies for inclusive practice. J. Perspect. Appl. Acad. Pract. 11, 109–120. doi: 10.56433/jpaap.v11i2.517
Heron, P.J., F. Crameri, E.F. Canaletti, D. Harrison, S. Hashemi, P. Leigh, S. Narayan, K. Osowski, R. Rantanen, and J.A. Williams (2025), Art, music, and play as a teaching aid: applying creative uses of Universal Design for Learning in a prison science class. Front. Educ. 10:1524007. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1524007
Thanks for your effort with this, and the nice read and interesting insights!
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-715-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Katja Anniina Lauri, 02 Jul 2025
Reviewer’s verbatim comments are in plain font, followed by authors’ replies in bold.
This paper presents useful findings from a masters program in a unique teaching setup. Based on this unique setup, novel results are presented on understanding how the sense of belonging in students is impacted when a longer-term stable geographic classroom environment is missing. This paper is very well written, presents the results clearly, and overall fits well within the scope of Geoscience Communication. I do not see needs for major revisions. I only have one minor comment to revise and two suggestions, which I don’t consider critical and go more into how the results are presented.
Thank you for the positive overall comment!
Figure 1: Shouldn’t the arrow point to: “Belonging is achieved” or similar, as Belonging is actually possible on the entire intersection between Availability and Ability circles, and the Motivation finally makes it happen.
That is a relevant point, and we will change the text in the Figure to "Belonging is achieved".
Section 4.1 is predominantly focussed on the social aspect of belonging. I got the feeling that belonging towards the science content, or the academic and geographic environment, falls a little short here. Maybe it could just be mentioned that most of the students’ answers go in the social direction, so that it is clear to the reader that there’s more to consider (as is nicely mentioned in other sections). As is also pointed out, belonging is increasing with getting to know something better, which, I guess, can be applied not only to people, but also the study environment, the science content, etc.
Yes, it is worthwhile to specify the focus areas. However, we feel that while it is true that the data we collected has limitations showing belonging to the science content, the academic and geographic environments were rather strongly present in the students' interviews. As a solution, we will add a paragraph in the beginning of Section 4.1 describing the general focus of the interview answers.
Regarding the ‘Ability to belong’ section: Would it be worth mentioning the barriers for students with more complex learning needs. It is not clear whether there was feedback from students with variable neurotypes, but adaptive education practices to provide multi-modal learning experiences seem important too. e.g.,:
- Spaeth, E., and Pearson, A. (2023). A reflective analysis on neurodiversity and student wellbeing: conceptualising practical strategies for inclusive practice. J. Perspect. Appl. Acad. Pract. 11, 109–120. https://doi.org/10.56433/jpaap.v11i2.517
- Heron, P.J., F. Crameri, E.F. Canaletti, D. Harrison, S. Hashemi, P. Leigh, S. Narayan, K. Osowski, R. Rantanen, and J.A. Williams (2025), Art, music, and play as a teaching aid: applying creative uses of Universal Design for Learning in a prison science class. Front. Educ. 10:1524007. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1524007This is an important issue. We did not specifically study or take into account variable neurotypes, but this is an issue that is definitely present, and also indirectly expressed in some of the interviewees' answers. We will add a paragraph about this in the Ability to belong under Section 4.1.
Thanks for your effort with this, and the nice read and interesting insights!
Thank you for your reviewing effort and useful suggestions to improve the manuscript!
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-715-AC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Katja Anniina Lauri, 02 Jul 2025
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-715', Maurits Ertsen, 13 Jun 2025
The topic of this study is interesting, as it highlights the importance of issues beyond the content and didactics of programs when understanding study success. Having said that, I am not sure that this study is as useful as it claims to be. Partially, that has to do with my uncertainty on what the study actually claims (showing the issue can be studied, showing how belonging affects study success, showing how to engage with promoting belonging?). Partially, that has to do with the properties of the study (setup, reach, case specificity).
In the pdf attached I have indicated several comments in the text, with some general remarks at the end. Summarized, I would like to share this feedback:
- The Introduction reads well, but seems to lack some references here and there. Some refs seem to be a little old. I am not sure what the criteria were when separating what is now 1, 2, and 4.3, as content seems to be quite similar. How is geosciences education special?
- The method is only mentioned and not defended: why is this a useful and applicable method? Some limitations are mentioned in 4.4, which should have been addressed in the method. With results so depending on the coding (assuming that the items in 4.1 and 4.2 are constructed from coding) that step in the method needs much more attention. Listing a set of quotes makes nice reading, but I find it not so easy to determine the relevance of the findings.
- The case study itself is unclear in terms of relevance and applicability. The Intro claims that due to the unique properties the case allows understanding a general issue. The limitations suggest the opposite. The properties of the program are mentioned, but hardly explained in relation to theory and/or results. For example, which findings can be attributed to the case and which are more general? Which results are specific for geosciences?
- The conclusion is very general, as in "we found stuff" and "there is a need to do something in general". I would not even be surprised that is the case, but I would need to know more about the issues I identified above before I accept the general tendency of this conclusion.
I like the topic and see the relevance. I am not sure this paper is ready yet for publication.
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AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Katja Anniina Lauri, 08 Jul 2025
Reviewer’s verbatim comments are in plain font, followed by authors’ replies in bold.
The topic of this study is interesting, as it highlights the importance of issues beyond the content and didactics of programs when understanding study success. Having said that, I am not sure that this study is as useful as it claims to be. Partially, that has to do with my uncertainty on what the study actually claims (showing the issue can be studied, showing how belonging affects study success, showing how to engage with promoting belonging?). Partially, that has to do with the properties of the study (setup, reach, case specificity).
Thank you for your valuable comments. We believe that this study is particularly useful for organisers of joint- and double-degree education programmes. We will try to clarify this in the abstract and introduction. After sharing the preprint we have actually already received positive feedback from a few joint-degree programme directors and coordinators. Our aim has not been to show how sense of belonging affects study success or how to promote belonging. Some of the authors have conducted another recent study where they tried to understand connections between sense of belonging and transformative learning (Siponen et al., Geosci. Comm. preprint https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2024-4097/), but in this study the main aim has been to find out the elements that create sense of belonging among students in a constantly changing study setting of this particular degree programme - which also makes it unique, but does not mean that the results would not be useful in the curriculum design of other programmes, particularly international joint-degree programmes and other geoscience programmes involving both fieldwork and online studies. Concerning the reach of the study we would like to emphasise that the programme is small: there were a total of 21 students in the first three cohorts of the programme, and thus the 15 interviews covered more than 70% of all the students and graduates of the programme at the time the interviews were carried out.
The Introduction reads well, but seems to lack some references here and there. Some refs seem to be a little old. I am not sure what the criteria were when separating what is now 1, 2, and 4.3, as content seems to be quite similar. How is geosciences education special?
We will try to better distinguish the different intentions we have, while addressing generally the overall topics of this paper, in different sections of the submission. In addition, we will add/update some of the utilised references, although some works which are more seminal to the discussion, would remain the same. Among these references, we will highlight those that are engaged specifically for their relevance and context of geoscience (education).
The method is only mentioned and not defended: why is this a useful and applicable method? Some limitations are mentioned in 4.4, which should have been addressed in the method. With results so depending on the coding (assuming that the items in 4.1 and 4.2 are constructed from coding) that step in the method needs much more attention. Listing a set of quotes makes nice reading, but I find it not so easy to determine the relevance of the findings.
The choice of the qualitative methodology we have used is not only typical to education research, but also useful for the explorative approach we chose for this study. Of course the small size of the programme has its effect too. With 15 informants a quantitative approach would be challenging. We will add a further clarification and justification of the method we used in the beginning of Section 3.2.
The case study itself is unclear in terms of relevance and applicability. The Intro claims that due to the unique properties the case allows understanding a general issue. The limitations suggest the opposite. The properties of the program are mentioned, but hardly explained in relation to theory and/or results. For example, which findings can be attributed to the case and which are more general? Which results are specific for geosciences?
We want to thank the Reviewer for their astute comment here. As a response, we will aim to be more explicit by our case selection, and its relevance and implications to geoscience education and communication.
The conclusion is very general, as in "we found stuff" and "there is a need to do something in general". I would not even be surprised that is the case, but I would need to know more about the issues I identified above before I accept the general tendency of this conclusion.
We will revise and edit the Conclusion chapter with aims to correspond to this comment, with the note that the majority of the argumentation and evidence is (also structurally) part of the "Results and discussion" chapter, leaving the Conclusion chapter to be quite explanatory and concise.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-715-AC2
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