Belonging-Centered Retention: A Conceptual Model Linking Mentorship, Advising, And Institutional Belonging to Persistence Among Underrepresented STEM Students
Abstract
Persistence gaps in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics remain widest for students from racially minoritized, first-generation, and low-income backgrounds, even when prior preparation and ability are held constant. This pattern locates the problem less in student deficit than in the relational and structural conditions students encounter once enrolled. Yet the supports most often credited with retaining these students, namely mentorship, advising, and inclusive institutional environments, are typically studied in isolation, as though each produced persistence through a separate channel. This paper develops a Belonging-Centered Retention model that resolves this fragmentation by positing a single integrative mechanism. The model identifies three antecedents that differ in level, the quality of mentorship, the orientation of academic advising, and the climate of institutional belonging, and theorizes that their influence on persistence operates substantially through their convergent effect on a student's sense of belonging rather than through independent direct pathways. Belonging in turn shapes persistence both directly and through two intermediate states with standing in the STEM literature, science self-efficacy and disciplinary identity. The model further specifies conditions that strengthen or weaken these pathways, including the salience of a minoritized identity, the perceived inclusiveness of the disciplinary environment, and exposure to identity-based threat. Twelve propositions formalize the relationships and make the model testable through longitudinal and multilevel designs. By treating belonging as an integrative mediator rather than one variable among many, the framework offers a parsimonious account of why diverse supports share retention effects and reorients attention toward the conditions that produce them.
Keywords
sense of belongingpersistencementorshipacademic advisingunderrepresented studentsSTEM educationconceptual framework
References
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