Friendship Networks of Middle School Students With and Without Disabilities: Enhancing Inclusion Through a Research-Practice Partnership

• In Event: Using Social Network Analysis to Examine the Social and Organizational Networks of Children With Disabilities and Their Educators

Abstract

Objectives
During early adolescence physical, cognitive, and social changes shape adolescents’ identity development. Social pressures like peer acceptance into social groups and strong friendships are important for adolescents to develop their identity. This study examined the friendship networks of middle school students with and without disabilities over one academic year in which their teachers were participating in a Research Practice Partnership (RPP) to implement inclusive practices. The main research aim was ‘to understand the impact of the RPP on the evolution of students’ friendship networks’.

Perspective
Florian (2008) defined inclusion in terms of a philosophy of education that promotes the education of all students in mainstream schools, and as a policy which is generally understood around the world as part of a human rights agenda that demands access to, and equity in, education (Florian et al., 2016). Artiles and colleagues (2006) argue that inclusive education is one of the most important developments in special education. Inclusion is necessary to achieve social justice for students with disabilities.

Methods
Bounded descriptive social network analysis techniques (Borgatti et al., 2018) were used to gather data. With IRB approval, 266 students across four school districts (4 schools; 11 classrooms) participated in a social network survey over three time points.

Data sources
Students were given a classroom roster and asked to identify as many of their friends in the classroom. For each friend they selected, they were also asked to define whether that particular friend was a very good friend, a good friend or sort of a friend. Social network maps for each classroom were developed and descriptive network measures were calculated at three levels of analysis, namely the network level (density), the dyad level (reciprocity), and the node level (centrality: in-degree).

Results
Results suggest that the RPP had an overall positive impact on the friendship networks of all students across 11 classrooms. For data point 1, across all participating classrooms, 2470 combined friendship ties were reported. For data point 2 this number jumped to 3476 friendship ties, an increase of about 41%. For data point 3, the number of friendship ties reported was 3500 which shows that the gains made in data point 2 remained stable even after the RPP had been completed. The quality and strength of ties among students also improved. Students’ reports of the number of close friendship ties (very good friend) increased more than the number of less close friendship ties (good friend or sort of a friend). For example, in one classroom, students who reported close friendship ties increased from 33 (point 1) to 67 (point 2) to 70 (point 3).

Significance
Findings present important pedagogical implications for enhancing inclusion for students with disabilities. Tailored micro-interventions that are co-constructed by teachers and researchers may be an effective way to foster inclusion rather than generic interventions that may lack contextual specificity.

Authors

• Christoforos Mamas, University of California - San Diego

• Shana R. Cohen, University of California - San Diego

• Caren Holtzman, University of California - San Diego