About Us
Who We Are
Mattering in Action is the leader in bringing the scholarship of mattering to transform education. For too long, schools have measured success in test scores and attendance while overlooking a more fundamental need: the need for every student, teacher, and staff member to know they matter.
We exist to change that. We translate decades of scholarship on mattering into practical, actionable tools that address the urgent challenges facing today's students and educators — and in doing so, we help make schools more human.
How It Began
Mattering in Action is led by Dr. Sarah Bennison, NYU faculty and an educator for over 30 years, whose work sits at the intersection of intellectual rigor and social impact.
Dr. Bennison created a thought-leading, innovative service learning program at Trinity School in New York City, integrating meaningful, ongoing community engagement into daily school life. Working alongside hundreds of students and families over many years, what she noticed was profound: when students had opportunities to contribute in ways that met genuine human and community needs, they experienced powerful mental health benefits — reduced anxiety, less loneliness, and a reframing of their own identities in the world.
What she was witnessing, it turned out, was not anecdotal. It was rooted in decades of scholarship.
As leading scholar Professor Isaac Prilleltensky defines it, mattering is the psychological experience of "feeling valued and adding value."
Dr. Bennison began to call it Mattering in Action: identifying your gifts, and putting them to work in the world — and we provide free resources to students and educators to put mattering in action in classrooms and on campuses.
We bring mattering to life through three program groups, each designed for a different part of the school community:
Collegiate Mattering Council
A network of college students applying the principles of mattering on their own campuses.
Youth Leadership Council
A leadership program equipping high school students to build cultures of mattering among their peers.
Higher Ed Mattering in Action
Our partnership arm working directly with higher education faculty and administrators to embed mattering into campus life.
From Science to Practice
Mattering doesn't stay in the realm of theory at Mattering in Action — we apply it. Through our proprietary framework, Mattering Centered Education (MCE), we translate the science of mattering into concrete practices for curriculum, culture, and relationships across an entire school community.
MCE is grounded in the three core components of mattering — Attention, Importance, and Reliance — and in over 40 years of interdisciplinary research showing that a strong sense of mattering predicts healthier, more resilient lives. Learn more about the framework on our Research page.
More Than Research
Mattering in Action is more than a research organization — we're a hub for actionable resources and community. We bring educators and students together in the same space, giving both groups the tools, training, and support to make change from the inside out.
We believe transformation doesn't happen through top-down policy alone. It happens when the people inside a school community — the ones living it every day — have what they need to lead the change themselves.
Whether you're an educator looking to bring mattering into your classroom, a student ready to lead change on your campus, or a partner interested in supporting our work — there's a place for you here.
What is Mattering?
Mattering is a concept as simple as it is profound. A deep sense of mattering offers a protective shield of psychological resources — self-worth, belonging, purpose — that act as a critical buffer against life's adversities. People who feel valued, and who feel that they add value to others, are more likely to thrive in adolescence and adulthood.
Attention, Importance, and Reliance
Leading scholars identify these as the core components of mattering. When any one is absent — when a person feels unnoticed, insignificant, or not depended upon — it triggers a fear response inextricably linked to anxiety and depression.
Attention
Being noticed. Feeling seen and heard by the people around you, not overlooked.
Importance
Feeling that you genuinely matter to someone — that your presence carries weight.
Reliance
Being depended upon. Knowing that others count on you and what you contribute.
The Mattering Balance
How well a person balances feeling valued with adding value to those around them predicts positive mental health outcomes — separating healthy high achievers from those who are less healthy, even when their accomplishments look the same from the outside.
Mattering is a deep, human universal need.
A strong sense of mattering is a protective shield against life's ups and downs. Research consistently shows that mattering buffers against anxiety, depression, and loneliness — across every age, background, and stage of life.
The concept is simple. The deficit is real.
Mattering might seem obvious — yet we are facing a mattering deficit within individual households, schools, workplaces, and entire communities. With rising rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide, understanding how mattering protects people is more critical than ever.
The good news: mattering is easy to understand, and simple to put into practice.
From science to the architecture of school life.
The foundational science of mattering — first established by Rosenberg and McCullough (1981) and developed across four decades of interdisciplinary research — can be applied to the full architecture of educational design. It's an evidence-based framework built on a simple but powerful premise: when every person in a school — student, teacher, administrator, staff — genuinely feels they matter, everything else follows.
Drawing on scholarship across psychology, cognitive science, the history of education, social impact theory, and educational policy and leadership, Mattering Centered Education™ applies Attention, Importance, and Reliance to curriculum, culture, and relationships school-wide.