Teacher behavior and peer liking and disliking: The teacher as a social referent for peer status.

Abstract

According to social referencing theory, cues peers take from positive and negative teacher behavior toward a student affect the student’s peer liking and disliking status. The present study was the first to test the hypothesized mediation model connecting teacher behavior with peer liking and disliking status, via peer perceptions of teacher liking and disliking for the student. We used a longitudinal design and controlled for peer perceptions of student behavior. A sample of 1,420 5th-grade students (Mage = 10.60) from 56 classes completed sociometric questionnaires at 3 time points within 1 school year. At the first time point video data was also recorded, and teacher behavior toward specific students was coded. A multilevel path analysis showed that teachers did function as social referents for peer status but only through their negative behavior toward a student. Negative teacher behavior was associated with peer perceptions of the teacher’s disliking for the student 3 months later, which in turn predicted peers’ disliking of the student 6 months later. Findings suggest that teachers play a prominent role in peer relationships, particularly in peer disliking. For practice, this suggests that it may be important for teachers to refrain from openly negative behavior toward students, particularly those at risk of peer rejection.

Social Acceptance in Inclusive Classrooms: The Role of Teacher Attitudes Toward Inclusion and Classroom Management

“…Teachers also unintentionally affect the social dynamics of the classroom by interacting with students and implementing their teaching routines (Farmer et al, 2011). For example, how teachers give feedback does not only have an impact on students' learning processes (e.g., Hattie, 2009), but also affects their social acceptance (e.g., Hendrickx et al, 2017;Wullschleger et al, 2020). However, most empirical studies on the impact of teachers on student social outcomes have been carried out in regular classrooms.…”

Bidirectional associations between emotions and school adjustment

“…It is also possible that teachers are more likely to observe children’s peer interactions in the classroom than in lunch and recess, resulting in associations being more consistent for negative emotion expressed in the classroom. Additionally, teachers’ negative interactions with students seem to affect students’ dislike of peers (Hendrickx et al, 2016), suggesting that children’s negative emotions in the classroom might affect students’ peer relationships due in part to the effect of negative expressivity on students’ interactions with the teacher in classes. Alternatively, negative emotional expressivity may be more acceptable or common during play in recreational settings (Craig, Pepler, & Atlas, 2000), and thus was not negatively associated with later peer acceptance.…”

“…Socially competent children may have more positive experiences with others, and thus be more likely to express positive emotion over time. We hypothesized that teacher–student relationship conflict and closeness would be associated with children’s negative and positive emotional expressivity in school one year later, especially in the classroom where teachers have a strong socializing role (Hendrickx, Mainhard, Oudman, Boor-Klip, & Brekelmans, 2016).…”

Introduction of a new method for representing the sociometric status within the peer group: the example of sociometrically neglected children

“…Sociometric methods are widely used in educational research to measure positive and negative links (e.g. liking and disliking) between peers (Hendrickx et al 2016;Hughes and Im 2016). Children are asked to nominate the peer group members they like the most and those they like the least.…”