Teaching practices and elementary classroom peer ecologies

Abstract

Teachers and students in 39 1st, 3rd and 5th grade classrooms participated in a study of teaching practices and classroom peer networks. Teachers reported on their attitudes towards aggression and withdrawal, provided rationales for their seating arrangements, and were observed on patterns of emotional and instructional support and classroom organization. Students were surveyed or interviewed for peer nominations of friendship, popularity, being cool, and aggressive and prosocial behavior, and from these nominations classroom-level indices were derived concerning the richness of positive and negative social ties among children, the egalitarian or hierarchical nature of social status hierarchies, and classroom norms for aggressive and prosocial behavior. Preliminary results suggest that teachers' attitudes towards social behavior are associated with the degree of liking and disliking their students express; teachers' grouping patterns are associated with numerous features of classroom social networks; and teachers' observed emotional support was associated with higher rates of friendship reciprocation.