The experience of peer rejection in the classroom, an environment in which students spend a large part of their time, is accompanied by a sense of social pain which can have a profound effect on self-perception and attitude toward the overall school environment. These attitudes can be subsequently reflected in the student’s behavior at school and in his/her school success. The research aims to identify differences in the perception of school life (interpersonal and intrapersonal) among rejected and popular upper-primary school students. For this purpose, the sociometric nomination method and a questionnaire measuring the student’s perception of the school environment were used. From a total of 1,625 students (aged 11–15) from 20 schools, 312 students with the status of popular (liked) and rejected (disliked) were included in the research. The multivariate analysis of covariance (with age and gender as covariates) results revealed no significant differences between the two contrasting groups (popular and rejected) in terms of the perception of school life (interpersonal and intrapersonal). The results of the research indicated a different perception of the school environment within the groups of rejected and popular students rather than differences between the groups. Both the rejected and popular students report contradictory attitudes toward school life. Half of the students indicated that they feel lonely at school and have no confidence in teachers, considering the school a place where they do not like to learn, where they are troubled and where they do not like to talk to their classmates. Perhaps counterintuitively, a larger number of popular students stated that they feel lonely than did the rejected students from the class. Although the results do not paint a very positive picture of perceptions of the school environment, this should be seen as an opportunity to develop active class work with a greater emphasis on strengthening collective trust in the school.
Peer rejection, which is accompanied by the experience of social pain, can have a serious impact on the ability to create new relationships in the future and can cause a negative effect on selfconcept. Research shows that peer rejected pupils fail to self-regulate their own behavior. These mechanisms may be undermined by peer rejection. This qualitative study explored which factors strengthen and weaken the self-regulation of behavior in peer rejected and accepted pupils. Twelve pupils (aged 12-14 years) were purposively sampled on the basis of the intensity of peer preferences in the class (strongly accepted and strongly rejected pupils). Unstructured face-toface interviews in combination with the problem situation analysis from video recording, the metaphorical associative cards, and a sociometric (peer nomination) method were conducted. Using the grounded theory and factoring methods, common factors have been found to affect the self-regulation of pupils´ behavior in the classroom: own power or powerlessness; fear of being or not being accepted by peers, internal denial or manifestation of emotions and to stay with yourself or with others. The results suggest that the use of self-regulation behavior alters under different contextual influences and the nature of the peer interaction. Furthermore, the nature of the peer interaction is largely influenced by the relationship to oneself. The results indicate that it is important to understand the importance that pupils attribute to themselves and others and that facilitating factors should be used individually to reduce the effect of inhibiting factors to improve pupils´ self-regulation.
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