Methods Participants & Procedures Participants were draw from a larger study that included rd, 4 th, and 5 th grade students and sixty seven teachers from six schools in a large school district in the southwestern United States. The participant pool was reduced to 626 students due to missing data at the teacher level during analyses. Surveys were administered during fall of the school year to teachers and students. Of the students that provided demographic information 48 % of students were male; 31 % percent were in 3 rd grade, 33% were in 4 th grade and 36% were in 5 th grade; 13.8% were Caucasian, 25.8% were African American, 3.7% were Asian Pacific Islander, 3% were American Indian, 47.5 % were Hispanic and 8.9% were unknown. Of the 54 teachers with complete data for this analysis, 72% reported receiving training in differentiated instruction since beginning teaching at the current school district with an average of 36 hours of training. Measures Student and Teacher Emotional and Behavioral Engagement. Students reported on their behavioral and emotional engagement with academic tasks on a four point Likert scale that ranged from 1= not at all true of me to 4 = very true of me (Patrick, Skinner & Connell, 1993; Wellborn, 1991). The survey consisted of twenty items. Ten items measured emotional engagement, example items are “When I work on something in class I feel interested” and “Class is not all that fun for me” (reverse coded). Behavioral engagement was measured with ten items, example items are “When I’m in class, I listen very carefully” and “When I’m in class, I just act like I’m working” (reverse coded). The teachers reported on individual student engagement with similar items such as “When starting something new in class, this student participates in discussions” (Wellborn & Connell, 1987). Psychological Sense of School Membership scale. Students reported on their perceived belonging at school (Anderman, 2003; Goodenow, 1993). The instrument consisted of five Likert scale items. The scale ranged from 1 = not at all true to 4 = very true. An example of an item is “I am proud of belonging to this school”. Frequency of Differenced Instruction. Teachers reported their frequency of use of differentiated instruction, ranging from 1 = never to 5= daily. Introduction Findings and Contributions Students in classrooms with teachers who reported using differentiated instruction more often also had stronger feelings of belonging in school. When students had more positive feelings of belonging, they participated in more positive ways during classroom activities, as reported by both teachers and students. At the classroom level, teachers’ practices influenced engagement by influencing students’ self-perceptions of mattering in the environment. Consistent with other emerging literature, teacher and student reports of engagement (Lee & Reev,e 2012; Marchand & Furrer, 2014) may be measuring different constructs or function in different ways. The MSEM procedure allows for more unbiased estimates of multilevel mediation, creating an opportunity to gain a more nuanced view of teacher and student effects in motivational models. Limitations and Future Research The measure of differentiated instruction was based on a single self-report item. All data were based on self- or other- report. Future research should consider observational measures of both teacher practices in the forms of differentiated instruction as well as student engagement. Future research may want to explore specific practices teachers use within the differentiated instruction realm that influence student sense of belonging in the classroom. Discussion The Effects of Differentiated Instruction on Student Belonging and Engagement Nicholas M. Nardi & Gwen C. Marchand Department of Educational Psychology and Higher Education, University of Nevada, Las Vegas While there are numerous definitions of differentiated instruction, the basic idea behind the concept is creating an environment that accounts for the learning needs of each student. Therefore, differentiated instruction occurs whenever the classroom teacher alters his or her teaching method in order to tailor instruction to a learner’s needs. The most widely adopted definition of differentiated instruction posits that teachers can differentiate their instruction in three different ways; the content, the process, or the product. While differentiated instruction has been linked to positive learning outcomes (Reis, McCoach, Little, Muller, & Kaniskan, 2011) many unanswered questions remain regarding how the use of differentiated instruction influences student feelings of belonging and motivation in the classroom. Differentiated instruction allows teachers to personalize instruction in the classroom. Although meeting motivational needs of students is not an explicit goal of differentiated instruction many of the tenants of differentiated instruction align with supporting a learners motivational needs. One such need is to perceive oneself as related to others in the classroom. When this need is satisfied, students are more likely to participate in classroom activities with positive, sustained patterns of engagement (Connell, 1990; Connell & Wellborn, 1991). The first goal of this study was to investigate how teacher use of differentiated instruction influenced students’ sense of belonging. We then sought to determine whether students’ feelings of belonging mediated the effects between differentiated instruction and teacher and student reports of engagement. A multilevel structural equation approach (MSEM; Preacher, Zyphur, & Zhang, 2010) was used to test for mediation. Thus, the general question addressed by this investigation was whether, and to what extent, classroom-level variability in perceptions of belongingness served as mediator between classroom-level effects of differentiated instruction on the classroom-level components of behavioral and emotional engagement. Findings Analytic Process Multilevel path analyses were conducted in MPLUS v6.0 to test multilevel mediation using a multilevel structural equation paradigm (MSEM; Preacher, Zyphur, & Zhang, 2010). Two separate models were created for teacher and student report of emotional and behavioral student engagement. The models included teacher reported use of differentiated instruction as a classroom-level predictor of individual-level reports of student behavioral and emotional engagement. Student reported sense of belonging was a mediator variable and ethnicity, IEP status, and gender were predictors of the engagement outcomes. Figure 1. Simplified conceptual model of multilevel path model. Table 1. Effects from multilevel models of student engagement. Model 1 Question: Does perceived belonging (SB) mediate the relationship between teacher report of differentiated instruction (TD) and student report of emotional (SEE) and behavioral engagement (SBE)? Perceived belonging predicted student emotional and behavioral engagement at the student level, even after controlling for the significant effects of gender (b =.14, p <.001) and IEP (b = -.15, p <.05) on SBE and IEP (b = -.17, p <.01) on SEE. At the classroom level, student perceived belonging was a significant mediator of the effect of TD on both SBE and SEE. There was no significant residual variance remaining in classroom level SBE or SEE, although there was for SB. Model 2 Question: Does perceived belonging (SB) mediate the relationship between teacher report of differentiated instruction (TD) and teacher report of emotional (TEE) and behavioral engagement (TBE)? Perceived belonging predicted TBE and TEE, even after controlling for the significant effects of gender (b =.29, p <.001) and IEP (b = -.44, p <.001) on TBE; and gender (b =.17, p <.001) and IEP (b = -.37, p <.001) on TEE. Student belonging exerted a significant positive effect on TBE and a significant indirect effect for the mediated relationship was found for TBE. At the classroom level, TD had an effect on perceived belonging, but no significant direct or indirect effect on TEE. Significant between-level residual variance remained for TEE and SB.