My Ideal First Day

This is a report drawing upon the research carried out for the 'Student Sense of Belonging' project, a collaboration between researchers in London Universities interested in the first year experience. This report provides interim observations with reference to a three-university study into the implications of students’ sense of belonging in UK tertiary education. The study employs a survey measurement based on the Psychological Sense of School Membership (Goodenow, 1993), which was administered to over 1,300 first-year, first-semester students. To enrich the survey data, descriptions related to the ‘sense of belonging’ phenomenon were recorded via the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method (Wengraf, 2007) and will be subject to further analysis via this method in later stages of the project. Initial findings include emergent themes and practice-based opportunities to increase students’ sense of belonging. Appendix A (p.10 onwards) will be of interest to those seeking international student views on the induction process.