Social networks within classroom ecologies: peer effects on students’ engagement in the context of relationships with teachers and parents

Abstract

If researchers wish to understand how classroom ecologies influence children's learning at school, they will need to combine investigations of the effects of peer group networks with analyses of teachers' and parents' influences. One promising target outcome for such studies would be children's classroom engagement, because it is not only visible to peers and teachers at school, but is also apparent in children's academic activities at home. To study peer influences on engagement, socio-cognitive mapping strategies appear to be well suited, because they capture groups of peers who frequently interact with one another. Building on findings from several such studies of peer group effects, we expand the framework by incorporating influences from teachers and parents. We include preliminary analyses suggesting that peer influences are especially strong for children who do not experience much involvement from teachers and parents. Finally, we suggest that it would be beneficial if teachers were trained to keep track of peer group processes in their classrooms.

Dancing is belonging! How social networks mediate the effect of a dance intervention on students' sense of belonging to their classroom

“…This mediation finding may be more meaningful than a comparable mediation using solely self-report measures because it suggests that students have an accurate perception of whether their peers actually like and accept them (Cappella et al, 2012). Although the observed indirect effects were small, our research contributes to the field by providing insight into the importance of relationship context in academic environments because it supports the concept of classrooms as social ecologies (Kindermann & Vollet, 2014). While this notion is not yet reflected in typical analyses of students' experiences in educational settings, research suggests that the role of social proximity within educational settings (e.g., dance) should receive more consideration (Beckes & Coan, 2011).…”

A meta-analysis of longitudinal peer influence effects in childhood and adolescence.

“…Therefore, these studies were excluded as peer influence processes may work differently in these relationships. PEER INFLUENCE IN CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE statistical tests (Cairns et al, 1985;Kindermann & Vollet, 2014). Finally, similarly to sociometric nomination procedures, for each participant, a peer group behavior can be computed by averaging across all group members' behaviors.…”

“…Most studies included in this meta-analysis used this approach. 1 A second approach, used by a smaller number of studies, is the social cognitive map (SCM; Cairns et al, 1985) method, in which participants report not only about their own personal peer groups but also about other peer groups they know through everyday interactions and observations (see Kindermann & Vollet, 2014). For example, youth are asked to identify all existing peer groups in their schools-even the ones they are not part of-by listing all names of each group's members.…”

Peers Matter: Links Between Classmates’ and Individual Students’ Executive Functions in Elementary School

“…Although we were not able to directly test the underlying mechanisms for our results, it is likely that our findings reflect processes among students and between students and teachers. Since the 1970s, researchers have highlighted that classroom environments should be viewed as social ecologies (Doyle, 1977; Vygotsky, 1978), where learning is a socially organized process (Kindermann & Vollet, 2014). Peer interactions and teacher-child interactions together shape children’s opportunities to build and practice their self-regulation skills.…”