Catastrophic effects of bullying on school belonging

Our aim was to understand students’ sense of school belonging as a function of their engagement with academics and their experiences of bullying. Due to the complex pattern of relationships, we applied linear and nonlinear models. Participants were 4,778 fourth graders from Saudi Arabia from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2021 cohort. Data were analyzed using linear modeling as well as the cusp catastrophe. The results fully supported the premises of the cusp catastrophe model, in that level of bullying, in principle, had a negative impact on the development of school belonging, but once the level of bullying crossed a critical threshold, students’ sense of belonging became unpredictable and chaotic. Previous empirical studies found that the cusp model has significant predictive validity. We can conclude that bullying may act as a moderating factor that distorts relationships such as that between student engagement and school belonging.