Facilitate Peer Interaction Research Articles

Preschool Teachers’ Strategies to Enhance Social Interaction Skills of Children during Playtime

The purpose of this study is to examine how preschool teachers organize free play activities and what kind of strategies they use for enhancing peer related social interactions among 6-year-old children. The study was conducted in Ankara by interviewing with teachers to obtain their views and experiences on peer related social interaction during playtime and by observing them to learn their actions to facilitate peer interactions. Findings of this study are thought to highlight the importance of the teachers’ role in the development of social skills and peer relationships in early years.

Assessing the effects of interactive blogging on student attitudes towards peer interaction, learning motivation, and academic achievements

AbstractBlogs have been increasingly used to supplement traditional classroom lectures in higher education. This paper explores the use of blogs, and how student attitudes towards online peer interaction and peer learning, as well as motivation to learn from peers, may differ when using the blog comments feature, and when students are encouraged to read and comment on each other's work. We contrast two ways blogs affect learning engagement: (1) solitary blogs as personal digital portfolios for writers; or (2) blogs used interactively to facilitate peer interaction by exposing blogging content and comments to peers. A quasi‐experiment was conducted across two semesters, involving 154 graduate and undergraduate students. The result suggests that interactive blogs, compared with isolated blogs, are associated with positive attitudes towards academic achievement in course subjects and in online peer interaction. Students showed positive motivation to learn from peer work, regardless of whether blogs were interactive or solitary.

Training Early Childhood Educators to Promote Peer Interactions: Effects on Children's Aggressive and Prosocial Behaviors

Research Findings: This study examined the effects of educators' participation in an in-service training program on the aggressive and prosocial behaviors of preschool-age children. Seventeen early childhood educators were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. A total of 68 preschool children, 4 from each educator's classroom, also participated. The educator–child play groups included boys and girls. Educators in the experimental group received in-service training on how to facilitate peer interaction; educators in the control group received training on adult–child dyadic interaction strategies. Videotaped interactions of small-group play were coded to capture the frequency of children's use of aggressive and prosocial behaviors. Decreases in aggressive behaviors were found for boys but not for girls. Compared to the control group, the children in the experimental group used significantly more prosocial behaviors following the in-service training. Follow-up studies measuring the stability of decreases in aggression for boys and increased prosocial behaviors have yet to be conducted. Practice or Policy: In-service training for educators that focuses on promoting peer interactions improves children's use of prosocial behaviors during dramatic play in small-group interactions.

Facilitating peer interaction – support to children with Down syndrome in mainstream schools

This study addresses the support provided by class staff in order to facilitate social participation of pupils with Down syndrome and peers in regular classes, and how they experience the interaction between the pupils. Data were collected through field observations of six pupils with Down syndrome in their class in mainstream schools, their six teachers and teachers’ assistants. Qualitative interviews were conducted with the teachers and teachers’ assistants. The analysis showed different support strategies, implying both environmental adaptations and individual support in order to facilitate peer interaction. A major finding was the role of the ‘supported ego’, mainly provided by teachers’ assistants. This role accommodated to the differences between the pupils, by compensating for the cognitive difficulties (i.e., perceptions, understanding and agency) of the pupils with Down syndrome. We concluded that class staff strived to keep the class as one unit by creating opportunities for participation for all the pupils through different strategies depending on their role and responsibility.

Training Graduate Student Clinicians to Use Preschool Peer Interaction Strategies

Abstract Playing with peers is an important part of childhood—what children learn from interacting with one another has enormous impact on both their social and language development. Although many children naturally develop the ability to interact well with peers, some children have difficulty interacting with other children and may miss out on important learning opportunities as a result. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can target the peer interactions of young children on their caseload, assuming that they have the knowledge and skills with which to address them. SLP graduate programs have the opportunity to provide future SLPs with both knowledge and skills-based training. This study assessed a graduate program in which three graduate clinicians participated in a preschool program for children with communication disorders; peer interactions were targeted within the program. The students were observed and data was collected regarding their use of peer interaction facilitation strategies in the group sessions both prior to and after they participated in a direct training program regarding the use of such skills. Outcomes indicate that the direct training program resulted in a statistically significant increase in the students' use of different strategies to facilitate peer interactions among the children in the group.

Social Communication: A Framework for Assessment and Intervention

Social Communication: A Framework for Assessment and Intervention

Promoting Peer Interaction Skills

This article highlights the importance of peer interactions for pre–school-aged children's social and language development and demonstrates the need for professional development in this area. Learning Language and Loving It™—The Hanen Program® for Early Childhood Educators and Preschool Teachers is a professional development program that is delivered by speech–language pathologists and teaches educators and preschool teachers to use naturalistic environmental arrangements and verbal support strategies to facilitate peer interactions. This article describes the program and summarizes research that indicates that the program effectively improves educators' use of verbal supports for peer interaction. Other outcomes for children in their care included increased interactions with their peers that continued beyond 2 conversational turns. To date, the efficacy of the verbal support strategies used in this in-service program has been investigated only for typically developing children. The program's usefulness in promoting peer interactions with children who have disabilities (e.g., language disorders) is beginning to be explored.

Facilitating Language Skills

Learning Language and Loving It is a well-known model of inservice education for early childhood educators and preschool teachers. Its objectives are to facilitate language learning, peer interaction, and literacy development in naturalistic classroom contexts. The inservice education program consists of 8 evening group sessions and 6 individual video feedback sessions. Early childhood educators are taught to use (a) child-centered strategies (eg, follow the children's lead), (b) interaction-promoting strategies (eg, ask questions that continue the conversation, wait for the child to take a turn), and (c) language-modeling strategies (eg, label, expand, comment). Educators also learn strategies to facilitate peer interactions and early literacy skills. Investigations of the efficacy of this inservice program indicate that it effectively improves educators' language facilitation strategies and verbal supports for peer interaction. Typically developing children evidenced increased talkativeness, used a more diverse vocabulary, and increased their peer interactions. The program's use with children who have disabilities (eg, language disorders) and children who are learning English as a second language is beginning to be explored.

Low Income African American Mothers' Parenting Stress and Instructional Strategies to Promote Peer Relationships in Preschool Children

This study investigated mothers' stress as a predictor of her instructional strategies for promoting peer relationships in preschool children. Forty-two low income African American mothers responded to structured interviews on the teaching strategies they frequently used to facilitate peer interactions of their two to three- and-a-half-year-old children. Mothers' stress was measured by The Parenting Stress Index-Short Form. Using regression analysis, three stress predictors of mothers' strategies to promote peer relationships were examined: parental distress, difficult child, and parent-child dysfunctional interactions. The three predictors of stress had a differential impact on mothers' instructional strategies. As stress increased: (a) when teaching their own children, mothers more frequently used strategies that reduced antisocial behaviors and less frequently used the strategies that promoted pro-social behaviors towards peers; (b) when teaching their children's peers, mothers less frequently used strategies that would directly benefit these children. Educational implications of these findings for stressed parents, professionals who work with stressed parents, as well as those professionals who teach parent educators are examined.

Pro-Act: Sex Strategies for Organizing Peer Interaction in Elementary Classrooms

One of the continuing instructional dilemmas faced by elementary bilingual education and English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers has been that of providing students with adequate and appropriate second language input and opportunities for practice. While recent research has shown that the use of peer language models is one potential solution to this problem, few bilingual educators have suggested the specific means by which peer models may be used to facilitate such input and practice. This article outlines six major (or “macro”) strategies for facilitating peer interaction in English used by two teachers who were observed and videotaped in a study of a summer English Enrichment program. When combined, the first letters of each of the macrostrategies used by these teachers spell the word “PRO-ACT,” a term which describes a crucial attribute of each of these teachers’ macrostrategies- -that of being pro-active rather than re-active in the use of peer language models in the daily life of the classroom.