Children’s Collaborative Skills as a Mediator of the Relation Between Peer Victimization and Academic Achievement

• In Event: Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Toward a New Ethnic of Care, Love, and Collaboration in Schools

Abstract

The relations between peer victimization, academic achievement, and children’s collaborative skills (i.e., cooperative skills, showing support and concern, conscientiousness, staying on-task) were examined in elementary school-aged children. Data were gathered on 205 third, fourth, and fifth grade students. Correlational analyses revealed peer victimization was negatively related to academic achievement and children’s collaborative skills. Positive academic outcome was associated with higher levels of collaborative skill use. Multivariate analyses of variance analyses revealed significant sex and grade differences in children’s collaborative skills such that girls and older children were rated as more skilled than their counterparts. Findings supported the proposed hypothesis that collaborative skills mediated the link between peer victimization and academic achievement.

Authors

• Khaerannisa Cortes, Arizona State University

• Becky Kochenderfer-Ladd, Arizona State University - Tempe