Peer Cultures and Their Challenge for Teaching

Abstract

In recent years, the term peer group has increasingly been replaced by the term peer culture. This chapter begins with a discussion of these two terms and the likely reasons for this change. Next, a typology of peer cultures is presented based on three different ways in which these culture can be created. The presentation of this typology is followed by a discussion of the diversity among peer cultures generated by background characteristics of peers such as social class, gender, age, and race-ethnicity. The chapter then assesses the claims that peer cultures of children and adolescents frequently conflict with teachers’ goals and the official school culture that encompasses these goals. While not rejecting these claims, I argue that they are based on simplifying assumptions that ignore tensions and contradictions within official school cultures. In particular, I argue that it is useful to separate three strands of official school culture — academic goals, extracurricular activities, and school rules about deportment — and to show how each affects and is affected by the peer cultures students construct for themselves. Next, the influence of peer cultures on students’ opinions and behaviours is assessed directly in a section of the chapter that reviews the literature concerned with the nature and strength of peer influence. The final section of the chapter assesses the implications of peer cultures for teaching by examining what school staffs have done and might do to affect peer group processes at different levels of schooling.KeywordsSexual HarassmentJunior High SchoolSchool StaffExtracurricular ActivityGang MemberThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.