Social Class and Belonging: Implications for Graduate Students

Both personal and social identities are critical components of our self concept. Deaux, Reid, Mizrahi, and Ethier (1995) not that ​“membership in social groups or collectives provides and important basis for self-definition” (p.280). In his influential work on identity development, Erikson (1968) emphasizes the important role of the broader community in affirming one’s sense of self or identity. 

Our understanding of how social identities matter is greatly enhanced by paying attention to the contexts in which these identities develop. The academy is one critical context in which these identities matter (Ostrove & Cole 2003; Steward & Dotolo, 2005). In this paper we endeavour to show how an important but understudied (Frable, 1997) dimension of social identity – social class – has implications of the extent to which graduate students are interested in becoming faculty members at top research universities. Specifically, we examine the extent to which graduate students’ social class backgrounds structure a sense of belonging in graduate school, and the relation between that sense of belonging and graduate students’ academic self-concept.

Ostrove, J, Stewart, A. and Curtin, N. (2011)

Social Class and Belonging: Implications for Graduate Students.

The Journal of Higher Education, 82(6): 748–774.