Effect of Peer Nominations of Teacher-Student Support on Social and Academic Outcomes

• In Event: Peers and Academics: The Influence of Peers and Peer Groups on Academic and Social Outcomes

Abstract

Teachers exert considerable influence on the classroom peer ecology. This influence likely operates at both the individual (i.e., individual teacher-student relationship) and classroom levels. At an individual level, the affective quality of the teacher-student relationship may influence students’ peer relationships via multiple processes, including the nature and quality of students’ classroom participation (Hughes, Luo, Kwok, & Loyd, 2008). Classmates may also rely on their observations of teacher-student instructional and social interactions in making judgments about classmates’ social and academic traits (Hughes, Cavell, & Willson, 2001). At the classroom level, the structure, or distribution, of teacher support may also have implications for the peer ecology and students’ academic motivation, because teachers’ interactions with students set the tone for peer interactions.
Although the effect of teacher-student support on peer relationships is explained in terms of social referencing theory, few researchers have directly assessed classmates’ perceptions of teacher support. Peer nomination inventories are often used to assess a child’s reputation within a peer group on various dimensions, such as aggression or perceived popularity. A student who receives many nominations for a particular social or behavioral dimension is said to have a high reputation for that dimension. Research on peer reputations finds that peers react differently to classmates on the basis of these classroom reputations (Hymel, 1986).
In a sample of 713 third and fourth grade students, the current study investigated the effect of students’ reputation for teacher support (i.e., peer teacher support reputation, or PTSR) on children’s peer relationships (acceptance and reputation as academically capable) and two indicators of children’s academic motivation (academic self-efficacy and teacher-rated behavioral engagement), controlling for children’s baseline performance on the outcomes. The study also investigated the effect of a measure of the dispersion of peer nominations of teacher support (i.e., classroom centralization) on children’s peer relationships and academic motivation, to capture the hierarchical versus egalitarian structure of peer perceptions of teacher support. In classrooms with high centralization for peer nominations of teacher support, a few students receive many nominations while most students receive no or few nominations (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). High classroom centralization for teacher support nominations represents a high level of group consensus as to who is preferred by the teacher.
Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to examine the effect of individual PTSR and classroom Centralization of Teacher Support on peer academic reputation (PAR), peer acceptance, perceived academic competence, and teacher-rated behavioral engagement. PTSR predicted changes in all student outcomes except perceived academic competence, above baseline scores and other covariates. Centralization of Teacher Support predicted changes in students’ PAR, net the effect of PTSR and covariates. Children’s achievement levels moderated some effects (Table 1 and Figure 1). The finding suggests that when the provision of teacher support is more inclusive, or egalitarian, more students have the opportunity to be perceived by peers in a positive light, leading to less rigid stratification of social and academic status.

Authors

• Jan N. Hughes, Texas A&M University

• Myung Hee Im, Texas A&M University

• Sarah Wehrly