Who Is Friends With Whom? Friendships From Peer and Teacher Perspectives

• In Event: Social Participation: A Multiple-Perspective Approach

Abstract

As students spend a significant time of their life in school, it is important that they have friends in class. Having friends influences students’ academic and socio-emotional development as well as their health (e.g. Bukowski & Adams, 2005). Furthermore, having the chance to build friendships with peers without special educational needs (SEN) is used as a strong argument for including students with SEN in mainstream classes (e.g. Author, 2018). As students with SEN are at a high risk of being socially excluded (see e.g. Bossaert, Colpin, Pijl, & Petry, 2013) it is important to identify students from this student group without friends. For instance, Author (2019a) showed that around 15% of students with SEN in mainstream education do not have a single friend in class. Comparing teachers’ and students’ ratings of the social inclusion of students with SEN, it seems that teachers have an even more negative picture of the situation. E.g. Author (2019b) showed that the overlap between students’ self-ratings of social inclusion and teachers’ ratings is lower for students without SEN compared to students with SEN. According to sociometric networks analysis, previous research indicated that peer popularity of students’ and teachers’ ratings is only moderately correlated (r = .42, Kwon, Kim, & Sheridan, 2012). The present study investigated the friendship nominations of around 500 students from 25 primary school classes (4th grade, mean age = 9-11 years). Around 10% of the students had an official diagnosis of having SEN. Data was collected in urban and rural areas in the Federal State North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). To assess students’ friendships, students listed their best friends based on free recall. The nominations were limited to a maximum of five peers. The class teacher in addition named five best friends of each student in their class. Results indicated, that students without SEN have more friends compared to students with SEN. Students without SEN indicated that they have 3.95 friends (SD = 1.33) while their peers with SEN only had about 3.79 friends (SD = 1.62). This group difference was even higher when taking teachers’ nominations into account. Teachers indicated that students without SEN (M =3.31, SD = 1.27) have more friends compared to students with SEN (M = 2.89, SD = 1.42). Using the R (package Siena) the results show that there is a large difference in the agreement of students’ and teachers’ ratings in the 25 classes. The correlation varied between r = .18 - .71. The mean interrater agreement for all 25 classes was r = .47 (SD = .13). Moreover, for students with SEN as well as for boys a smaller interrater-agreement was found. The findings of the study will be discussed in terms of the significance of friendships and diagnosing competences of teachers. Early identification would be a first step to preventing social exclusion and improving the students’ situation overall.

Authors

• Susanne Schwab, University of Vienna

• Christoph Helm, Johannes Kepler University of Linz

• Stefan Markus, University of Wuppertal